Fabio Sonnati on video delivery and encoding
For much of its history, video streaming has treated compression as primarily a codec problem. New standards introduced more efficient prediction modes, transforms, entropy coding techniques and motion estimation tools, while encoder developers searched for increasingly sophisticated ways to exploit them. This work remains essential, but the evolution of large-scale streaming has demonstrated that…
Introduction When people think about video compression, they usually think about increasingly sophisticated coding tools.Over the last thirty years, codecs have evolved through: Modern codecs such as AV1 and VVC are extraordinary engineering achievements and we can say that they have essentially solved the problem of efficiently exploit temporal and spatial redundancy in video encoding. … Continue…
Twenty years! It is a strange number to write down, because in our industry twenty years contains several geological eras and it makes me feel…old. When I published my first posts in this Blog at the end of 2005, “Internet video” still was in its infancy and the idea that one day streaming would represent … Continue reading Twenty Years of Curiosity, Codecs and Community →
[Note: Article originally published on linkedin] In the hyper-competitive world of video streaming, keeping subscribers engaged isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s crucial. Engagement is inversely correlated with churn, meaning the more viewers interact with your content and platform, the less likely they are to cancel their subscriptions. But what exactly does that mean in practical … Continue…
[Note: this article was originally published on Streaming Media] In the ever-evolving landscape of video technology, new encoding scenarios present a set of new challenges in measuring accurately perceived quality. Accurate quality measurement is essential for assessment and even more for optimization, enabling us to fully exploit the potential of those advanced scenarios. The evolution … Continue…
Six years after my last talk, I had the great pleasure and honor of speaking again at Demuxed 2024. In the presentation, I shared a real story from my work — including a phone call I got in the middle of the night about an issue that was affecting hundreds of millions of viewers around … Continue reading My presentation at Demuxed 2024 →
Exactly 20 years ago, May 2003, the Joint Video Team (VCEG and MPEG) approved the first version of the video codec known as H.264/AVC, a groundbreaking standard that would forever change the world of video. H.264, not only revolutionized video compression but also gave birth to and propelled the era of Internet streaming. It has … Continue reading Celebrating 20 Years of H.264: the foundation of…
I remember clearly the enthusiasm and excitement when I moved my first steps in streaming and real-time communication. I was already fond of video compression and interactive web and was working actively with Flash community to create interactive experiences, but my career took a turn when Macromedia released Flash Communication Server 1.0. It was September 2002 and … Continue reading FCS and RTMP…
Recently Banding has finally become an hot topic in encoding optimization. As discussed in this previous post, it is nowadays one of the worst enemy for an encoding expert especially when trying to fine-tune content-aware encoding techniques. Banding emerges when compression reduces too much high frequencies locally on a frame and this splits a gradient … Continue reading Defeat Banding – Part II…
Who follows me since the years of Flash Player and Adobe Media Server knows that I’ve been busy in the last 15 years developing encoders, players and in general software architectures to enable, enhance and optimize video streaming at scale. I’ve achieved many professional successes working on innovative projects for companies like NTT Data, Sky, … Continue reading HYPER: a decade of challenges…