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.

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.

Here are the handouts from my recent presesentation at Streaming Media West in LA. Here's the description.

Learn the technological fundamentals behind encoding for both H.264 and WebM formats. You’ll learn how to encode H.264 for HTML5 distribution and streaming to iOS and other mobile devices, as well as how to encode it for Flash, including live, on-demand, and RTMP, as well as HTTP-based adaptive streaming. For WebM, you’ll learn the basics of on-demand streaming, plus get a look at live WebM encoders. Finally, you’ll learn how the various H.264 and WebM encoding tools compare in regards to performance, quality, and features.

You can download the presentation below.

Just produced this seminar for Streaming Media Europe in London. Here's a description:

This session starts by detailing the playback specs for all iDevices, old and new. Then, it shares the strategies used by prominent iTunes publishers to serve the complete range of installed iDevices. Next, the session switches to cellular wireless delivery, with a technical description of Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming, including recommendations for the number of streams and Apple's encoding parameters. It concludes with a review of encoding options for HTTP Live Streaming and techniques for serving multiple target platforms such as Flash and iDevices with one set of encoded H.264 files.

Click over to the main article to download the handout.