Transcoding with ASICs has drawn a lot of attention – from YouTube’s ARGOS VPU to Meta’s new ASIC that prompted David Ronca’s comment that there are only two types of companies: ‘those using Video Processing ASICs in their workflows, and those that will.’ Based in Sweden, RealSprint provides live-streaming solutions worldwide. Choosing a transcoder for the AV1 capabilities of its Vindral Live CDN, RealSprint weighed software transcoding, GPU and CPU acceleration, and ASICs – and, like YouTube and Meta, chose ASICs. Jan Ozer from NETINT and Daniel Alinder from RealSprint discuss the role of hardware encoding.