Tag Archives: content marketing

This article on the Wowza website provides a quick overview of the HEVC codec: what it is, how it performs, what it costs, and what it’s good for. It concludes with a section on what you need to know to effectively deploy the HEVC codec using the Wowza Streaming Engine software. The article is the third in a five-part series …

I’m adding some lessons that identify and describe the operation of Mac video utilities to the online course Streaming Media 101 and took this as an opportunity to have a look at Apple’s Advanced Video Quality Tool  (AVQT) which launched at the company’s 2021 World Wide Developers Conference. I’m making the lesson available as a lesson of the week, immediately …

Streaming producers need tools to explore different encoding options and verify their work. Here are two free Windows tools that I couldn’t live without. MediaInfo MediaInfo is a video analysis tool that displays the most significant data points regarding a video file, including resolution, data rate, codec, bit depth, frame rate, duration, etc. It’s available for download here, and there …

My review of the Epiphan Pearl Nano is now available on Streaming Media. The video I produced for the review is below. Note that I really liked the feature set and usability but found that video quality suffered from a slight cast as you can in Figure 8 of the article and below. The cast is most visible in the …

Pleased to announce my second report on LCEVC Technology entitled LCEVC x264 Report: Live Sports & eGames, ABR Ladder. The first report assessed VOD performance at 1080p; this report tested live performance using a full encoding ladder and weighted average performance as well as BD-Rate comparisons. Here’s the Table of Contents. Note, in particular, the GB Tech report in the …

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve published a comprehensive report that documents the testing, quality, and performance of the Low Complexity Enhanced Video Codec (LCEVC) as developed by V-Nova and in the process of becoming standardized by MPEG. By way of background, I’ve been consulting with V-Nova to test LCEVC using a range of test files …

MediaMelon’s SmartPlay is a streaming optimization solution that reduces bandwidth use by 35% or more and improves QoE while working with your existing ABR content without reencoding. As you’ll read in this post, SmartPlay works by analyzing the quality of every segment in an ABR package and producing a hintfile used by the SmartPlay plug-in installed in the player to …

We’re all aware of the sudden need to reduce streaming bandwidth to alleviate congestion. MediaMelon’s SmartPlay/QBR is a very viable option for this that was recently adopted by Brazilian OTT producer Telecine. I reviewed MediaMelon’s QBR technology for Streaming Media Magazine back in 2017. I called it a “server-side, per-title delivery mechanism.” Unlike traditional per-title technologies that re-encode your files …

The Common Media Application Format (CMAF) is supposed to be the Holy Grail of streaming; one set of files that you can deliver to multiple output points. How well does it work today? This 3:47 video shows you. I started by creating CMAF output in AWS Elemental MediaConvert. Why? Because they supply useful templates, have an easy to use UI, …

On September 11, 2019, Streaming Media Magazine published an article entitled Hardware-Based Transcoding Solutions Roundup: Testing Performance, that compared various H.264 and HEVC encoders using objective and subjective testing. The HEVC encoders tested included Intel’s SVT (Scalable Video Technology)-HEVC, a software-based codec; NGCodec’s FPGA-based HEVC encoder (now owned by Xilinx) and x265 using the medium and veryfast presets. After the …