Can we profitably surf the Video Zettabyte Tsunami?

Two key ingredients are in place. But we need to get started now. In a previous post, we warned about the Zettabyte video tsunami – and the accompanying flood of challenges and opportunities for video publishers of all stripes, old and new.  Real-life tsunamis are devastating. But California’s all about big wave surfing, so we’ve […]

Data Caps, Zero-rated, Net Neutrality: The Video Tsunami Doesn’t Take Sides

We Need to Work Together to Conserve Bits in the Zettabyte Era Over the past year, and again last week, there has been no shortage of articles and discussion around data caps, binge-on, zero rated content, and of course network neutrality. We know the story. Consumer demand for Internet and over-the-top video content is insatiable. […]

Translating Opinions into Fact When it Comes to Video Quality

This post was originally featured at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/translating-opinions-fact-when-comes-video-quality-mark-donnigan  In this post, we attempt to de-mystify the topic of perceptual video quality, which is the foundation of Beamr’s content adaptive encoding and content adaptive optimization solutions.  National Geographic has a hit TV franchise on its hands. It’s called Brain Games starring Jason Silva, a talent described as “a […]

VCT, the Secret to Confident Subjective Video Quality Testing

We can all agree that analyzing video quality is one of the biggest challenges when evaluating codecs. Companies use a combination of objective and subjective tests to validate encoder efficiency. In this post, I’ll explore why it is difficult to measure video quality with quantitative metrics alone because they fail to meet the subjective quality […]

Will Virtual Reality Determine the Future of Streaming?

As video services take a more aggressive approach to virtual reality (VR), the question of how to scale and deliver this bandwidth intensive content must be addressed to bring it to a mainstream audience. While we’ve been talking about VR for a long time you can say that it was reinvigorated when Oculus grabbed the […]

The TV of Tomorrow Needs Standards Today: Why the streaming video industry must work together to solve video delivery quality issues

Nearly 50 percent of Americans have an entertainment subscription service like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu, accessed via a connected television or devices like Amazon Fire TV, Roku, or Apple TV, according to recent research from Nielsen. Furthermore, a quarter of those in the coveted 18-to-34 demographic have either cut their cable or satellite services […]

Applications for On-the-Fly Modification of Encoder Parameters

As video encoding workflows modernize to include content adaptive techniques, the ability to change encoder parameters “on-the-fly” will be required. With the ability to change encoder resolution, bitrate, and other key elements of the encoding profile, video distributors can achieve a significant advantage by creating recipes appropriate to each piece of content. For VOD or file-based […]

Net Neutrality Means Bye Bye HOV Lanes

What started as a rant from comedian John Oliver calling for support of an open internet, has now developed into a monumental philosophical debate riddled with controversy that is centered upon the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) attempt to reclassify broadband based on its role in modern day life. For the past two decades, the Internet […]

Dolby Vision and HEVC, an Introduction

Notice that some material from this post appeared originally in the article, “Integrating HEVC Video Compression with a High Dynamic Range Video Pipeline,” by Raul Diaz, Sam Blinstein, and Sheng Qu, SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, 125 (1): 14-21, January/February 2016. You can download the original paper here. Advances in video capture and display are moving […]

Using Beamr’s V.265 HEVC Encoder to Generate MPEG-DASH Compliant Streams

Recent developments in video encoding and streaming technology have come together to supply two major tools to optimize the delivery of synchronized video streams across multiple devices. The first development is the next generation video coding standard HEVC, which offers significant compression efficiency gains over AVC. And the second is MPEG-DASH, which gives key advantages […]