Tag Archives: Streaming fundamentals

Stephen Nathans-Kelly, a video producer at Streaming Media Magazine, is carving conference videos into short useful segments. Here are the first two videos on building your encoding ladder from my talk on how to use objective quality metrics you can watch in its entirety here, as well as download the handout. The first video covers the bitrate side, the second …

Your encoding ladder is the set of encoding parameters that you use to create the various files that you deliver adaptively to your web viewers. These encoding parameters can live in your on-premise encoder, in your cloud encoder, or in your online video platform (OVP). When optimally configured, your encoding ladder lets you efficiently deliver great quality video to viewers …

Late last year I ran a survey asking respondents to choose whether DASH or HLS was the best ABR format going forward. The poll results are in and are shown below. Basically, a small majority preferred DASH over HLS. The reasons why are even more illuminating, and are presented below the survey results. “Not sure why i wouldnt cover both …

I’ve been focusing a lot on webcams lately, mostly because I have a new book out on the topic, Mastering Webcam and Smartphone Video, How to Look and Sound Great in Webinars and Videoconferences. As the title suggests, the goal of the book is to help those without media training look and sound their best when broadcasting with their webcam.  I …

Perhaps it’s just me, but something about being a book author often feels like I have a sign on my back that says “Kick Me,” or worse. Maybe it’s that publishers get to hold onto my royalties for 3-6 months, so I can finance their business. Isn’t that special? Or maybe it’s Amazon’s Kindle royalty strategy; I get 70% if …

My article on HEVC Advance is up on Streaming Media. Here’s the opening section which tells what’s covered. On March 24, HEVC Advance, an independent licensing administrator announced a new HEVC patent pool, in addition to the one being offered by MPEG LA. In this article, we’ll explore exactly what that means and what the implications are. To gather this …

As mentioned previously, I’m producing a free webinar entitled Replacing Flash with the Media Source Extensions/Encrypted Media Extensions on March 16, at 1:00 PM EST. It’s sponsored by Onstream Media. You can read the description and signup here.  To supplement the information that I compiled, I asked a number of collegues the following questions: For computer distribution –           Assuming your …

Every once in awhile, a slide comes a long that’s so brilliant that you just have to share it. So it is with the slide below from Will Law’s presentation at the 2013 Velocity Conference entitled Optimizing the Black Box of HTML Video. I’ve always struggled to efficiently (under 30 seconds or less) explain why single bitrate video (SBR) is …

Here’s the session description; click below to download the handout. You can watch the actual conference video at the bottom of the page.   This session describes what cloud encoding is and how it works for both live and on-demand applications. Learn the types of applications that work well with cloud encoding and the factors to consider when choosing an …

I’ll be moderating a webinar for Talkpoint on how companies can leverage their existing infrastructures with webcasting. The date is August 19th, 2014 at 11:00am EST, and speakers will include Adam Bell, Global Digital Marketing, from Mastercard, and Paul Leninger, Marketing Manager at GENBAND. Here’s the description. You can register for the webinar by clicking here. Many enterprises that have …