Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content

Re:Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content by dmurray on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:26PM (#24312441)

> My point is that if Netflix thinks they can do better, it would be great to see their code contributed to the public, since they're using an open source program to do all their encodes.

This really is their core business and somewhere they can have a competitive edge, though. Even if you think it's unethical or that it might make business sense to contribute back to the upstream projects, you can see why they might want to keep some of that secret sauce in-house.

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Re:Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content by bscphil on Friday August 28, 2020 @09:29PM (#24312463)

Fair enough, I'm not arguing that they're obligated to or anything, I just think it would be nice. I do suspect that catalogue matters much more at this point than any tiny competitive advantage they get through better encoding. And they've certainly been willing to share advances (like VMAF) in the past - that's why this tech blog exists, after all!

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Re:Netflix is now doing per-shot encoding for UHD content by ponker on Friday August 28, 2020 @10:43PM (#24312900)

Bandwidth is a huge cost for these services and if they share encoding techniques then their competitors can cut prices at the margins.

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