drorgill

Again, you are missing the point. Where did the CRF number of 18.5 come from? Did you test several parameters, and found what parameter gives lower bitrates than Beamr Video on this specific clip set?

Would you apply the same CRF parameter of 18.5 to any video file to reduce its bitrate? And does this parameter ensure reducing the bitrate of any video file without hurting its quality? If so, you could apply it recursively on a video clip and reduce bitrate indefinitely...

The bottom line is that there is no setting of x264 that guarantees reducing the bitrate of ANY input video file while maintaining its visual quality. And this is exactly what Beamr Video guarantees.

Note my previous reply on this issue: JPEGmini adaptively encodes each JPEG file to the minimum file size possible without affecting its original quality (the output size is of course different for each input file). You can take a specific file and tune a regular JPEG encoder to reach the same size as JPEGmini did on that specific file. And you can also manually tune the quality for each image using a regular JPEG encoder by viewing the photo before and after compression. But there is no other technology that can do this automatically (and adaptively) for millions of photos.

Even if you compare #2 and #3 and they are similar quality, what would that prove? You could do #3 for a specific file after Beamr Video has processed it, but how would you know the right bitrate for #3 without applying Bearm Video in #2?

We don't have a constant bitrate feature. And the comparison you refer to was not done on content encoded with Beamr Video, but on content encoded with "Beamr-like" settings for an x264 encoder. Since we are controlling the video encoding at the frame level, these comparisons are meaningless.

Those are just preview files used for fast page load, but they are based on resized versions of the original and the JPEGmini version. You are welcome to download the original and JPEGmini full resolution files, and compare them at "Actual Size" (100% zoom).

The decision Beamr Video makes are "smarter" than x264's CRF mode, since they are based on a perceptual quality measure we have developed. This quality measure is similar to the one used in JPEGmini, our image optimization technology, and has been proven (in standard ITU BT.500 testing) to have higher correlation with subjective results than other quality measures such as SSIM.

Beamr Video is not a bitrate-driven encoder - you cannot specify the bitrate of the output clip, so we cannot provide 2). We can only provide an output clip with the same quality as the input and lower bitrate, but we can't guarantee in advance what that bitrate would be. That is the basic difference between Beamr Video which is a quality-driven video optimization technology, and a regular video encoder that is typically bitrate-driven.

Daiz hello, this is Dror from Beamr. The technologies we have developed, JPEGmini and Beamr Video, are definitely not "Snake Oil", and I don't think it would be good practice to make such claims regarding any company's technology without checking the facts first and asking for the company's response before posting.

Our technologies for image and video compression have received excellent reviews in the media, and have been tested and proven by industry experts. You can find the reviews online, and I would be happy to send you the quotes we got from the industry experts as well. Thousands of users are using our free online photo optimization service at JPEGmini.com daily, and thousands more have purchased JPEGmini for Mac to optimize images locally, and they are all very happy with these tools.

The important thing regarding our technologies, and the main point you have missed in your analysis, is that they are used for automatic image optimization to the lowest bitrate or file size possible, and not for encoding an image or video to a specific bitrate or file size. Based on analysis of the image or video using a perceptual quality measure we have developed, we adaptively set the encoding parameters for each image or video. So the amount of compression for each image or video clip is different, and depends on the content and original quality of that image.

Comparing the quality of a clip encoded in Beamr Video with the quality of the same clip encoded at the same bitrate using another encoder is meaningless, since part of the uniqueness of Beamr Video is "knowing" what is the right bitrate (actually the lowest bitrate possible) for encoding each video such that it stays perceptually identical to the original clip. Beamr Video is the only technology that can adaptively reduce the bitrate of any clip to the minimum amount possible, while ensuring that quality of the output clip is perceptually identical to the quality of the input clip.

The same is true for our image technology: We reduce each JPEG file to the minimum file size possible without affecting its original quality. Of course, you can take a specific file and tune a regular JPEG encoder to reach the same size on that specific file. And you can also manually tune the quality for each image using a regular JPEG encoder by viewing the photo before and after compression. But there is no other technology that can take millions of photos and automatically adapt the size of each one to the minimum possible size while preserving quality.

The clips on our website are an initial demo of Beamr Video we are offering today, based on Blu-Ray sources. In a few weeks we will launch a cloud-based Beamr Video encoding service, where everyone will be able to process their own clips and reach their own conclusions. There are free trial versions of JPEGmini available for anyone to download and try. So again, I don't understand the basis of your "Snake Oil" claim. I would be happy to continue this discussion with you privately if you like, you can email me at dror@beamr.com.