How YouTube Encodes Videos

Looking for insights into exactly how YouTube encodes billions of videos? Jan Ozer went down the rabbit hole and shares what he discovered about AV1, VP9, and resolutions.

Paying to Watch Ads with HBO Max

Like almost everything else HBO Max does, the OTT service has gotten the ad experience right

Pandemic Mergers and Acquisitions in Educational Video

Three transactions from the last year illustrate how educational video providers are capitalizing on trends in streaming media, both specific to e-learning and more broadly

The Future Is Real Time, and It Starts Now

Where and how does "real time" fit into your workflows in this "COVID and beyond" era? Similar to global wars accelerating advan­ces in medicine such as plastic surgery, COVID has pushed all of us working in streaming media to rethink, innovate, optimise, and rebuild many components of our day-to-day responsibilities. 

Judging Apple's Advanced Video Quality Tool

As a metric, Apple's Advanced Video Quality Tool (AVQT) showed some bright spots, but it's hard to see it bumping VMAF or SSIMPLUS from real-world workflows without a lot more verification.

Editor's Note: The Streaming Gold Rush of 2021

We haven't seen this much funding or merger and acquisition activity in the streaming market in at least 15 years. Don't expect it to slow down anytime soon.

IATSE May Need to Strike While the Iron is Hot

Studios and producers are reaping the rewards of the OTT revolution. It's about time everyone involved in creating our favorite shows and movies gets their fair share.

Streaming Tools for COVID and Beyond

The changes streaming producers have made in the last 18 months are going to come in handy for a future where hybrid events are the norm.

Whither SVT-AV1

The Alliance for Open Media has gone all-in on SVT-AV1, but real-world tests show that Scalable Video Technology codecs don't live up to their promise when it comes to performance.

STIRRing Up Local TV Advertising

Sinclair Broadcasting's STIRR brings viewers free, live, local broadcasts—along with localized ads. The implementation is still buggy, but the concept is right on target.

How to Design a Hybrid Classroom

In-person or virtual? It's no longer one or the other, and schools and universities need to have clear strategies for delivering hybrid education to their students.

Collecting 'Junk' for Better Streaming

Got junk? The Help Me Stream Research Foundation can take your tech castoffs and use them to research better streaming practices, repurposing it into efficient and inexpensive solutions that can run on intermittent power—dovetailing with the efforts of another new organization, Greening of Streaming.

What Is Streaming Video 'Delivery?'

'Delivery' is one of the most commonly used words in our business? But what does it actually mean? If we think it's just about protocols and bytes, we're never going to catch up to traditional TV.

Top 10 Reasons Why Streaming Media West is Better Than Big Expos

As the future of the behemoth conferences is in doubt, Streaming Media West will return to Huntington Beach in November. Here's just a few of the reasons why you should join us.

Back to School with New Video Teaching Skills

Educators learned a lot about video learning over the last 18 months. With most schools reopening this fall, how do you integrate those new skills and techniques into the physical classroom?

Defend Your Video Encoding Choices with Data

If you're charged with configuring your encoding ladder, there are a few datapoints you should have nailed. The most important is the VMAF score of the top rung of your encoding ladder.

OTT Ad Tech's Biggest Challenges (and a Few Solutions)

OTT advertising technology is at a crossroads, as brands work to build relationships with consumers without alienating them. Here's a look at some of biggest questions facing the ad tech industry, along with some possible answers.

Ditch the Niche: It's Time to Come Up With a New Term

Calling some OTT services "niche" is an insult to not only the content they deliver but the audiences they serve. Isn't ESPN a "niche" service, too?

Why Is Watching Sports on OTT Harder Than Watching on TV?

Streaming is supposed to provide a better experience than television. So why is watching the Euro 2020 on the ESPN app such a poor experience?

Reaching the Global Classroom

China provides a particularly interesting global classroom case study, due to both its huge population size and the difficulty of operating in its networks.