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 innovation company.
Computer 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 2 however rarely three of the pillars. It does state that to provide the quality of video experience customers anticipate, video distributors will need to assess industrial options that have been performance enhanced for high core counts and multi-threaded processors such as those offered from AMD and Intel.
With so much upheaval in the circulation model and go-to-market business plans for streaming entertainment video services, it may be tempting to push down the top priority stack selection of new, more efficient software application video encoders. With software eating the video encoding function, calculate performance is now the oxygen needed to flourish and win versus an increasingly competitive and congested direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketplace.
How Video Encoder Computing Efficiency Can Impact Streaming Service Quality
Till public clouds and ubiquitous computing turned software-based video operations mainstream, the process of video encoding was performed with purpose-built hardware.
And after that, software ate the hardware ...
Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape and a16z the famous equity capital company with financial investments in Foursquare, Skype, Twitter, box, Lyft, Airbnb, and other similarly disruptive companies, penned an article for the Wall Street Journal in 2011 entitled "Why Software application Is Eating The World." A version of this post can be discovered on the a16z.com website here.
"Six years into the computer system revolution, 4 decades since the innovation of the microprocessor, and twenty years into the increase of the modern Internet, all of the technology needed to transform markets through software finally works and can be commonly delivered at international scale." Marc Andreessen
In following with Marc Andreessen's prediction, today, software-based video encoders have actually nearly entirely subsumed video encoding hardware. With software application 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 totally accurate to state that "software is eating (or more properly, has actually consumed) the world."
What does this mean for a technology or video operations executive?
Computer software is the bedrock of every function and department in the business; appropriately, software application video encoding is necessary to video streaming service operations. Software application video encoders can scale without requiring a linear increase in physical area and utilities, unlike hardware.
When dealing with software-based video encoding, the 3 pillars that every video encoding engineer must deal with are bitrate efficiency, quality preservation, and calculating performance.
It's possible to optimize a video codec execution and video encoder for two but hardly ever 3 of the pillars. The majority of video encoding operations hence focus on quality and bitrate efficiency, leaving the compute efficiency vector open as a sort of wild card. However as you will see, this is no longer a competitive method.
The next frontier is software application computing performance.
Bitrate performance with high video quality needs resource-intensive tools, which will result in slow operational speed or a significant boost in CPU overhead. For a live encoding application where the encoder must run at high speed to reach 60 frames-per-second (FPS), a compromise in bitrate efficiency or outright quality is often required.
Codec intricacy, such as that required by HEVC, AV1, and the upcoming VVC, is surpassing bitrate performance developments and this has actually created the requirement for video encoder efficiency optimization. Put another way, speed matters. Typically, this is not a location that video encoding specialists and image researchers have actually needed to be worried with, however that is no longer the case.
Figure 1 illustrates the benefits of a software application encoding implementation, which, when all characteristics are stabilized, such as FPS and objective quality metrics, can do twice as much work on 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 needing 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 performance is straight associated to the quality of service as an outcome of less devices and less complicated encoding structures required.
For those services who are mostly worried about VOD and H. 264, the best half of the Figure 1 graphic programs the efficiency benefit of a performance enhanced codec application that is set up to produce really high quality with a high bitrate effectiveness. Here one can see up to a 2x advantage with Beamr 4 compared to x264.
Video encoding compute resources cost real cash.
OPEX is considered carefully by every video distributor. Suppose home entertainment experiences like live 4K streaming can not be provided reliably as a result of an inequality between the video operations capability and the expectation of the customer.
Due to the fact that 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 doesn't suggest that live 4K encoding in software application isn't possible. It does say that to provide the quality of video experience consumers anticipate, video distributors will need to evaluate industrial solutions that have actually been efficiency optimized for high core counts and multi-threaded processors such as those readily available from AMD and Intel.
The need for software application to be optimized for greater core counts was just recently highlighted by AMD CTO Mark Papermaster in an interview with Tom's Hardware.
Video distributors wishing to utilize software for the flexibility and virtualization alternatives they provide will come across overly made complex engineering hurdles unless they choose encoding engines where multi-processor scaling is native to the architecture of the software encoder.
Here is a post that shows the speed benefit of Beamr 5 over x265.
Things to believe about concerning computing effectiveness and efficiency:
Don't chase after the next more innovative codec without thinking about first the complexity/efficiency quotient. Dave Ronca, who led the encoding team at Netflix for 10 years and just recently left to join Facebook in a Click Here similar capacity, recently published an outstanding short article on the topic of codec intricacy entitled, "Encoder Intricacy Strikes the Wall." Though it's tempting to think this is only a problem for video streamers with tens or hundreds of millions of subscribers, the exact same trade-off considerations should be thought about regardless of the size of your operations. A 30% bitrate cost savings for a 1 Mbps 480p H. 264 profile will return a 300 Kbps bandwidth savings. While a 30% 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 must thoroughly and systematically consider where we are spending our calculate resources to get the maximum ROI possible.
A commercial software application service will be constructed by a dedicated codec engineering team that can stabilize the requirements of bitrate efficiency, quality, and calculate efficiency. This remains in stark contrast to open-source projects where contributors have separate and specific top priorities and agendas. Exactly why the architecture of x264 and x265 can not scale. It was developed to accomplish a various set of tradeoffs.
Insist internal teams and specialists carry out calculate performance benchmarking on all software encoding solutions under consideration. The three vectors to determine are outright speed (FPS), private stream density when FPS is held consistent, and the total number of channels that can be created on a single server using a small 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 team plans a video encoder shoot out, make sure to ask what their test strategy is for benchmarking the calculate effectiveness (performance) of each solution. With a lot upheaval in the circulation design and go-to-market service strategies for streaming entertainment video services, it might be tempting to lower the top priority stack choice of new, more effective software application video encoders. Surrendering this work could have a real impact on a service's competitiveness and capability to scale to satisfy future home entertainment service requirements. With software application eating the video encoding function, calculate efficiency is now the oxygen needed to thrive and win versus a significantly competitive and crowded direct-to-consumer (D2C) market.
You can attempt out Beamr's software application 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
