For all talk about the new AV1 codec or HEVC in HLS, the simplest and fastest way to save bandwidth costs and improve your viewer’s QoE is to deploy video optimization or per-title encoding. I explore why in a column now up on StreamingMedia.com. You can implement a simple form of per-title encoding with FFmpeg using Capped CRF (for Constant …

Figure 1. BD-rate savings from AV1 as published by Facebook. When Facebook compared the AV1 codec to VP9 and two flavors of H264, their researcher precisely stated, “In terms of PSNR, the average BD-rate savings of AV1 relative to x264 main, x264 high and libvpx-vp9 were 51.0%, 47.0% and 29.9%, respectively.” This means that AV1 delivered the same quality as …

As recently as June, HEVC seemed to have more momentum than the Golden State Warriors and New England Patriots combined, courtesy of Apple’s adding HEVC to HLS. Then, in the span of 30 days in January, the balloon popped as a trio of seismically negative events cast a dark shadow on HEVC’s future relevance and potential financial success. Et Tu, …

According to Moscow State University (MSU), AV1 is the highest quality codec available, besting both HEVC and VP9—when considering quality only, and not encoding speed,. More interesting is that in normal operating modes, VP9 produced higher quality than HEVC. These are just two of several compelling findings from the recently completed MSU 2017 Codec Comparison Report. As you’ll read below, …

At its June 2017 Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Apple announced support for HEVC playback in HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) delivered to iOS, MacOS, and tvOS end points. For many, this announcement raised more questions than answers, which we hope to address in this article. By way of background, at Streaming Media West 2017, I co-produced a preconference session on encoding HEVC …

It’s easy to imagine the deployment of HEVC as a case study in business and technology schools about how not to launch a technology. Not only do you have a launch cycle that clearly limited adaption, you also have classic illustrations of two of the major problems related to standard-essential patents, patent holdup, and royalty stacking. Patent holdup refers to the practice …

RealNetworks is one of the most storied names in video streaming-if you’re on the wrong side of 40. If you’re younger, than odds are you never heard of the company. On Wednesday, August 16, RealNetworks announced an agreement to deploy Advanced RealMedia HD (RMHD) Technology in China. What do we know about the codec? Here’s a blurb from the product …

Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg in 30 Minutes or Less, is an entry-level book for developers who need to produce single MP4 or adaptive groups with FFmpeg, the free, open-source utility used in some of the largest encoding farms in the world. The book also includes a primer on terms and technologies related to streaming and recommended settings for …

I’ll be speaking on HEVC, VP9, and AV1 at Streaming Media East, though the presentation description mentions only HEVC. You can download the handout below. Here’s the description. A102 – How To: Comparing And Choosing The Best HEVC Codec Content distributors and aggregators adding HEVC to their delivery pipeline will have plenty of codec options, but who has the time …

On Tuesday, May 16, 2017, at Streaming Media East, I’m presenting a talk entitled How To: Comparing and Choosing The Best HEVC Codec. Unfortunately, I could only get two codec vendors to participate, x265 and MainConcept. It’s not for lack of trying; I also asked Elemental, Beamr/Vanguard, and Fraunhofer if they’d like to participate and all declined, as did Intel, Ittiam, …