As our world becomes increasingly connected, we are consuming more and more media online. From YouTube to Netflix, streaming is all the rage. As this industry has boomed, quality is the most important factor for consumers.

According to a study conducted by IBM Cloud Video, when it comes to online streaming, buffering is the primary concern. While there is a large quantity of streamable content, the quality does not always meet consumer expectations. Video transcoding is the best way to deal with this issue.

What Is Video Transcoding?

Video transcoding is the conversion of video files from one format to another format, making it accessible to many different devices. In a perfect world, after making your video, you would upload the original file to the internet for the world to see. In reality, if you were to upload your original video, most viewers would not see much beyond the buffering reel.

Between visual data and audio data, video files contain a ton of information and watching them takes up substantial memory and bandwidth. For people to be able to see your video, a compressed version needs to be created.

Even compressing your video may not make it accessible to every device and platform. Someone watching your video from their office computer connected to the internet via cable will be able to process media that is heavier than his friend watching the same video from his smartphone connected to public wifi.

Transcoding is essential because it not only compresses the video, but it creates different versions so that it can be viewed on any screen.

Why Is Transcoding So Important?

If you want your video to be widely accessible to users, video transcoding is key. The main reasons to transcode your video are:

• File size—video transcoding is used to reduce the file size when a video is too heavy for the target device.
• Formatting compatibility—when the target device does not support the format of the video, transcoding is used to convert it to a compatible format.
• Old file types—if the video file type is very old or obsolete, video transcoding is used to convert it to a modern format.

We are consuming more and more online content, much of it in the form of video streaming. There is, therefore, a clear need to deliver this content in a way that is flexible to different devices and with an adaptive bitrate. Moreover, many video streaming platforms only accept videos in certain formats. Making transcoding a necessity or anyone involved in media streaming.

How Video Transcoding Works

Video transcoding has two steps. First, the video is decoded to an uncompressed format. Second, the video is re-compressed to a new format, compatible with the target device.

When we talk about video transcoding we are talking about file codecs, containers, and file types. To encode the video files we use codecs. These are hardware devices or software programs that code and decode video files.

The codec creates an encoded version of the video, this is then decoded by the player on which the video is watched. Some of the most common codecs are MPEG, H.264, and VP9. Desired size, quality and delivery method all factor into the choice of codec.

A video file is composed of visual images, audio, and metadata. Once the different components of the video recompressed by the codec, they are held inside the container.
The container specifies the video and audio that will be played and provides rules for the playback device to decode the video.

Some common containers are MPEG4, Quicktime File Format, and Audio Video Interleave. The container (also referred to as file format) can be identified by the file type, for example, the MPEG4 container is represented by .mp4. The file type defines on which platform the video file can be streamed.

When Should You Use Video Transcoding?

Anytime you want your video to reach a wide online audience, you need to use video transcoding. Transcoding creates multiple compressed versions of the original file. Each version is optimized for a different viewing platform and internet speed, making it universally accessible to viewers.

Moreover, many video sharing platforms require your video to be transcoded. For example, if you want to upload a video on YouTube, your video needs to be transcoded into one of the formats accepted by YouTube.

Generally, most of these platforms support more than one format. However, you will still need to convert your original video from your camera, for example, to one of the supported formats using transcoding.

Make Your Video Accessible to Everyone

If you use online streaming, you need to be aware of video transcoding. In a world that is demanding an increasingly customized streaming experience, consumers will not compromise on loading speed and video quality.

It is therefore crucial to create videos that can adapt to the viewing needs of the consumer. This means delivering content that can be played on any device, such as a computer, tablet or smartphone. In addition, it is imperative to be able to distribute content based on the device’s bitrate capacity.

Video transcoding is a crucial component of the video production process that will optimize your video file to fit the needs of your consumer.