Streaming Video Consulting

Affordable, insightful streaming video consulting from one of the most respected voices in streaming production.

Prerelease testing and review

Discover any obvious flaws or competitive disadvantages before the product or service gets in the hands of actual customers or is reviewed by a trade publication. Provide product marketing and development with an objective view of the product or service’s key competitive strengths and weaknesses.

Preset creation and Testing

Encoding presets control both quality and bandwidth costs; these engagements ensure that you’re optimizing both. Few companies can afford (or need) experienced compressionists in-house on a full-time basis. You can rent an expert at the fraction of the cost, and achieve the same benefits.

Encoder selection and Workflow analysis

Encoding and workflow decisions are costly and have long-term implications on throughput and production efficiency. Through his writing and consulting work, Ozer is knowledgeable about all production alternatives and has an extensive network within provider companies to bypass the sales hype and get fast accurate answers

Pre-Release Testing and Review

Discover any obvious flaws or competitive disadvantages before the product or service gets in the hands of actual customers or is reviewed by a trade publication. Provide product marketing and development with an objective view of the product or service’s key competitive strengths and weaknesses.

A company is bringing a new encoder online, creating presets for a new format, or simply wants a third party review of existing presets.

Together with the client, we create and implement a test plan to assess usability and competitive performance.

We deliver a formal report that, at the client’s option, can be distributed to prospects or freely from the client’s website.

Case study: Beamr engaged the Streaming Learning Center to review the company’s video optimization technology. SLC produced a report that Beamr elected to distribute and is available below. Beamr blog post on the subject reads, “Jan Ozer, one of the world’s top experts on video compression and streaming and Contributing Editor of Streaming Media Magazine, has done a thorough evaluation of Beamr Video using test clips that he encoded.  The evaluation included analyzing the quality of the resulting clips using objective measures such as PSNRSSIM and VQM, and conducting extensive viewing of the optimized clips, assessing their subjective quality compared to the original clips.  Following this evaluation, Jan Ozer concludes that “for 99.99% of the expert and average viewers, the Beamr-processed clips would be perceptually identical to their source.”

Dror Gill, Beamr CTO (excerpted from LinkedIn). “Jan performed an independent technical evaluation of our product. It was a great pleasure working with Jan, who is one of the world’s top experts on video encoding and streaming workflows. Jan always meets the agreed schedule, and his work has consistently exceeded my expectations. On top of it all, he is a super nice guy to work with.”

Download Beamr_Report

STREAMING AND PRODUCTION

SLC’s streaming-related consulting typically falls into two main areas

Preset creation and Testing

Encoder selection
and Workflow analysis

  • Lower bandwidth and encoding costs while optimizing video quality, compatibility, and deliverability.
  • Encoding presets control both quality and bandwidth costs; these engagements ensure that you’re optimizing both.
  • Few companies can afford (or need) experienced compressionists in-house on a full-time basis. You can rent an expert at the fraction of the cost, and achieve the same benefits.

A company is bringing a new encoder online, creating presets for a new format, or simply wants a third party review of existing presets.

Clients provides multiple representative test clips, all encoding presets, a list of target platforms and access to the encoder. Previous projects have involved working with encoding.com, Elemental Server and Elemental Cloud, Capella Systems Cambria FTC Encoder, Sorenson Squeeze, FFmpeg, and many other encoders. We create and execute a structured test plan using the client’s content and encoder that focuses on multiple components, including:

 

  • Do the presets deliver optimum compatibility, quality, and deliverability
  • Is the stream count and configuration in the encoding ladder appropriate for the content and streaming targets
  • Are the data rates appropriate for the content; in particular, are expensive, high bitrate presets essential for optimal viewing.
  • Are there natural categories that can be encoded using per-category encoding
  • Should the client consider per-title encoding

 

This work involves compatibility testing, objective quality metrics, and subjective comparisons.

The client receives a report documenting our tests and findings, and updated presets. Download anonymous sample report here.

Cinepolis KLIC is a subscription VOD premium content provider in Mexico that streams to computers, mobile devices, PlayStation 3 and 4, Roku, and multiple Smart TVs. Cinepolis engaged Streaming Learning Center to review its presets and encoding ladders.

 

Click image to see table at full resolution (using VQM metric; lower scores are better).

Marco A. Garcia De La Cruz, Cinepolis KLIC Deputy Director (from LinkedIn). “Jan recently reviewed the streaming presets we use for our online movie service. His examination was very extensive and involved state-of-the-art analysis tools, as well as subjective comparisons. Jan ran his tests using footage we supplied on our current encoding platform, so we knew his results would be relevant to our application. His comprehensive report detailed his findings and made his suggested changes easy to implement. As a result, our updated presets produce better quality at the same data rate, and we dropped the number of streams that we produce, reducing our encoding expense.”

  • Lower bandwidth and encoding costs while optimizing video quality, compatibility, and deliverability.
  • Encoding and workflow decisions are costly and have long-term implications on throughput and production efficiency. Through his writing and consulting work, Ozer is knowledgeable about all production alternatives and has an extensive network within provider companies to bypass the sales hype and get fast accurate answers.

A company needs to update its encoding and packaging workflow, perhaps to manage increased volume, and/or to deliver additional formats to a greater range of devices. The company wants to consider all alternatives, including on-premise or cloud-based encoding, or static vs. dynamic packaging, or whether to create their own streaming encoding and delivery infrastructure or use a third party service provider.

We gather extensive information about current and future encoding and delivery needs, budgets, and related requirements, like captioning and DRM, whether live and VOD encoding are required, and which playback platforms and devices must be supported. With the client, we identify the key features and capabilities of the candidate systems. Then we gather features, performance, and pricing information from products and services to create features and cost comparisons, and a product recommendation.

The client receives a report documenting our research and recommendations.

Case study: Skillsoft engaged us to recommend a delivery technology and encoding tool for its digital courses and to create encoding presets.

 

Jim Renner, Senior Manager, Product Management (from LinkedIn). “Video is ubiquitous but expertise in the production and distribution of video is not. While researching video streaming I kept running into Jan’s work and realized that his expertise could be invaluable in reinventing our approach to video delivery. During our engagement, Jan demonstrated his breadth of knowledge and an ability to understand both the business drivers and the needs of end users. Ultimately Jan provided us valuable insight into the processes, tools, and encoding approaches we should use to not only delivery a world-class video experience to our clients but to realize substantial cost savings in our production processes. Jan’s expertise was critical in the evolution of our products.”

TRAINING

Jan Ozer, the owner of the Streaming Learning Center, has taught video encoding to thousands of production professionals over the last 20 years, in public seminars hosted by Streaming Media Magazine annually in Manhattan, London and Huntington Beach, and in custom private workshops for corporations, universities and government agencies. The public seminars are affordable, and available as a component of a much larger event. Please check the Streaming Media site for more information on timing and availability. Private workshops are customized, and when multiple students attend, can be much more affordable than off-site training.