How Video Encoder Performance Impacts UX Mark Donnigan Vice President Marketing Beamr



Get the original LinkedIn article here: How Video Encoder Computing Efficiency Can Impact Streaming Service Quality

Author:

Mark Donnigan is Vice President of Marketing at Beamr, a high-performance video encoding technology company.


Computer system software application is the bedrock of every function and department in the business; accordingly, software application video encoding is vital to video streaming service operations. It's possible to enhance a video codec implementation and video encoder for two but rarely three of the pillars. It does state that to deliver the quality of video experience customers anticipate, video suppliers will require to examine industrial options that have actually been performance enhanced for high core counts and multi-threaded processors such as those available from AMD and Intel.

With so much turmoil in the circulation design and go-to-market business plans for streaming home entertainment video services, it may be appealing to push down the priority stack selection of brand-new, more efficient software video encoders. With software consuming the video encoding function, calculate efficiency is now the oxygen required to thrive and win against an increasingly competitive and crowded direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketplace.



How Video Encoder Computing Efficiency Can Impact Streaming Service Quality

Till public clouds and common computing turned software-based video operations mainstream, the process of video encoding was carried out with purpose-built hardware.

And then, software application consumed the hardware ...

Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape and a16z the famous venture capital company with financial investments in Foursquare, Skype, Twitter, box, Lyft, Airbnb, and other similarly disruptive business, penned a post for the Wall Street Journal in 2011 entitled "Why Software Is Consuming The World." A version of this post can be discovered on the a16z.com site here.

"Six years into the computer system transformation, four years since the innovation of the microprocessor, and 20 years into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology needed to transform industries through software application lastly works and can be extensively delivered at international scale." Marc Andreessen
In following with Marc Andreessen's prophecy, today, software-based video encoders have actually nearly entirely subsumed video encoding hardware. With software applications devoid of purpose-built hardware and able to run on ubiquitous computing platforms like Intel and AMD based x86 devices, in the data-center and virtual environments, it is entirely precise to state that "software is consuming (or more appropriately, has consumed) the world."

What does this mean for a technology or video operations executive?

Computer software application is the bedrock of every function and department in the business; appropriately, software video encoding is important to video streaming service operations. Software video encoders can scale without requiring a linear increase in physical area and utilities, unlike hardware. And software can be moved the network and even whole data-centers in near real-time to satisfy capability overruns or momentary rises. Software application is a lot more flexible than hardware.

When handling software-based video encoding, the 3 pillars that every video encoding engineer must resolve are bitrate efficiency, quality preservation, and computing efficiency.

It's possible to enhance a video codec execution and video encoder for 2 but hardly ever three of the pillars. A lot of video encoding operations therefore focus on quality and bitrate efficiency, leaving the calculate effectiveness vector open as a sort of wild card. As you will see, this is no longer a competitive approach.

The next frontier is software computing efficiency.

Bitrate efficiency with high video quality needs resource-intensive tools, which will result in slow operational speed or a substantial increase in CPU overhead. For a live encoding application where the encoder need to run at high speed to reach 60 frames-per-second (FPS), a compromise in bitrate efficiency or absolute quality is typically required.

Codec intricacy, such as that needed by HEVC, AV1, and the upcoming VVC, is exceeding bitrate effectiveness improvements and this has developed the requirement for video encoder efficiency optimization. Put another method, speed matters. Traditionally, this is not an area that video encoding professionals and image scientists have needed to be interested in, but that is no longer the case.

Figure 1 illustrates the advantages of a software encoding execution, which, when all qualities are normalized, such as FPS and objective quality metrics, can do two times as much work on the specific same AWS EC2 C5.18 xlarge circumstances.

In this example, the open-source encoders x264 and x265 are compared to Beamr's AVC and HEVC encoders, Beamr 4, and Beamr 5.

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For services requiring to encode live 4Kp60, one can see that it is possible with Beamr 5 however not with x265. Beamr 5 set to the x264 equivalent 'ultrafast' mode can encode 4 specific streams on a single AWS EC2 C5.18 xlarge instance while x265 operating in 'ultrafast' can not reach 60 FPS at 4K. As you can see in this poignant example, codec performance is straight related to the quality of service as an outcome of fewer makers and less complex encoding frameworks required.

For those services who are mainly interested in VOD and H. 264, the ideal half of the Figure 1 graphic shows the performance advantage of an efficiency optimized codec application that is set up to produce extremely high quality with a high bitrate efficiency. Here one can see as much as a 2x benefit with Beamr 4 compared to x264.

Video encoding calculate resources cost genuine money.

OPEX is thought about thoroughly by every video distributor. However suppose entertainment experiences like live 4K streaming can not be delivered dependably as an outcome of an inequality in between the video operations capability and the expectation of the consumer. Keeping in mind that many mobile phones offered today are capable of 1440p if not 4K display screen. And consumers are wanting material that matches the resolution and quality of the devices they bring in their pockets.

Because of performance limitations with how the open-source encoder x265 utilizes calculate cores, it is not possible to encode a live 4Kp60 video stream on a single device. This does not mean that live 4K encoding in software application isn't possible. It does say that to deliver the quality of video experience customers expect, video distributors will require to assess business options that have been efficiency enhanced for high core counts and multi-threaded processors such as those offered from AMD and Intel.

The requirement for software to be optimized for higher core counts was recently highlighted by AMD CTO Mark Papermaster in an interview with Tom's Hardware.

Video suppliers desiring to use software application for the flexibility and virtualization options they provide will encounter overly complicated engineering hurdles unless they select encoding engines where multi-processor scaling is belonging to the architecture of the software encoder.
Here is a post that reveals the speed benefit of Beamr 5 over x265.

Things to consider concerning computing effectiveness and performance:

It's tempting to believe this is just a problem for video banners with tens or hundreds of millions of subscribers, the exact same compromise factors to consider should be thought about regardless of the size of your operations. While a 30% cost savings at 1080p (H. 264), which is encoded at 3.5 Mbps, will give more than triple the return, at a 1 Mbps cost savings. The point is, we need to thoroughly and systematically think about where we are investing our calculate resources to get the optimum ROI possible.
An industrial software option will be constructed by a devoted codec engineering team that can balance the requirements of bitrate effectiveness, quality, and compute performance. Exactly why the architecture of x264 and x265 can not scale.
Insist internal teams and consultants carry out calculate performance benchmarking on all software encoding services under consideration. The 3 vectors to measure are absolute speed (FPS), individual stream More Info Now density when FPS is held continuous, and the overall number of channels that can be created on a single server using a nominal ABR stack such as 4K, 1080p, 720p, 480p, and 360p. All encoders must produce comparable video quality throughout all tests.
The next time your technical group plans a video encoder shoot out, ensure to ask what their test plan is for benchmarking the calculate performance (performance) of each option. With a lot turmoil in the distribution design and go-to-market organisation prepare for streaming home entertainment video services, it may be appealing to push down the priority stack selection of brand-new, more effective software application video encoders. However, surrendering this work could have an authentic effect on a service's competitiveness and capability to scale to meet future home entertainment service requirements. With software application consuming the video encoding function, calculate performance is now the oxygen needed to flourish and win against a significantly competitive and congested direct-to-consumer (D2C) market.

You can attempt out Beamr's software video encoders today and get up to 100 hours of free HEVC and H. 264 video transcoding on a monthly basis. CLICK ON THIS LINK

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