Jan Ozer on Video Encoding - Workshop, Presentation

Encoding H.264 Video for Streaming and Progressive Download, Workshop
Wednesday, Oct 14th, 10:00-13:00

Choosing a Video Encoding Tool, Presentation
Track A: Technology
Thursday, Oct 15th, 14:45-15:30

Speaker:
Jan Ozer, Principal, Coceo Publishing, USA

Jan Ozer is a writer and codec buff with some love for H.264. He has developed a method for comparing encoding quality of different codecs, encoding settings and encoding tools. Based on that he held a workshop on H.264 encoding that discussed different codec implementations and encoding parameters. In his presentation he did a comparison of the main commercial encoding tools for VP6, Windows Media and H.264.

As a short summary: With some test results Ozer showed that H.264 (with moderate encoding settings) is not harder to decode than VP6. Several encoding parameters like Entropy Coding were discussed separately. Generally all parameters have a varying positive impact on Quality, and have a drawback on either encoding performance, decoding performance or both. For comparison make an encoding where you turn down all advanced settings and one with all up. Then check what difference it makes in encoding, decoding and quality. It doesn't make sense to go into details here, this was the most technical session of the whole conference. If you are interested in the topic have a look at the workshop's slides.

The shorter encoding tools presentation gave more of a high-level overview of the market. Encoders were categorised into several tiers, free tools that come with a video program (e.g. Apple Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder), standalone tools (e.g. Sorenson Squeeze) and enterprise encoders that are automtable (Carbon Coder, Episode Engine).
A good point was made by Ozer about using several parallel instances of an encoder tool to reduce encoding time with a set of clips on multi-core systems. This is especially evident in VP6 encoding. Again, if you are interested, have a look at the slides of the presentation.

I was surprised about the absence of open source software like ffmpeg and x264 in the comparison. Following my question, Mr. Ozer said that he has received a lot of requests about that and promised to do a comparison with those in the next months. He added that he is very curious about the results to come from that, as some open source tools and codec implementations would have a very good reputation. The upcoming comparison will most likely be published on his website streaminglearningcenter.com, http://streamingmedia.com or in Streaming Media Magazine.