2017年3月9日
By 1月时特约编辑
专题文章

HLS Still "Industry Standard," Says 编码.com报告

编码.com's Global Media Format Report has become an annual barometer for the streaming industry since its inception in 2015, particularly regarding the adoption and usage of codecs and streaming formats. 2017年的报告涵盖了编码.com's production in 2016, provided some very interesting insights. I'll share only a few, so as not to steal the report's thunder, which you can 你自己下载没有登记.

For perspective, the report incorporates data from more than 3,000 clients that uploaded 5.9 petabytes of source video files to 编码.com's 14 global processing centers, up from 1.2015年是45pb. The peak processing load achieved by 编码.com was 21,700 simultaneous cores, the equivalent of 684 32-core instances. 有趣的是, the average number of target outputs for each source file dropped from 12 to 10, 这个编码.com attributes to content publishers mapping "HLS output to a broader set of devices."

One of the most significant findings in the report was the decline of HEVC as an output format, 从6%到3%(图1). 编码不足为奇.com attributed this in part to licensing issues surrounding HEVC, 声明, “we believe HEVC codec license uncertainty and a lack of mobile device compatibility is significantly inhibiting the market from further exploration of this codec and has actually made it retreat.” We've covered the mess that HEVC licensors have made in launching HEVC many times, and this is objective proof that it's actually hindered deployment.

hlsstill1

图1. VP9 has a strong debut at 11%, HEVC declines from 6% to 3%.

编码.com在2016年增加了对VP9的支持, 所以没有前一年的数字, 但11%似乎是个不错的开始. Here's what the report says: "Adding support for the VP9 codec in 2016 was followed by very strong adoption and market interest in VP9 as an alternative to H.264, especially for high-volume customers who benefit from the nearly half the data rate at the same quality when compared with H.264." This confirms the data rate savings touted by Google, though 编码.com also reports some market hesitation due to the "significantly longer encoding times seen with Google's libvpx encoding engine."

HLS仍然是唯一

在ABR格式方面, the report labels HLS as "the industry standard,“说, "HLS remains the most prominent standard, primarily due to its broad device compatibility (iOS, Android), 吃嫩叶的动物, 和OTT播放器(Apple TV), Roku, 火电视, Chromecast) and is especially popular with video publishers who require sophisticated DRM or dynamic ad insertion integrations. Also supporting the standard is Apple's continued improvement of the protocol. HLS v5 was 宣布 in September 2016 and most notably included support for Fragmented MP4."

DASH support grew from 10% in 2015 to 21% in 2016, though the MPEG LA royalty on DASH wasn't 宣布 until November 2016, so any impact this has on DASH adoption remains to be seen. With an annual royalty cap of $30 million/year, you can expect all potential users to investigate alternatives and to continue to use HLS as long as possible.

hlsstill2

图2. HLS continues to dominate, though DASH usage up by more than 50%.

The final observation I'll glean from the report relates to resolution. 4K made little inroads, increasing from 8%-10%. 720p encodings dropped the most significantly, 从38%到23%, with 1080p picking up most of the slack, 还有480便士, 哪个从6%上升到12%, 大概是针对手机的. 整体, if you've been thinking that 720p was sufficient as your maximum resolution, 现在也许是重新考虑的时候了.

Other topics of interest include DRM and closed caption format usage, 杜比音频的使用激增, 云存储使用模式, and which techniques are most commonly used for transit to and from the cloud. 基本上, if you're looking for a reality check on any of your encoding decisions or cloud-based workflows, you'll find the report a highly useful tool.