Video Codecs in 2020 – The Race is On!

Introduction There are several different video codecs available today for video streaming applications, and more will be released this year. This creates some confusion for video services who need to select their codec of choice for delivering content to their users at the best quality and lowest bitrate, also taking into account the encode compute […]

For Video Streaming Services, The Internet Is A Shared Resource To Preserve

TL;DR  Post COVID-19, the work from home trend will continue, and this will extend the pressure on the Internet from video traffic. Even with the EU Commissioner’s call for video services to reduce their traffic by 25%, as Internet traffic patterns shift from corporate networks to mobile, fixed wireless, and broadband networks, the need to […]

How To Cut Cloud Gaming Bitrates In Half So That Twice As Many Users Can Play

TL;DR: Beamr CABR operating with the Intel Media SDK hardware encoder powered by Intel GPUs is the perfect video encoding engine for cloud gaming services like Google Stadia. The Intel GPU hardware encoder reaches real-time performance with a power envelope that is 90% less than a CPU based software solution. When combined with Beamr CABR […]

Beamr AVC & HEVC Live Encoding Performance Milestones

It has been two years since we published a comparison of the two leading HEVC software encoder SDKs; Beamr 5, and x265. In this article you will learn how Beamr’s AVC and HEVC software codec SDKs have widened the computing performance gap further over x264 and x265 for live broadcast quality streaming. Why Performance Matters […]

The Patented Visual Quality Measure that was Designed to Drive Higher Compression Efficiency

At the heart of Beamr’s closed-loop content-adaptive encoding solution (CABR) is a patented quality measure. This measure compares the perceptual quality of each candidate encoded frame to the initial encoded frame. The quality measure guarantees that when the bitrate is reduced the perceptual quality of the target encode is preserved. In contrast to general video […]

A Deep Dive into CABR, Beamr’s Content-Adaptive Rate Control

Going Inside Beamr’s Frame-Level Content-Adaptive Rate Control for Video Coding When it comes to video, the tradeoff between quality and bitrate is an ongoing dance. Content producers want to maximize quality for viewers, while storage and delivery costs drive the need to reduce bitrate as much as possible. Content-adaptive encoding addresses this challenge, by striving […]

They don’t collect baseball cards, but eSports super fans are giving traditional sports a run for their money.

For sports fans that grew up before the 90s, you likely have fond memories of collecting baseball memorabilia or going to your first game. To hear eSports fans rattle off statistics and kill ratios from their favorite Twitch stream or boasting about their latest Fortnite Skin may bring back memories of spilling over your favorite […]

Why Game of Thrones is pushing video encoder capabilities to the edge

Game of Thrones entered its eighth and final season on April 14th, 2019. Though Game of Thrones has been a cultural phenomenon since the beginning of its airing, the attention and eyeballs on these final episodes have been higher than ever. Right now, every aspect of season eight is under a microscope and up for […]

HEVC Bitrate Efficiency

Today, video streaming services must offer solutions that can evolve as the demand for content availability across a wide range of devices increases. Though new innovations in display and capture technology are making headlines, the core pillars that differentiate every service are still video quality and user experience. Beamr’s HEVC & H.264 codecs having been […]

MPEG Through the Eyes of Its Chairman [podcast]

In “E08: MPEG Through the Eyes of Its Chairman,” The Video Insiders had the honor of sitting down with, Leonardo Chiariglione, the chairman and founder of the MPEG committee, to discuss the history of MPEG and what it means for the next generation of video codecs. Leonardo brings his extensive experience to the table as […]