Video: Encoding Challenges with Next-Gen Codecs

Learn more about emerging codecs at Streaming Media's next event.

Watch the complete video of this panel, DT102A:管理过渡到HEVC/VP9/AV1与多编解码器流, in the Streaming Media Conference Video Portal.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Paul MacDougall: 你将遇到的一些挑战在编码方面尤其相关. A lot of these next-gen codecs are very difficult to encode. 尤其是AV1，尽管它的效率越来越高，但编码起来极具挑战性. As an example, at Bitmovin we did a livestream of AV1 at 1.5兆比特，一年多以前，那需要200个核来实时完成. 它不是一个可以在现代环境中真正部署的体系结构, but that's improving quite significantly. We also got that down to 32 cores much more recently, 随着编解码器的最终确定，这个数字还会继续下降, and it's really able to be optimized for it.

Just to be clear, that 200 cores was on a very early version of the codec, so it has lots of debug coded in it, and it's not really, by any means, a market-ready product at that point. 我们离这款产品上市越来越近了, 这是我们终于可以开始真正专注于优化的东西, and making that much more efficient. Given today, it's a really, really challenging thing to do, 这不是对所有资产都要做的. 然后，你必须计算出这对你有什么好处.

Let's take a look at encoding decisioning. 这是你必须做出选择的地方, based upon those challenges of those demands of that encoding, how much it takes to do that, the replication of your assets. 你必须弄清楚对于你所拥有的资产来说，什么是正确的选择, what's the right choice for your business model.

Things to look at are, for instance, 资产跨越阈值的可能性有多大，这些新编解码器的效率将给您带来好处? 一项资产是否可能已经做到这一点，或者它是否会做到这一点? Then, 你还需要确保你所做的决定是有效的, 这些东西会让你的生意真正受益, 它们不仅仅是一种可能改善它的理论. You want to see that actually happening.

The way to do that is really with analytics. Analytics are critical here. As we showed you on some of the earlier slides, 支持这些不同编解码器的不同设备存在很大差异. Different customers, different sites, different media properties have very different audiences, 所以使用分析工具去了解你的用户是什么样的人是很重要的. Are they predominantly Android devices? Are they predominantly users who have a Chrome browser? Maybe they're iOS devices. Maybe they're Safari devices. 也许他们都是OTT、苹果电视的用户，或者类似的东西. 在所有这些设备中，针对市场上不同的编解码器，你将拥有不同的端口.

当你决定你的编码配置文件是什么样的时候，你会想要把它作为你的第一个指标来看.

Then, 下一个非常重要的部分是确保你现在正在使用它, 因为有些编解码器在计算上非常昂贵, 你把它用在资产上，它们会产生很大的不同. 内容会像病毒一样传播，你认为会像病毒一样传播 ... 这是一个很好的内容，可能会受益于那些更先进的, more efficient codecs.

Then, of course, you can also monitor your live rate continuously, see what assets are crossing that threshold after the fact. Perhaps you're looking at, for instance, 当您上传百家乐软件或将百家乐软件释放到属性中时的初始窗口. If you see a certain velocity of popularity for that asset, 这是一个很好的指示符，表明您可能希望非常快速地将编码作业分派到编码场, or whatever resource you're using for that, into one of those other codecs, so that you can, again, benefit from that.

You want to make sure you do that as soon as possible. 让你的分析尽可能接近实时是很重要的, 所以你知道内容在做什么你知道如何在那里做出编码决定.