Video Optimization Techniques
Videos are visually stimulating and shareable entertainment media. They are everywhere on the World Wide Web and are created by millions of online entrepreneurs (as well as mere netizens) who have access to any camera or mobile device that enable them to capture all kinds of scenes.
They can also be in the form of graphic animations in 2D and 3D. Videos are very popular because they tell stories even without the need of lines or words. However, with the widespread establishment of network access around the globe, the internet is beginning to suffer from data crowding, and data traffic has become messy and slow. Since videos pack large amounts of data to be transmitted or delivered over servers, methods of preventing traffic bursts needed to be applied on every single video found on the internet. These methods, in general, are called video optimization techniques. Video optimization has become a protocol in order to maintain the fair sharing of data among millions of internet users. If data traffic is uncontrolled, the results will affect many networks and ISPs. In this case, some users might end up not receiving any data because most of the available data are being transmitted or delivered only to some other users at a certain time. There are six primary techniques for video optimization that are applied in every video transmission: Pacing Transrating Transcoding Full Transcoding Adaptive Bitrate Techniques The Cloud. Pacing
It is a “rate limiting” technique that slows down or delays the delivery of data traffic to a computer or mobile device in order to avoid traffic bursts. This is done in the attempt of saving data in the event of possible cancellation or abortion of the data transfer requested. This technique is usually seen as the instance where a video is loading or “buffering,” and evidenced by the graying of the video’s progress bar during play mode. The video data, by technique, is not delivered in its entirety but delivered bit by bit until the whole object is loaded fully. Video Transrating
It is the modification of the video input stream. The modification is done if, after analysis, it is determined that the content’s bitrate may be reduced without changing the video’s quality, the resolution of the device that sends the data request would do fine with a video of reduced bitrate, or the network from which the data request was channeled could only accommodate data with a lower bitrate. This modification technique, however, is only limited to video quantization parameters. Transrating cannot modify the resolution, codec, and other parameters of the videos. Transcoding
It modifies the videos’ codec parameters according to the device. If it is detected that the device sending the request cannot accommodate the original codec format of the video, it will be decoded and recoded into another format that the device can read. Full Transcoding It is the modification of both the codec and the resolution while maintaining the original quality of the requested data or content. The Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) technique
It is an automation of adjustments of the requested contents by codec, resolution, and bitrate. It should first determine if the traffic on the network of the device is too congested to allow delivery of the video’s original stream rate. If the congestion has been determined, the video’s stream rate will be automatically modified upon the delivery of data. The Cloud
It is a new and convenient approach in video optimization. In this technique, the video is uploaded to the cloud and instead of directly streaming a video upon request, the device is directed to access the cloud that already contains the video, thus eliminating the need to load or stream the video all over again. If you’d like to make the most out of your videos, it’d be best to learn more about these techniques – discover the ways how you could benefit from them.
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