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 engineered to reduce the bitrate of video files and streams while maintaining the perceptual quality of the content, ultimately reducing the bandwidth required to stream video to every viewer’s device while offering the best visual quality possible.

Leveraging our 44 granted patents, the content-adaptive bitrate (CABR) technology enables a 20 to 40 percent (sometimes higher) reduction in bitrate without any degradation to the video.

We know that this sounds too good to be true, which is why we are providing a real example, including download links to the original files, and special free access to Beamr View so you can test yourself.


To get Beamr View CLICK HERE.

In this example, we are comparing an HEVC VBR encode with an HEVC CABR version.

We took the Test File and created an original using Beamr 5x VBR rate control, then compared it with the file on the right which was encoded with CABR. This dropped the bitrate from 3.09 Mbps to 1.44 Mbps.

Would you like to test the results yourself?

To see the results, follow one of these testing methods:

1. Download the pre-encoded files and then use Beamr View to compare the visual quality of the HEVC VBR file against the file encoded with HEVC CABR.

2. Download the Test File and run your own encodes of the Test File using Beamr Transcoder.  Compare the visual quality of your results by comparing the HEVC CABR with the HEVC VBR encoded file using Beamr View.

Below you will find the test files:

Download Original Test File

Download file encoded with HEVC VBR

Download file encoded with HEVC CABR

Comparing Quality

When is comes to assessing and comparing video quality, do you know what to look for? Our team of image scientists have put together the following tips for you to use during your tests.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder

When a user is comparing visual quality, the best measurement tool is the human eye. Visual quality is a subjective measure, meaning that image scientists and video engineers must rely on physically looking at an encoded file to determine whether the visual quality is better or worse than the comparison. To go off of quality metrics such as PSNR and SSIM alone isn’t enough because even if a video has the highest possible PSNR or SSIM score, it may not have the highest visual quality at a given bitrate.  

Speed, bitrate, and rate control

There are multiple methods to encode video and blocks can be encoded in various ways for speed, bitrate, and quality. In order to validate your test, you must configure both encoders to operate at similar speeds in order to assess whether the bitrate-to-quality tradeoff is favorable or not. To take it a step further, leveraging rate controls enables the user to maintain bitrate limits throughout a clip or video to replicate the needs of a scalable application.

Comparing moving video instead of still frames

The only way to effectively assess the quality of video is to comparing moving video instead of still frames.  In order to accurately compare the visual quality of two decoded frames, artifacts, motion inaccuracy, and other visual degradation must be assessed while the content is moving.  


Share