Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
Blogcast
MillimeterEncoding Best Practices, Part 1
Jun 9, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
This month I take a break from our HD production chores to look at streaming-related issues. In this first installment, I’ll share the results of a survey I recently completed that details the best practices of high-profile broadcast and corporate streaming producers, examining options such as codec choice, video resolution, audio and video data rates, and frame rate. In the next issue, we’ll compare the quality of the big three codecs—H.264, VC-1, and VP6—using SD, HD, and screencam videos.
About a year ago, I was speaking at a seminar on codec usage and decided to mix a bit of practice in with my theory. That is, I could talk my heart out about codec quality or the optimal encoding parameters for streaming, but actual market usage seemed much more compelling than my own unsupported theory.
So I grabbed a couple of programs that shall remain nameless and started capturing and analyzing streams of video from well known broadcast and corporate sites. I’ve updated the statistics twice since then, and I will present my most recent statistics, captured in May 2008, in this article. For the record, note that I only reported on files that I could actually download and analyze, which excluded multiple sites.
Nonetheless, the broadcast sites that I reviewed included ABC News, Accuweather, ABC, BusinessWeek, The Weather Channel, The New York Times, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, CNET, ETonline, The Golf Channel, DL.TV, CBS (show replay), The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fortune, MSNBC, and CBS (show preview). On the corporate side, I looked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, infoDev, PI Worldwide, Deloitte, EMC, Accenture, E&Y, Chevron, HP (case study), Cisco, Intel, HP (corporate TV), EDS, Microsoft, and and GE.
I chose the broadcast sites for obvious reasons. On the corporate side, I chose high-profile organizations that made videos fairly easy to find on their external websites. Note that many organizations included multiple codecs on their sites. For broadcast sites, I analyzed the video files most prominent on their home page. For corporate sites, I analyzed the most recent videos that I could find on their sites.
Overall, I don’t claim that these results are statistically meaningful, but they do illustrate general trends and best practices.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
