Even if they had actually developed some "interesting algorithms", they sure don't seem to be using them, at least not in the actual video encoding process. There's really no other explanation for the fact that you can end up with practically identical video to Beamr's examples when using largely identical settings and bitrate with vanilla x264.
There actually is an argument that if they can do as good a job as a manual encoding but automate the process, that is valuable, even if the encoding process is the same as the manual process. If you had thousands of videos to encode, they all probably wouldn't be optimally encoded at the exact same settings, and automating that task could save a significant amount of time.
Yea, but what Daiz proves in the OP is that he personally can do a better job than this so-called "algorithm". I hear his next project will be proving the worthlessness of spell checkers by simply beating them, at spelling. That paper clip thing in Word is such Snake Oil! ;)
For the record I have nothing to do with this Beamr, but I do feel sorry for the those guys. The marketing speak on their website may be a little hyperbole, but there's nothing fraudulent there that I can see. I don't think they deserve this treatment.
UPDATE: LocalPCGuy, sorry for posting this as a reply to your comment. You obviously get it.
Actually, no. What Diaz showed is that Beamr is offering nothing that actually improves either visual quality or bitrate; every setting that their method uses actually reduces quality compared to default x264 settings.
> What Diaz showed is that Beamr is offering nothing that actually improves either visual quality or bitrate
Well too bad Beamr never made that claim (AFAIK). What Beamr does claim is that their software can automatically find settings (per frame) that will compress a certain video file to it's smallest size without affecting quality (too much - in some subjective measure).
I'm not saying that Beamr is great. I have no idea, I've never used it. But what I can say for sure is that Daiz has not made a fair evaluation of the technology in the OP.
> I think Diaz just pointed out that these claims are dubious at best
He did no such thing. He just pointed out that you can get the same benefits from using x264 directly.
Most people just take the h264 stream they got from their phone / camera / BluRay rip. These are horribly compressed. x264 can consistently improve those without degrading quality by 30% without much tweaking, and by 50-70% with some tweaking.
Apparently, Beamr saves you some tweaking. Diaz' claim is that the tweaking saved is ridiculously minimal and does not warrant all the hyperbole around beamr.
