When it comes to optimizing bitrates, delivery costs and viewer experiences, the current industry belief is that you can’t always get what you want. A recent survey revealed that 86% of video company respondents claim that they want to balance Viewer Experience with costs, yet companies are hesitant to implement such projects.
In a recent webinar, SSIMWAVE Chief Revenue Office Carlos Hernandez and other streaming experts addressed how lack of standardized measuring tools is holding back the entire industry. Rather than adopting objective, automated systems, providers can be paralyzed by the lack of uniform metrics. Providers could benefit greatly from objectivity and automation but are hesitating due to uncertainty about the impact and ROI of each solution.
“OTT Insights: Best practices for optimizing bitrates, costs and viewer experiences” shared the results of a survey by streaming analyst Dan Rayburn of more than 300 video streamers, broadcasters, MVPDS, studio execs, publishers and brands. Hernandez, Rayburn and SDVI’s Simon Eldridge talked about how the survey identified two main areas of challenge: Uncertainty and Complexity.
They noted that while many organizations were considering video optimization before the pandemic struck, 94% accelerated their plans because of the surge in demand. The survey revealed reliance on a broad menu of technical approaches including PSNR, SSIM, MS-SSIM, VMAF and Brisque, as well as “golden eyes,” viewer surveys and internal video engineers solutions. Despite—or perhaps because of—the availability of so many alternatives, implementation often lacks management buy-in because of questions about potential ROI.
When asked what issues they encountered when they scaled up the number of viewers, our survey participants scored “Measuring the Viewer Experience” as the biggest challenge.
What’s needed, says Hernandez, is an objective measure of perceptual video quality.
Such a measure would make quantifying ROI and impact straightforward, informing important decisions and actions within the video workflow and delivering optimized bitrates, reduced costs and desired viewer experience levels—in short, allowing the industry to finally have it all.
Watch the full webinar recording HERE
