...is NOT how they encode their video. But, they do a lot of other things right with their streaming video as you can read below. 

GoDaddy.com aggressively advertises videos on television to convince you to visit their web site. With celebrities Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels on board, it’s a pretty good strategy. Of course, when most viewers see these TV commercials, they probably wonder how it ends, and how close the two beauties come to baring all. Me? I wonder how Go Daddy is encoding their video and how social media-savvy they are when it comes to their player.

I track the data rate and video configuration used by broadcast sites since they indicate the types of streams that their mass market audiences can retrieve and play, and also the quality of streams that web video consumers are used to viewing. In my latest survey, the average video configuration was very close to 640x360, with a combined audio/video data rate of 837 kbps (758 kbps video, 79 kbps audio). This computes to an average bits per pixel value of .115. If videos posted on your site are lower than these figures, you're probably being unnecessarily conservative.

To view the groupings and individual sites used in my analysis, click over to the main story.

Depending upon your encoding tool, you may have access to a checkbox or number box that controls something called IDR frames. What are these creatures and what is their significance? More imporantantly, what's the optimal setting? Well, let's just say that if you're seeing anything like the random blockiness in the picture below when you drag the playhead back and forth within your video, (click the figure to see it at full resolution in a separate window), you're probably using the wrong value.

Read on and I'll tell you why and identify the correct value.

I was noodling around in Compressor 4's presets, and noticed the presets for HTTP Live Streaming. "Hmmm," I thought, "I wonder if Apple chunks the files and creates the required manifest files?" (Didn't in my tests). Then I pondered, "I wonder if Apple's presets match their recommendations in Technical Note TN2224?" So, I opened all the presets, recorded their encoding parameters and compared them to the Tech Note. That's when things got interesting and I found (what I think are) errors in two of the presets.

Here's a video I produced for OnlineVideo.net on using Premiere Pro's Ultra Key and Garbage Matte. It's an intro- to mid-level video that applies the effect on three videos of varying complexity. The good news? One video is of a (fully clothed) lovely dancing lady. The bad news? The lady's face is not showing (those pesky permission issues) and the other videos are of me.

All joking aside, if you've never used Premiere Pro's Ultra key and you plan to do so in the near term, the tutorial is worth a look.

Depending upon the project type, rendering with GPU-acceleration in Creative Suite 5.5 can reduce rendering time by up to 92% over CPU-only rendering. Since NVIDIA's CUDA technology is the only GPU that currently accelerates rendering in the Adobe Media Encoder and Premiere Pro, buying a notebook without NVIDIA hardware for CS5.5 production is a huge mistake.

If you're in the market for such a notebook, the HP 8760w is a dream machine that performs as well or better than a single CPU desktop workstation. If you need an external eSATA drive for production work, the Akitio Taurus Mini Super-S LCM should be on your short list.

I track the data rate and video configuration used by broadcast sites since they indicate the types of streams that their mass market audiences can retrieve and play, and also the quality of streams that web video consumers are used to viewing. In my latest survey, the average video configuration was very close to 640x360, with a combined audio/video data rate of 837 kbps (758 kbps video, 79 kbps audio). This computes to an average bits per pixel value of .115. If videos posted on your site are lower than these figures, you're probably being unnecessarily conservative.

To view the groupings and individual sites used in my analysis, click over to the main story.

Configuring your video streams properly requires an understanding of three concepts; data rate, resolution and frame rate. In this article, I'll define these terms and discuss the influences that impact your choices for each parameter. Then, at the end, I'll walk you through a decision matrix designed to help you choose the optimal parameters for your streaming video.

While this is designed for newbies, the concepts discussed will be valuable to all streaming producers, particularly the information regarding the average bitrates used by broadcast, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sites. Sound interesting? Well then, click over the main article to get started.