Every piece of content is different, and each requires specific encoding settings to look good. Since Netflix popularized the concept of flexible encoding ladders, Per-Title Encoding optimization has been gaining recognition for its quality and bandwidth-saving advantages. It sounds simple enough, but there is a good reason it took the streaming giant years to make per-title encoding a viable part of their video delivery workflow. Each and every encode requires individual analysis as the first step, the process is both very time consuming and expensive (more about the reasons why here). Until now, implementing per-title encoding optimization was only accessible to the largest streaming organizations. Bitmovin Product Manager, Daniel Hölbling-Inzko, explains the details in conversation with the Head of Developer Experience, Kieran Farr. The presentation covers: + The theories behind per-title encoding optimization + Real-life applications + Go through feature setup in the Bitmovin API.

1. Per-Title Encoding
Netflix Style Optimization for Quality and CDN Costs
Thursday, January 18, 2018

3. Who are we? Daniel Hoelbling-Inzko
@tigraine
Product Management
Kieran Farr
@kfarr
Developer Marketing

4. Webinar Agenda
● What problem are we solving?
○ Diverse content libraries are challenging to encode!
● What are 3 common methods to solve this?
● Why is per-title encoding a good solution?
● How does per-title encoding work?
● Let’s look at some real world examples
● How to get started?
● Q&A

5. Examples for High-
Complexity
Content

6. Examples for
Low-Complexity
Content

7. Problem
● Every piece of content is different
● So why are we using the same bitrate ladder for every video we encode?

8. Common Problems with Diverse Content
● One bitrate ladder is often far from optimal for certain titles
● High default bitrate is often wasteful (storage, CDN / bandwidth and
encoding)
● Quality is often inconsistent for consumers

9. Find a “good”
bitrate ladder

10. Considerations
when choosing a
video delivery
strategy
● Bandwidth constraints of your customers
● Playback devices used by customers
● Kind of content you want to stream
○ Low vs high complexity
● Quality of source material
● Highest quality (bitrate) you want to deliver
● Switching between representations
○ Number of representations to encode
○ Smooth vs. clearly visible
● Cost of delivery

11. General Purpose Bitrate Ladder

12. General Purpose
Bitrate Ladder
H.264
Bitrate (kbps) Resolution Bits/Pixel
240 384x216 0.10
375 384x216 0.15
550 512x288 0.12
750 640x360 0.11
1000 768x432 0.10
1500 1024x576 0.08
2300 1280x720 0.08
3000 1280x720 0.11
4300 1920x1080 0.07
5800 1920x1080 0.09

13. Recommended
General Purpose
Bitrate Ladders
But with this approach there are problems
● Action movies or sport movies would require
more bitrate
● Bandwidth is wasted for cartoons or news
● No consideration of
○ different aspect ratios
○ different FPS

14. Profiles for different
content types

15. Types of Content
● What are your different content categories?
● Who decides what content falls into which
category?
● Usually a manual process - Error prone
● Still a trade-off and not optimal

16. Every Content is
Different!
But they are still not optimal
● There are not only three categories of content!
Source: Netflix

17. Per-Title Encoding

18. Per-Title Encoding

19. Per-Title Encoding
● Compute a special purpose bitrate ladder for
every title
● Use bitrate to encode content in a quality that
viewers can actually enjoy, but not more!
● Improves quality, and reduce bitrate for less
complex content
● Fully configurable by user
○ Upper limit for highest bitrate
○ Lower limit for lowest bitrate
○ Step sizes between renditions (SD, HD,
UHD)
○ etc.

20. Real-World Examples

21. Real-World
Example:
Movie Content ● Medium complexity
○ Partially complex textures
○ Fast moving scenes and some slow
scenes

22. Real-World
Example:
Movie Content
Standard Bitrate Ladder:
Per-Title Bitrate Ladder:

23. Real-World
Example:
Movie Content

24. Comparison - Movie Content
Standard Profile Per-Title Profile
240 kbps, 384x160 240 kbps, 512x217

25. Comparison - Movie Content
Standard Profile Per-Title Profile
5,800 kbps, 1920x804 5,097 kbps, 1920x804

26. Comparison - Movie Content
● Bitrate Reduction of 20%
● Storage Reduction of 33%
● Quality Improvement 101%

27. Real-World
Example:
Animated Content ● Low complexity
○ Simple textures
○ Low motion
○ Large homogeneous areas

28. Real-World
Example:
Animated Content
Standard Bitrate Ladder:
Per-Title Bitrate Ladder:

29. Real-World
Example:
Animated Content

30. Real-World
Example:
Animated Content
No visible quality improvement
at 45 db and higher
Encoding artifacts visible
at 35 db and lower

31. Comparison - Animated Content
Standard Profile Per-Title Profile
593 kbps, 360p 480 kbps, 1080p

32. Comparison - Animated Content
● Bitrate Reduction of 28%
● Storage Reduction of 88%
● Quality Improvement 30%

33. Per-Title Encoding - Summary
● Every piece of content is different
● Per Title optimizes the bitrate ladder for each Asset
● Enables better quality of experience for customers
● Consistent visual quality across different assets
● Saves Encoding cost
● Saves Storage & CDN cost

34. How do I get started?
1) Contact sales to schedule consultation session (sales@bitmovin.com)
2) Activate this feature on my account
3) Change my API call based on analysis (provided after consultation)

35. Q&A
bitmovin.com/contact-bitmovin/