Decoded — How Video Really Works

Fora Soft
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Decoded is a podcast about how video really works — the engineering behind every stream, video call, and clip you watch. Each episode takes one piece of the video pipeline — pixels and color, codecs and compression, quality metrics, and the latest in AI — and explains it clearly, from first principles to what actually ships in production. The series is based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook and is made by Fora Soft, a software company that has done one thing since 2005: video, real-time communication, and AI systems. 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. Whether you're a developer moving into video, a product person who needs to reason about codecs and bitrate, or simply curious how a camera becomes a stream, Decoded turns a dense field into something you can actually follow — one short episode at a time. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

Season 1

  1. Episode 1

    Episode 1. What Digital Video Is

    Every video product begins with the same raw material — a grid of colored dots refreshed many times a second. Before you can reason about codecs, bitrate, or resolution, you have to know what a codec actually compresses. This first episode builds digital video from the ground up: the frame, the pixel, and the handful of numbers that describe any video ever made. In this episode: — the frame, the pixel, and RGB: how a picture becomes numbers — the five quantities behind any video: resolution, color space, bit depth, frame rate, and scan type — why doubling the resolution roughly quadruples the bitrate — progressive vs interlaced scan, where "combing" comes from, and what deinterlacing does — codec vs container: what the difference actually is — how heavy raw, uncompressed video is — and why compression is unavoidable Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  2. Episode 2

    Episode 2. Sampling: Space and Time

    Every digital video is a continuous scene measured on a grid of points — in space and in time. This episode explains the rule that governs those measurements, the Nyquist limit, and what goes wrong when you break it. In this episode: — what sampling is, and why video is a measurement on a grid — the Nyquist–Shannon theorem and the Nyquist limit, in plain words — aliasing and its three faces: moiré, jaggies, and the wagon-wheel effect — the three sampling axes of video — two in space, one in time — why codecs deliberately break the rule for color (4:2:0 chroma subsampling) — the three lines of defense against aliasing Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  3. Episode 3

    Episode 3. Colour

    A pixel is just a few numbers — but which colors those numbers actually mean is a surprisingly deep question. This episode goes from light and the eye to color spaces, and explains why every codec quietly converts to a brightness-plus-color representation. In this episode: — how a color becomes a number: from the eye's three cone types to three primaries — what a color space pins down: primaries, white point, and transfer function — RGB versus YCbCr, and why every codec works in YCbCr — the main color standards and what each is used for — the three ways to break color by losing metadata Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  4. Episode 4

    Episode 4. Dynamic Range: Bit Depth, Gamma, and HDR

    Why does ordinary video top out around 100 nits, and what exactly does HDR add? This episode covers bit depth and banding, the gamma curves that shape every signal, and how the HDR formats really differ. In this episode: — dynamic range of a scene and a screen, and the SDR brightness ceiling — bit depth: counting shades at 8, 10, and 12 bits, and where banding comes from — transfer functions: the camera-side OETF and the display-side EOTF — the two HDR curves — PQ and HLG — and which suits which job — the four HDR formats and why they are not interchangeable — why wide gamut and HDR need at least 10 bits Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  5. Episode 5

    Episode 5. Motion, Time, and Perception

    Frame rate is where video meets the human visual system. This episode explains why cinema clings to 24 frames a second, what judder and motion blur really are, and the perceptual quirks that all compression secretly relies on. In this episode: — the working frame rates and what content each one suits — why 24 fps persists, and the truth behind flicker fusion and apparent motion — judder, motion blur, and the shutter angle — telecine, 3:2 pulldown, and the odd 29.97 broadcast rate — the properties of vision that psycho-visual compression rests on Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  6. Episode 6

    Episode 6. The Problem: The Math of Bitrate

    Before compression can be a solution, you have to feel the size of the problem. This episode gives you a ten-second formula for the raw bitrate of any format, and shows why uncompressed 4K at 60 frames a second weighs about 12 gigabits per second. In this episode: — what bitrate is, and the formula for raw bitrate — the full 4K-60 calculation — why raw video is about 12 Gbps — that figure against real network pipes — the gap of hundreds of times — a mental model for compressed bitrate — the two meanings of 'bits per pixel', and how to spot starved or overfed encodes — real compression ratios and the gain of each codec generation Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  7. Episode 7

    Episode 7. The Compression Landscape

    Not all compression is the same, and choosing wrong is expensive. This episode maps the whole landscape into four quadrants and places the codecs you actually use in each one. In this episode: — lossless versus lossy, and the typical ratios of each — why video compresses harder than a still image — the four quadrants: lossless vs lossy, production vs delivery — the codecs of each quadrant and their typical 1080p bitrates — the 'one master, many deliveries' pipeline, and mistakes to avoid Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  8. Episode 8

    Episode 8. Information, Entropy, and the Shannon Limit

    Why can't lossless compression reach ten-to-one, no matter how clever the codec? This episode answers with information theory: what information really is, what entropy measures, and the floor below which no future codec can go. In this episode: — what information is, and the idea of 'surprise' — Shannon entropy — the intuition, then the formula — why a predictable stream codes shorter than a random one — the compression floor, and where today's codecs stand against it — a first encounter with the rate–distortion curve Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  9. Episode 9

    Episode 9. The Four Kinds of Redundancy

    Underneath every modern codec is one simple map: four kinds of redundancy, and one tool against each. This episode is that map — the single idea that makes the rest of the series click into place. In this episode: — spatial redundancy, and intra-frame prediction — temporal redundancy, and inter-frame prediction — psycho-visual redundancy, and quantization and subsampling — statistical redundancy, and entropy coding — how the four ideas assemble into one codec Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  10. Episode 10

    Episode 10. The History and Geopolitics of Codecs

    Codec names like H.264, HEVC, and AV1 are not just technical labels — they are the residue of a forty-year arms race between standards bodies and patent pools. This episode gives you the history that makes those names make sense. In this episode: — the timeline from the first standards to AV2 in 2026 — who displaced whom — and who survived — the standards bodies: ITU-T, MPEG, and AOMedia — how patent pools and licensing shaped which codecs won — why the codec world split into rival camps Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  11. Episode 11

    Episode 11. The Hybrid Codec Architecture

    From H.264 to VVC, every mainstream codec is the same machine wearing different clothes. This episode dissects that machine — prediction, transform, quantization, and entropy coding — and the feedback loop that ties it together. In this episode: — what 'hybrid' means: prediction plus transform plus quantization plus entropy coding — the encoder block diagram, step by step — the decoder as just the encoder's lower path — the residual and the reconstruction feedback loop — the same boxes across H.264, HEVC, AV1, and VVC — and where they diverge Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  12. Episode 12

    Episode 12. Frames and GOP Structure

    Which frames predict from which? That schedule — the group of pictures — decides your file size, your seeking, and how well live video holds up. This episode sets the structure of time inside a codec. In this episode: — the three frame types: I, P, and B — the group of pictures: open versus closed — hierarchical B-frames and reference frames — how GOP length trades off quality, size, and seeking — live versus VOD, and codec-specific differences Decoded is a podcast by Fora Soft, based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook book series. Since 2005 Fora Soft has built video products, real-time communication, and AI systems: 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

  • 12 Episodes

About

Decoded is a podcast about how video really works — the engineering behind every stream, video call, and clip you watch. Each episode takes one piece of the video pipeline — pixels and color, codecs and compression, quality metrics, and the latest in AI — and explains it clearly, from first principles to what actually ships in production. The series is based on The Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook and is made by Fora Soft, a software company that has done one thing since 2005: video, real-time communication, and AI systems. 50 in-house engineers, 250+ delivered projects, live streaming with 0.4–0.5-second glass-to-glass latency for 10,000 simultaneous viewers, and solutions used by NBC, CBS, and Red Bull. Whether you're a developer moving into video, a product person who needs to reason about codecs and bitrate, or simply curious how a camera becomes a stream, Decoded turns a dense field into something you can actually follow — one short episode at a time. If you're building a product with video or online calls, come talk to us: https://www.forasoft.com/

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