Slashdot Mirror
Netflix To Re-Encode Entire 1 Petabyte Video Catalogue In 2016 To Save Bandwidth (variety.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix has spent four years developing a new and more efficient video-encoding process that can shave off 20% in terms of space and bandwidth without reducing the quality of streamed video. With streaming video accounting for 70% of broadband use, the saving is much-needed, although the advent of 4K streaming, higher frame rates and HDR are likely to account for it all soon after. Netflix video algorithms manager Anne Aaron explained to Variety that certain types of video benefit little from the one-size-fits-all compression approach that Netflix has been using until now: "You shouldn't allocate the same amount of bits for My Little Pony as for The Avengers."
"You shouldn't allocate the same amount of bits for My Little Pony as for The Avengers."
So they're dropping the resolution for The Avengers?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Shaving 20% off seems pretty optimistic to me. Unless they've suddenly discovered some whole new realm of compression mathematics I'd be surprised if thats anything more than a peak compression in some rare edge cases.
Back in the MPEG2 Sat days they regularly used different bit rates depending on content talking heads very little compared to full out for sports and action movies. An actual knowledgeable encoding tech can do wonders, higher quality source material can also do wonders.
No sir I dont like it.
Almost sounds to me like they have switched to multiple pass encoding, rather than a fixed quality/bandwidth setting.
"The new system will encode from the raw source material more intelligently, considering whether or not the material itself can really benefit from higher bit-rates, or whether identical quality can be maintained with less space and bandwidth."
They can save about 500% of my bandwidth by just letting me perma-download Family Guy, American Dad, and Buffy, which I keep watching over and over and over again.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What problem is this trying to address?
Saving on bandwidth costs?
Providing a better streaming experience for customers on poor or throttled connections?
Storage space savings?
Getting the satisfaction of doing something better because why not?
As a My Little Pony enthusiast who pays the same per month as everyone else I demand the same quality as the Avengers.
I watch YouTube a lot, on average about 2-3 hours a day. As of late, I live in a country where there is a bandwidth cap of 40 GB/month. And I have no option but to YouTube at 144p to avoid extra bandwidth charges.
I applaud all efforts by tech companies to reduce bandwidth usage (and not to forget, making inter-webs more exciting). Then again, none of those efforts matter, if bandwidth caps are forcing consumers to use internet like back in 90s.
With all their efforts concentrated on their original series, it seems like their movie and TV offerings already shrink every month already, without any compression.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Three words: Comcast data cap...
Peter.
Actually I doubt they'd reduce the color precision from 24 bit (it's not 32 bit).
In fact, content with lots of synthetic content can sometimes be smaller by being 30 bit instead of 24 bit (think how often synthetic content puts in gradients, with 24 bit those gradients are more dithered than 30 bit, and the compression algorithms struggle a bit more with what appears to be 'noisy' content from dithering compared to less noisy undithered content).
Of course this is using general purpose algorithms that are used for both animated and photorealistic alike. There may be some gains in theory from a codec focused exclusively on animated content, but in practice no one seems to think it's worth the trouble to pursue.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So nothing that's REALLY important then?
So what would something REALLY important be?
Maybe better implementations of existing algorithms, but they have to tread carefully about new algorithms.
I assume today they use H264 and the re-encode would just be newer implementation of H264 encode/different settings than they used before.
They could get more from jumping to HEVC, but netflix is on crap tons of smart TVs and such.
Of course that's not to say they transcode to HEVC and client advertises whether it's H264 or HEVC and netflix just keeps both H264 and HEVC live on their CDN, if capacity is no big deal.
It's obvious it saves bandwidth, and if Netflix were having someone manually babysit instances of a transcoder that would be ridiculous. Every transcoder is automation friendly and assuming they've done it all right it's a matter of kicking off a massive parallel job to chew on the library using their idle capacity. It's a common thing to do when you have low priority workload and gobs of servers. Now if they are having people hand review the result of the transcode for video quality issues that would be expensive, but I doubt they would. They would cherry pick a few representative scenes of content and verify their batch job looks good and fire away. Then they would rely upon user issue reports to catch anything they may have missed.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Improved sarcasm enhancement
So can someone tell me how this doesn't violate Net Neutrality rules? Video streamed from Comcast's own source properties doesn't count towards data caps, yet watching the same movie from Netflix does? And Netflix has their own caching servers installed directly inside Comcast's distribution network? WTF?
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Haven't been to Dollar General lately, have you? They've been selling off the majority of their DVDs and not replacing damaged ones. I have movies that have been on my queue for years that are now (permanently) unavailable. I had a big backlog and now I don't really have a way to watch them - they're certainly not available for streaming. And they already put rental stores out of business. I would literally have to buy some of these movies to watch them.
4K is not going to happen unless [...]
It seems a bit odd to suggest it can't happen when 4K streaming is already happening. The main selling point of Netflix's top streaming tier is that it grants you access to their "Ultra HD" (i.e. 4K) catalog. YouTube has had 4K support since late 2013 and has quietly been adding support for even higher resolutions in the last two years. You can already find content available at resolutions as high as 8K (e.g. this video). One of the production houses I follow on YouTube makes most of their animated content available at 4K and is moving more and more of their live action content over to 4K as they get more 4K cameras into the hands of their teams.
And the pipes are already good enough. Netflix's 4K content only requires a sustained 25 Mbps connection, which is orders of magnitude more common in US households than 4K TVs are.
Comcast, TWC, et al. are certainly deserving of a good raking over the coals, but when it comes to their ability to deliver 4K streaming capability...well, that bar is actually pretty low, and they've pretty much already met it. 25 Mbps plans are not particularly difficult to come by in most of the US, though I'm quite aware that some regions are woefully underserved and that prices for those plans remain unjustifiably high. For instance, the area where I live (Bryan/College Station, Texas, smack dab in the middle between Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin) is officially classified as a metropolitan area, but Internet plans here cost 34x that of peer cities not too long ago (that "34x" is sadly not a typo), simply because we don't have any adjacent urban centers.