Free and premium comparison
Premium encoding changes the output limits listed in the table, and both options apply to live streams and VOD.Premium renditions
The table lists every quality available with premium encoding, including the ones that free transcoding already produces, and the custom plan can change the values. These are the default settings.
As with free transcoding, Gcore does not upscale videos. The output renditions range from the lowest quality up to the resolution of the source, so a 4K source produces renditions up to 4K.
Premium codecs
HEVC, AV1, and VP9 usually need less bitrate than H.264 for the same visual quality, so they lower CDN traffic for large VOD libraries and bandwidth-sensitive workflows. Each codec is delivered through specific manifests.
HLS MPEG-TS carries H.264 only, so HEVC and AV1 in HLS need HLS CMAF. VP9 is included only in the MPEG-DASH manifest, which can use WebM chunks for it, and the width and height of each VP9 rendition must be divisible by 2.
Live streams with advanced codecs require a separately validated configuration, while the activation steps and codec-specific manifests for VOD are described in multi-codec VOD.
Custom output settings
Custom settings cover requirements that fall outside the default presets. Each group below is configured per account on request.- Bitrate and ladders: higher or lower bitrate targets, different ABR ladders for specific devices or regions, changed quality presets for all or selected renditions, and removal of unneeded renditions to lower CDN costs
- Frame rate: 60+ FPS or original FPS passthrough
- Audio: higher audio quality, 48 kHz sample rate, Dolby Digital, and Dolby Atmos
- Delivery: transmuxing of VOD MP4 files to HLS on the fly, and pass-through instead of transcoding for live streams