Ways Software Encoder Computing Efficiency Can Impact Streaming Service Quality Mark Donnigan Vice President Marketing Beamr



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

Author:

Mark Donnigan is VP Marketing at Beamr, a high-performance video encoding innovation company.


Computer system software is the bedrock of every function and department in the business; appropriately, software video encoding is vital to video streaming service operations. It's possible to optimize a video codec implementation and video encoder for two however rarely three of the pillars. It does state that to deliver the quality of video experience consumers expect, video suppliers will require to evaluate industrial options that have been efficiency enhanced for high core counts and multi-threaded processors such as those readily available from AMD and Intel.

With so much turmoil in the distribution design and go-to-market service plans for streaming home entertainment video services, it might be appealing to push down the top priority stack choice of brand-new, more effective software video encoders. With software application consuming the video encoding function, calculate efficiency is now the oxygen required to thrive and win versus an increasingly competitive and crowded direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketplace.



How Video Encoder Computing Efficiency Can Impact Streaming Service Quality

Until public clouds and ubiquitous computing turned software-based video operations mainstream, the process of video encoding was performed with purpose-built hardware.

And then, software consumed the hardware ...

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

"6 decades into the computer transformation, four decades given that the invention of the microprocessor, and 2 years into the increase of the modern-day Web, all of the technology required to change markets through software finally works and can be extensively provided at worldwide scale." Marc Andreessen
In following with Marc Andreessen's prophecy, today, software-based video encoders have nearly completely subsumed video encoding hardware. With software applications devoid of purpose-built hardware and able to work on common computing platforms like Intel and AMD based x86 makers, in the data-center and virtual environments, it is entirely accurate to say that "software is consuming (or more appropriately, has actually consumed) the world."

But what does this mean for a technology or video operations executive?

Computer system software is the bedrock of every function and department in the business; accordingly, software video encoding is important to video streaming service operations. Software application video encoders can scale without needing a direct increase in physical space and utilities, unlike hardware.

When handling software-based video encoding, the 3 pillars that every video encoding engineer needs to deal with are bitrate performance, quality preservation, and calculating efficiency.

It's possible to optimize a video codec application and video encoder for 2 but seldom 3 of the pillars. Many video encoding operations hence concentrate on quality and bitrate performance, leaving the calculate effectiveness vector open as a sort of wild card. However as you will see, this is no longer a competitive approach.

The next frontier is software application computing performance.

Bitrate effectiveness with high video quality needs resource-intensive tools, which will cause slow functional speed or a significant increase in CPU overhead. For a live encoding application where the encoder should run at high speed to reach 60 frames-per-second (FPS), a compromise in bitrate performance or absolute quality is often required.

Codec complexity, such as that needed by HEVC, AV1, and the upcoming VVC, is outmatching bitrate efficiency developments and this has produced the requirement for video encoder efficiency optimization. Put another way, speed matters. Generally, this is not a location that video encoding practitioners and image scientists have needed to be worried about, but that is no longer the case.

Figure 1 illustrates the advantages of a software encoding implementation, which, when all attributes are normalized, such as FPS and unbiased quality metrics, can do two times as much deal with the specific very 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 but not with x265. Beamr 5 set to the x264 equivalent 'ultrafast' mode can encode four individual 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 efficiency is straight associated to the quality of service as a result of less makers and less complex encoding structures needed.

For those services who are primarily interested in VOD and H. 264, the best half of the Figure 1 graphic shows the efficiency advantage of a performance enhanced codec execution that is set up to produce very high quality with a high bitrate effectiveness. Here one can see as much as a 2x advantage with Beamr 4 compared to x264.

Video encoding calculate resources cost real money.

OPEX is thought about carefully by every video distributor. Expect home entertainment experiences like live 4K streaming can not be delivered dependably as a result of a mismatch between the video operations capability and the expectation of the consumer.

Due to the fact that of performance constraints with how the open-source encoder x265 makes use of calculate cores, it is not possible to encode a live 4Kp60 video stream on a single device. This does not suggest that live 4K encoding in software application isn't possible. However it does say that to provide the quality of video experience consumers expect, video suppliers will need to examine commercial options that have been performance enhanced for high core counts and multi-threaded processors such as those available from AMD and Intel.

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

Video suppliers wishing to use software for the flexibility and virtualization choices they supply will experience extremely made complex engineering hurdles unless they pick encoding engines where multi-processor scaling is belonging to the architecture of the software encoder.
Here is a short article that shows the speed benefit of Beamr 5 over x265.

Things to believe about worrying computing efficiency and performance:

Don't chase the next more sophisticated codec without considering first the complexity/efficiency quotient. Dave Ronca, who led the encoding team at Netflix for ten years and just recently delegated sign up with Facebook in a similar capability, recently published an excellent short article on the subject of codec complexity titled, "Encoder Complexity Hits the Wall." Though it's appealing to think this is only a problem for video banners with 10s or numerous millions of customers, the very same compromise factors to consider should be thought about no matter the size of your operations. A 30% bitrate cost savings for a 1 Mbps 480p H. 264 profile will return a 300 Kbps bandwidth cost savings. 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 savings. The point is, we must thoroughly and systematically consider where we are investing our compute resources to get the optimum ROI possible.
An industrial software application service will be constructed by a devoted codec engineering group that can balance the requirements of bitrate performance, quality, and compute efficiency. This is in plain contrast to open-source projects where factors have separate and specific priorities and programs. Exactly why the architecture of x264 and x265 can not scale. It was constructed to achieve a different set of tradeoffs.
Insist internal teams and experts more info carry out calculate performance benchmarking on all software encoding services under consideration. The three vectors to determine are outright speed (FPS), individual stream density when FPS is held consistent, and the overall number of channels that can be developed on a single server utilizing a nominal ABR stack such as 4K, 1080p, 720p, 480p, and 360p. All encoders must produce similar video quality throughout all tests.
With so much upheaval in the distribution model and go-to-market company strategies for streaming home entertainment video services, it may be tempting to push down the priority stack choice of brand-new, more effective software video encoders. With software consuming the video encoding function, calculate efficiency is now the oxygen required to prosper and win versus an increasingly competitive and crowded direct-to-consumer (D2C) market.

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

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