While live video streaming is expected to continue growing at an accelerated pace, one potential area for optimization that has remained relatively untapped is the use of content-aware encoding to improve the quality of live contribution streams. For those who have tried, it has been quite challenging due to the additional latency that complexity analysis adds to the streaming framework. However, it merits further investigation, as optimizing live video coding workflows may result in (i) decreased storage or/and delivery costs and (ii) increased QoE.

In this talk, we introduce a revolutionary video complexity metric that operates in real-time and enables the adoption of per-title encoding (among others) for live video workflows. We will explain and illustrate the key components of this metric and highlight the open source repository including how video developers can utilize it for their video workflows. Finally, we will present selected applications (i.e., per-title encoding among others) and showcase their performance compared to state-of-the-art techniques for live video workflows. Video developers will gain a deep understanding of video complexity, how to extract it in real-time, and how to use it in live video workflows. This talk was presented at Demuxed ’22, a conference for video nerds in San Francisco featuring amazing talks like this one. Demuxed ’22 was made possible by sponsors like our Platinum sponsor Daily (https://daily.co) and organized by people from Mux (https://mux.com). For more information about the conference and community, see https://2022.demuxed.com.