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Netflix To Re-Encode Entire 1 Petabyte Video Catalogue In 2016 To Save Bandwidth (variety.com)

Posted by timothy on from the gotta-save-space-gotta-save-space dept.

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."

11 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. My little pony by Eunuchswear · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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?

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    1. Re:My little pony by Kagato · · Score: 5, Interesting

      On a serious note, animated content is much harder for the 8-bit encoding. It's the hard edges with high contrast cell shading. You get a lot more compression artifacts than a typical movie. You can resolve this by using 10-bit encoding, but there's a lot of Netflix devices with embedding video codecs. They really can't change, and almost none of the chipsets out there support 10-bit decoding. So that leaves option two, which is to increase the bitrate.

    2. Re:My little pony by marcansoft · · Score: 4, Informative

      That animated content benefits from 10-bit encoding is true. That has less to do with hard edges and more to do with banding artifacts on flat shaded areas - TFA actually goes into that, mentioning soft focus and fog as producing hard-to-encode gradients, the same kind of gradients present in many kinds of animation and which would benefit from using 10-bit mode. Hard edges do tend to be hard to encode with typical video codecs too (but 10-bit probably won't help you there).

      However, My Little Pony isn't a particularly good example, because it's full of completely flat areas that are trivial to encode. It might take a higher quality setting than you might expect to look crisp, but at the end of the day, you're going to be spending fewer bits per frame on it than on The Avengers. Animation has its own set of encoding tradeoffs/challenges (which is why good encoders have presets tuned for animation).

  2. Another year, another video codec... by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Another year, another video codec... by hawguy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Sounds more like as a part of re-compression, they are going to drop the bitrate (and video quality?) for videos that don't "need" it:

      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."

    2. Re:Another year, another video codec... by c0d3g33k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I suspect that by the time of this announcement they have already done the testing, so have a good idea of how much they can optimize. From the article, it's more about optimizing compression parameters to fit the source material rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.

    3. Re:Another year, another video codec... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The article is actually in English, you know.

      "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."

  3. Repetition by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  4. Re:Neat... but why? by c0d3g33k · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  5. class action suit by sunking2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    As a My Little Pony enthusiast who pays the same per month as everyone else I demand the same quality as the Avengers.

  6. Re:Neat... but why? by loony · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Three words: Comcast data cap...

    Peter.