Identifying which phones can handle AV1 decode is the goal of Meta's new VCAT testing tool, for Video Codec Acid Test, which is both the brainchild and the swan song of encoding legend David Ronca. In short, VCAT is an Android app for benchmarking battery drain and system health during HW/SW video decode operations on Android devices.
11 Jul 2025
The readers have spoken! Here we present 19 top tech solutions of 2025, as chosen by the readers of Streaming Media .
02 Oct 2025
This article examines recent data on efficiency and power usage for hardware and software decoding and explores how this data shapes the value proposition for publishers opting for software decoding and viewers that wittingly, or unwittingly, watch services that deploy it. It concludes with two short surveys for publishers and consumers that ask for your perspective on and experience with software decoding. Be sure to take the surveys!
29 May 2025
If you'll be encoding with SVT-AV1 or VVC, in this article you'll learn a bit about how to optimize your encodes, particularly the trade-offs that presets deliver, and how many logical processors to use. With SVT-AV1, I also explore the quality and playback efficiency of the fast decode option, although I didn't find much to show for it. You can also peruse the FFmpeg command strings used for all encodes.
08 May 2025