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> There’s lots of encoding work to do. Netflix supports 2200 devices and lots of different codecs, so video is needed in many different file formats. Why? Don

> There’s lots of encoding work to do. Netflix supports 2200 devices and lots of different codecs, so video is needed in many different file formats. Why? Don't they write/control their own client apps and video players? Why isn't a single codec with a choice of 3 or 4 different resolutions sufficient?

Mindwipe 9y ago
Because software video decoding of a codec that doesn't have native hardware decoding is slow (software 4K decoding taxes even many modern machines) and most importantly is incredibly resource intensive and therefore battery draining. You've no realistic option than to support whatever formats that the hardware has native decoding support, and you'd prefer H265 over 264 (bandwidth costs money) if it's available, and there are many different HDR formats.
slig 9y ago
Their clients are in used in different Smart TVs, and each brand/model can have different codecs chips.
IanCal 9y ago
That may depend on what's supported on the devices. I worked on smart TVs years ago and there was a large variability in what things could play.
wkillerud 9y ago
About resolutions, different resolutions can serve different bandwidths. Not everyone can stream crystal-clear HD at all times.
erinaceousjones 9y ago
On most platforms that aren't powerful games consoles or personal computers, the video decoding is done by proprietary hardware; these hardware decoders usually only support a few families of codecs and are difficult or impossible to reprogram. Even if most things support, say, H.264 out of the box, each video decoding SoC has different quirks which means either A) the same encoding looks different on different hardware or B) the encoding fails to decode on different hardware, so even the same codec can have a bunch of parameters which can/need to be adjusted for different devices. One smart TV might have a Broadcom SoC with a GPU which supports h.264 decoding like the Raspberry Pis do, an Android tablet might have a Mali GPU which can decode VP9 and HEVC, some weird older set top box which has netflix built in might only support MPEG...
hinkley 9y ago
Three things stand out to me. One and two, some devices have hardware support for certain formats, and Netflix optimized for playtime (battery) and bandwidth so you have to handle all those. Scaling a video on the client looks like crap and is slow. So you have to deal with all the fiddly screen resolutions, of which the distinct count used to be truly awful but now is much better. However you have to add tablets in which cancels out some of the gains in sanity. On the bandwidth thing, I wouldn’t put it past Netflix to reencode popular movies with a more time intensive compression settings to achieve better aggregate bandwidth usage but not hold up new releases.

Mindwipe 9y ago

Because software video decoding of a codec that doesn't have native hardware decoding is slow (software 4K decoding taxes even many modern machines) and most importantly is incredibly resource intensive and therefore battery draining. You've no realistic option than to support whatever formats that the hardware has native decoding support, and you'd prefer H265 over 264 (bandwidth costs money) if it's available, and there are many different HDR formats.

slig 9y ago

Their clients are in used in different Smart TVs, and each brand/model can have different codecs chips.

IanCal 9y ago

That may depend on what's supported on the devices. I worked on smart TVs years ago and there was a large variability in what things could play.

wkillerud 9y ago

About resolutions, different resolutions can serve different bandwidths. Not everyone can stream crystal-clear HD at all times.

erinaceousjones 9y ago

On most platforms that aren't powerful games consoles or personal computers, the video decoding is done by proprietary hardware; these hardware decoders usually only support a few families of codecs and are difficult or impossible to reprogram. Even if most things support, say, H.264 out of the box, each video decoding SoC has different quirks which means either A) the same encoding looks different on different hardware or B) the encoding fails to decode on different hardware, so even the same codec can have a bunch of parameters which can/need to be adjusted for different devices. One smart TV might have a Broadcom SoC with a GPU which supports h.264 decoding like the Raspberry Pis do, an Android tablet might have a Mali GPU which can decode VP9 and HEVC, some weird older set top box which has netflix built in might only support MPEG...

hinkley 9y ago

Three things stand out to me. One and two, some devices have hardware support for certain formats, and Netflix optimized for playtime (battery) and bandwidth so you have to handle all those. Scaling a video on the client looks like crap and is slow. So you have to deal with all the fiddly screen resolutions, of which the distinct count used to be truly awful but now is much better. However you have to add tablets in which cancels out some of the gains in sanity. On the bandwidth thing, I wouldn’t put it past Netflix to reencode popular movies with a more time intensive compression settings to achieve better aggregate bandwidth usage but not hold up new releases.