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Hi All,
With the theft of one of my video cameras (insured!!) I’m taking the opportunity to revamp and upgrade my video facilities.
As part of this I was wondering what video formats people were interested in.
I’ve always liked RealMedia, because I’ve always found it to produce nice crisp results for a reasonable file size. Having to install RealPlayer isn’t ideal as unless you switch everything off the damn thing phones home like the worst sort of spyware.
WMV is a must to provide, because for the 90%+ of people who access the site using Windows, it allows playing the video without installing any other software. I don’t think it is as high quality, personally, and it does take ages to encode, but as long as you get the settings right it is pretty good for web video; as broadband speeds go up I can up the bit rate of the encoding to help the quality along.
In fairness to people who don’t have fast connections, I have to keep on providing a small version of the clip. Until now that’s been a RealMedia clip and no-one has moaned so I’ll probably leave that as it is.
There are some other formats I could offer, and I wondered if people had any interest or opinions?
The most obvious one to add is Quick Time MPEG4/H.264 in a suitable format for playing on computers and video iPods. I don’t currently have the software to encode this efficiently but I should get it with the upgrades I’m buying. Is that something people would be interested in? It’ll have to be slighter smaller in pixel size that the current large clips, as iPods can only view up to 640×480 pixels, but that’s not so different from the 720×540 or 720×405 that the current videos are encoded at. It would mean you could add the clips to iTunes, play them natively on Macs, and take them with you on a video capable iPod.
DivX would be another possibility. It seemed to be popular a while back but no-one has requested it in absolutely ages so I am guessing most people are happy with Real or WMV?
Let me know what you think.
Cheers, Hywel.
Theora (from the people that made .ogg files) and its totally free!
I agree that RealMedia is technically excellent, but you’d think the software came from AOL the way it screws up your machine.
Windows media is pretty good these days, especially at higher resolutions. With so many folk on broadband I don’t think 100MB + files would be an issue.
Mpeg4 is great for reducing file size but it can lead to excess pixelation where there is a lot of rapid movement. Not a problem in a bondage situation, I guess. 😀
I use Real Alternative to play Real Media files.
As you alreads mentioned, the Real player is disgusting. Also, I regularly examined strange compression irregularities in real clips – like, artifacts and strange slowdowns.
Altogether, I think the Real format is crap, and deserves to die out.
Since Apple had quite an uprising in the last few years, I’d vote to substitute Real media through Quicktime.
Theora isn’t a realistic possibility until it can be encoded in the same workflow as the rest of the video production. Which means Cleaner XL or Procoder or something else which can be left to batch create a lot of files from a lot of originals, really, as I often leave the videos encoding overnight.
Quicktime is certainly a possibility. The obvious thing to do is to produce Quicktime at 640×480 and at a bit rate that the video iPods can play. I’ll see how it compares but I’d probably do it as well as rather than instead of Real.
Any other thoughts?
Cheers, Hywel.
I’ve never had any problem with RealMedia and I can’t say the same for the Microsoft product. Is it too much trouble to have the option of a couple of formats like you currently do?
Oh no, it is no trouble at all to have at least two formats.
I would definitely keep WMV, for those who want it to “just work” on a Windows PC.
I will probably keep the RealMedia too because I think they give things a nice crisp clean look.
What I was wondering was whether to add another format, specifically H264/MPEG 4 for people who prefer Quicktime or use Macs. If I do that, it would seem sensible to encode them at the highest image size and data rate that can be put onto a video iPod, so as well as viewing them on a computer people could put them onto video-capable iPods.
So long as I can use the same tool to encode from my high-quality master version to WMV, RealMedia and Quicktime, it isn’t a big deal to do. I was just wondering if there was enough interest to justify doing it, or if there was some format everyone wanted of which I was unaware.
Cheers, Hywel.
I have two reasons for hating real player format.
Firstly the software you have to install to play the files. Thankfully I found real alternative a few years ago, and have used that ever since.
The second problem is I get “no picture” with real player! Specifically I have a dual monitor system, with the primary monitor on the right and the secondary monitor on the left. When I shove a RM movie onto the secondary monitor, so I can watch it while doing something else, I loose the picture :blindfold
A “slight” technical flaw in RM movies, and they are a pain to try and convert into some other format that plays on the second monitor.
I have no special love for WMV as a format, but “it just works” is a BIG plus point 🙂
Not sure this actually helps anyone though 🙂 For other people, anything that is portable device friendly sounds good. I don’t have an ipod of any sort though, so cannot offer any help there.
When I shove a RM movie onto the secondary monitor, so I can watch it while doing something else, I loose the picture
Why the heck would you want to do something else whilst watching videos from our favorite bondage website? Have you ever succesfully completed the other task or, as I suspect happens, did you become sidetracked watching the video?
Personally I only ever bother with the large RM file nowadays (I was a late adopter of Broadband) which I watch with my fullest attention just as soon as it has completed downloading (a slight fib!). I hadn’t really registered that Real had installed a whole load of other stuff with the media player so it can’t be bothering me that much. If available, given a choice, I will likely still download the large RM file.
CD
PS, A bit late perhaps but really sorry to hear about the break-in and loss of camera – you could happily string the little B’stards up! (Oh! – quite a pun given your profession – hadn’t intended that!)
Regarding quicktime/ipod if using .mp4 files, rather than mp4 wrapped up in a quicktime .mov file, then the ipod will play them, and, since it’s an open standard will be playable on Quicktime, numerous windows players AND give you a linux option too, just in case.
Hy Hywel,
personally I think that WMV is the best choice.
A few months ago i had the same problems with WMV as you had:
not the ideal quality, extreme slow encoding, black that looks like grey…
Then i tried a App. called “Canopus ProCoder”.
I encoded a raw .avi File to a wmv file with the same settings (bitrate, resolution etc.) i usually use. The result was considerably better then the wmv’s i created with the windows media encoder or Adobe Premiere (the app. i use for cutting).
I know, ProCoder is pretty expensive but its worth it.
I’ve attached a link to the product description and the demo version.http://www.canopus.com/products/ProCoderSW/index.php?lang=EN
Best regards from germany,
ZaderaP.S.: Sorry for my poor english.
Hi Zadera,
I’ve already ordered Procoder having tried out its demo version. I have been using Cleaner XL to encode, but as they just released the first update in several years and didn’t offer me a cheap upgrade option, I thought I’d try out Procoder. I played a bit with Sorenson Squeeze as well but Procoder seemed to encode a lot faster for the same quality.
Premiere’s encoding is pretty poor, I agree. It is also SLOW and doesn’t let you batch encode so you can’t even leave it overnight. It seems to do OK for H.264 but for Real and WMV it is shocking.
The one thing that has kept me using Cleaner XL all these years is the blur/sharpen filter which does an unsharp mask on sharp detail while at the same time blurring smooth areas. That helps a lot encoding for the web as it gives the codec a really good guide as to what detail to concentrate on. But it is less of an issue now that we’re up to megabit per second bit rates and large pixel dimensions. Procoder doesn’t have that but its other features seem nice.
Cheers, Hywel.
Hy Hywel,
I’ve tried out a demo of Cleaner XL before i ordered ProCoder and the Blur/Sharpen feature is really impressive. But the difference between ProCoder and Cleaner that made me buying ProCoder is the Multi-Threading / Multi-Processor Support of ProCoder.
Since powerfull Dual- and Quadprocessors become cheaper and cheaper i thought this is a really important feature.Best regards,
ZaderaI’ve always had problems with real files. They never seem to work without having to fiddle with software first so I don’t think they’re a good format.
The only format i’ve seen used that isn’t available on Restrained Elegance is DivX. Very good quality but like real it needs extra software in the form of a codec download. Personally I think any format that works immediately is the best to use so maybe WMV is all you need.
@cavalierdriver wrote:
Why the heck would you want to do something else whilst watching videos from our favorite bondage website? Have you ever succesfully completed the other task or, as I suspect happens, did you become sidetracked watching the video?
CD, several reasons 🙂 I can, and have, done all of the following tasks in parallel quite successfully:
* installed one or more instances of Visual Studio into a virtual machine
* used one of my stock replies to answer a work question by pointing the person at the correct FAQ item
* sorted out a pile of paper on my desk, mainly just dividing it into two piles – shred and recycle.I jump between different tasks all the time, its my nature 🙂
Back to video formats, one fairly rare problem has now shown up a couple of times. I use JetAudio 7 for all of my multi-media needs. I started using an earlier version years ago since it was the only program I could find that would do a movie slideshow of WMV, MOV and RM movies in one go.
These days it is simply my player of choice. But I have now found two WMV files that it “chokes” on. They play fine in windows media player, but not in my player of choice :banghead
So a 3rd format, something that would show a picture on the second monitor, while also being more “friendly” would be nice. I am not sure if this helps any, but the only other time I have seen a player choke on a movie is a corrupt download.
*considers* I am sure I have re-downloaded the problem movie, but I will have to double check that.
I would prefer to see videos in a format that will still be supported in a few year.
RM really is a pain, the player-software is horrible and almost like a virus/trojan vehicle. :ghostface: Noone knows of the video format, it’s very restrictive and real is a small company that could vanish easily. Plus, there is almost no tool out there to convert RM into another video format, so you wouldn’t be able to rescue these file into anything else with longer life-time expectation.
Divx was popular, but there is not one “divx format”, there are so many versions and from its beginning as a MS-WMV crack to a commercial restrictive application with unknown format I don’t think we’ll see it in a few years.
If you want to choose a Divx derivates then please use the open source Xvid. :singhappy This one will survive the next few years.
WMV 9 works great, it’s still no open source codec but it’s so often used I’m absolutely sure it will survive the next ten years. Although MS often behaves like a standard hating monopolist fortunately it’s true you can still watch files encoded with one of the early WMV version from Windows 3.1 time. I don’t know of any video file format except maybe FLC that’s still working.
Apples quicktime could be another good choice, but same as MS WM there are many versions of it and in the last time Apple behaves more aggressively and anti-standard that even MS has never dared to … :banghead
In short, please support file formats that will have a future and don’t depend on certain companies software players.
One solution to keep these file alive could be to be able to burn higher resolution video file on CD-R / DVD-R and watch them on “extended” hardware players. Many stand alone DVD-players nowadays support of course MPEG1, MPEG2 (the VCD or DVD codec with huge file sizes) but also WMV9, Divx V3 and early V4 (easy profile) versions and XVid. :bounce
Good points.
On the plus side, for all but the very oldest videos I shot, I have the DV-AVI file (or Panasonic P2 files) of the edited videos on disk, so I can always re-render into new formats if an old one does become completely defunct.
I’d have thought the H.264 based MPEG4 files would be fairly future proof as a lot of manufacturers seem to be producing hardware which produces or displays it.
I admit that I share your concerns over Real. Its advantage years ago when I started doing video was that it was clearly superior in quality for a given bitrate to the WMV alternative. I think the MPEG4 files are better again, personally, but the majority of members are downloading the WMV so I have to make sure I do the best I can to optimize the quality there. I’ve bumped up the bitrate for new WMV encodes a bit and played around with keyframe settings to try to improve the quality a bit, but it still looks rubbish compared with the MPEG4 to my eyes.
Cheers, Hywel.
As you for sure know H.264 and a certain WMV9 derivate are the video codecs used for HD-video, both on HD-DVD and Blueray – plus the old MPEG2 which is not suitable for a web-site like RE.
With the proper settings there is no big difference between both new ones with movie-/ disk-lenght fitting bitrates. Maybe using lower profile / bitrate settings will change the advantage to one or the other – I can’t tell you.The problem is, both are only codecs – i.e. the algorithms to encode/decode video data – but don’t define the file container format defining the administration part around these data. Stadanrd file containers which could use many codes are e.g. the well known MS/IBM AVI, the “officially” restricted MS WMV and Apple’s Quicktime MOV. The good old times with (AVI-)DV are gone and will have no future.
Codecs are getting more and more complicated plus think of additional digital rights managent, so now it’s a matter of the big players. I don’t think there will be big advantages in the near future anymore, at least not coming from small companies like real or divx.
But without understanding the file container all included data is lost – and the only established container formats I know are MS-WMV itself for WMV9 and Quicktime MPEG4 for H.264.
@domestos29 wrote:
Plus, there is almost no tool out there to convert RM into another video format, so you wouldn’t be able to rescue these file into anything else with longer life-time expectation.
I know of a few different tools that will convert RM video files to another format. The one I normally use is:
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/
I have only used it a few times, but it has always worked well for me. Generally I just leave video files alone, converting them from one format to another format is to much hassle for me.
As for the formats RE is using, I have moved over to mp4 files since they look better to me. I have compared a couple of movies before forming that decision.
They just play on my system, without having to argue with any codec’s, so I am happy. True I don’t know how future prove this is, but I have that concern over any computer file format more complex than plain text.
I still have a few old MS Works and MS Word documents from years ago that are nearly impossible to open / view. So unfortunately I don’t place that much faith in any format. Anything that is totally open source is probably *slightly* safer, but you still need programs to actually support it.
With regards to the current MP4 vs. WMV, I personally don’t understand why people seem to think the MP4 is better.
I’ve compared the Kobe Lee video and the Delivery Girl video. With both, the MP4 seems to suffer from oversaturated colour and colour bleed, compared to the WMV.
The Kobe Lee videos are around the same file size and I think the compression artifacts on the WMV are less. The artifacts on the MP4 of the Delivery Girl video seem less but its a third bigger in file size.
I think it must be a personal choice as to what sort of artefacts you find objectionable, and what colour rendition you like. May also have something to do with which player you are looking at it on I guess?
I view WMV on windows media player (version 10? 11 maybe?) and it always has more artefacts and feels kinda “crude”, like a child’s drawing, when there’s a lot of movement on screen.
I view MPEG with Apple Quicktime/iTunes viewer and it is much crisper and has smoother movement, looks more naturalistic to me.
(I have turned up the bit rate for future WMV so the 1/3 file size issue won’t be there by the way).
Cheers, Hywel.
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