Thoughts on upgrading video formats

[tatyana]

Wassup all! I currently offer HD-WMV in three sizes (1920x1080, 720p, 450) on my members site, but now Im thinking of reprocessing them all to H.264. All the final videos are originally exported in their native resolution of 40mb/sec Bluray M2t, and here is what Im thinking:

1920x1080 MKV file for full HD experience

and

1024x720 H.264 M4V for faster, portable experience (iPad and HTML 5 friendly)

Both formats can be played on any modern OS using VLC. Thoughts? Suggestions on MKV bitrate? My current HD-WMVs are at 9mb/sec for members.

[Koodoo]

I have no idea but good luck with that.

[Barefootsies]

Personally I think it depends on where you will use content.

Pay site, may be worthy of format upgrade. Things like tubes, clip store, etc.. Not so much.

[DamianJ]

I think if anyone is considering redoing their vids and isn't going to be using h264/html5 is wrong in the head.

[Shap]

What is the bitrate? What are the end file sizes?

Be sure to have a mid range format for people who don't want to download huge files. If you are going to have only 2 formats I'd have one that is >500meg and one <500megs

[Nubiles]

Originally Posted by tatyana

Wassup all! I currently offer HD-WMV in three sizes (1920x1080, 720p, 450) on my members site, but now Im thinking of reprocessing them all to H.264. All the final videos are originally exported in their native resolution of 40mb/sec Bluray M2t, and here is what Im thinking:

1920x1080 MKV file for full HD experience

and

1024x720 H.264 M4V for faster, portable experience (iPad and HTML 5 friendly)

Both formats can be played on any modern OS using VLC. Thoughts? Suggestions on MKV bitrate? My current HD-WMVs are at 9mb/sec for members.

We are currently evaluating this as well. We wanted to change our hd wmv to mp4 but older machines on XP are having issues playing it. Also many surfers still perfer the wmv file. But the mp4 is a perfect replacement to our avi, we already use it for our 480 mobile and 640 flash player.

[seeandsee]

Just put Raw HD :d

[VGeorgie]

Originally Posted by tatyana

1920x1080 MKV file for full HD experience

When encoding HD in H.264 be sure to select the proper profile. Most people use the Main profile, which causes a lot of machines to simply lock up because of high CPU usage. Bitrates are too high for the resolution. For 1080p you'd want HiP, but it's not readily streamable by 90% of the population. You might want to look at the XP (Extended) Profile, and live within the means of the bitrates defined for it.

BTW, MKV is a container format, not a codec. It can have any of a number of compressed video formats within it, Divx, H.264, or some MPEG-4 variant being common.

[tatyana]

We originally started looking at this specifically because HTML 5 will want the H.264 and while making my ipad port site www.davidnudesipad.com I had to redo all the files into M4v so they will play on the iPad. So if we forget flash completely, then as far as streaming and Apple compliance goes, I figure 1 M4V in a low bitrate of 1.5 to 2 (preparing for wide 4G adoption on mobile pads), and 1 M4V in 720p 4-6mb/sec. Plus, leave the full HD WMV (1920x1080 @ 9mb/sec) for everyone else. Sounds like a plan?

[Mutt]

why an iPad specific site when from what i've heard from iPad users have no problem viewing regular websites?

[Babaganoosh]

Hold off on h.264. It's yet another proprietary format. Anyone remember the GIF debacle from many years back? The internet has been trending towards open standards so why adopt a proprietary format? There are other viable alternatives out there.

[LoveSandra]

Originally Posted by Barefootsies

Personally I think it depends on where you will use content.

Pay site, may be worthy of format upgrade. Things like tubes, clip store, etc.. Not so much.

[Davy]

Originally Posted by Babaganoosh

Hold off on h.264. It's yet another proprietary format. Anyone remember the GIF debacle from many years back? The internet has been trending towards open standards so why adopt a proprietary format? There are other viable alternatives out there.

I partially agree. I was pretty shocked when I first read the license for h.264.
Nobody keeps them from charging license fees once this is an established and wide-spread standard.

[Konkan]

Originally Posted by Davy

I partially agree. I was pretty shocked when I first read the license for h.264.
Nobody keeps them from charging license fees once this is an established and wide-spread standard.

Totally agree!

[VGeorgie]

Originally Posted by Babaganoosh

Hold off on h.264. It's yet another proprietary format. Anyone remember the GIF debacle from many years back? The internet has been trending towards open standards so why adopt a proprietary format? There are other viable alternatives out there.

H.264 is based on open standards (various MPEG-4 specifications), but the standards comprise technologies that are patented. Hence the licensing fees.

Maybe you mean open source. There are relatively few of those. There's VP3/Ogg Theora, but it's well behind the times and certainly not HD-capable. Google *might* meet the rumors to open source VP8, but it has not officially done so yet, and it will be years before it catches on.

There are several open source for container formats, but not codecs. And by-in-large, those codecs that are open source are old. When someone comes up with a really nifty video compression scheme, they know there's millions to be made from it.

[VGeorgie]

Originally Posted by Mutt

why an iPad specific site when from what i've heard from iPad users have no problem viewing regular websites?

If the regular Website has Flash or WMV videos the iPad can't play them. At least not without a converter.

You could make it iPad/iPhone friendly with those MP4 videos. A QuickTime video is basically H.264 in a MOV container. Even Flash 9 and above with play that if it's encoded properly, so it's actually not a bad universal format.

[tatyana]

...and Flash video is now H.264 as well, just in their container. And if the iPad sees the flash version of the file, it will not play it. And Youtube has released an HTML 5 version of their site with H.264 versions of all the videos, I read about it on Cnet recently.

Originally Posted by VGeorgie

H.264 is based on open standards (various MPEG-4 specifications), but the standards comprise technologies that are patented. Hence the licensing fees.

Maybe you mean open source. There are relatively few of those. There's VP3/Ogg Theora, but it's well behind the times and certainly not HD-capable. Google *might* meet the rumors to open source VP8, but it has not officially done so yet, and it will be years before it catches on.

There are several open source for container formats, but not codecs. And by-in-large, those codecs that are open source are old. When someone comes up with a really nifty video compression scheme, they know there's millions to be made from it.

[tatyana]

Originally Posted by Mutt

why an iPad specific site when from what i've heard from iPad users have no problem viewing regular websites?

I read multiple articles on the need to make an iPad specific site, there are lots of reasons, but the video compatibility is the top concern. The other concern is to provide an optimized experience for our growing mobile audience, mainly on the issue of touch navigation. Here is what I turned in for our press release on the same question asked by our press guy:

What makes the iPad version of David Nudes different from the standard
website?

Designing a website to function on a fixed screen size with a touch
interface requires a completely new layout. Buttons need to be bigger,
so you can easily touch them to navigate. The initial page view needs to
fit on the landscape orientation of the iPad without any breaks, so that
the visitor gets a nice view of our content and navigation in one screen
without the need to scroll. All the graphics and page elements needed to
be scaled back to fit the iPad screen in both landscape AND portrait
orientation. Calls to action needed to be rewritten to encourage touch
navigation. Flash does not work on the iPad, but interaction and
animation is still critical to engage the initial visitor. So I had to
find a javascript solution that gives some feeling of animation and
interaction, but works well with touch...in other words, we had to
forget about mouse-over interactions as there is no way to mouse-over in
a touch interface. So, JQuery was chosen as the framework for a new set
of interactive gallery elements, and all javascript works in Safari and
current versions of Web Kit on the iPad.

What are your thoughts on HTML 5 and preparing video content for iPad
sites?

Our video was only in HD-WMV formats for members and Flash F4V for the
tour trailers. The iPad doesn't play either format. HTML 5 introduces
the new <video> tag which works a lot like the well-known <img> tag, but
it can only load video based on the browser. Firefox will only load Ogg
files with the <video> tag right now, and the iPad will only load H.264
video files. Interestingly enough, Flash's F4V (NOT flv) format is
actually an H.264 container, so Quicktime will play it as H.264. This
means that current F4V trailers could be embedded in HTML 5 using the
<video> tag on the iPad version of the site. But all of the member
videos must be republished as Apple iPad compatible H.264 video now,
which only supports a resolution up to 720p.

What sort of considerations do you make when designing navigational
graphics for an iPad site?

Apple states in their developer documentation that touch areas need to
be designed to be at least the size of the tip of the average male index
finger. Plus we no longer want to give the user a bunch of inline or
header text links, as these can be really hard to touch. Instead, we
made the "Join" link into a nice big button for the top of the page, and
produced a navigation bar that rests in the header with big graphical
text that is easy to read and touch. The join form options are on the
footer of every page and are touchable graphics. Every other
navigational item on the site is a 226px or greater photo or video
thumbnail that can be touched to load it's promotional page. The free
photos we offer for every gallery also needed to now have their own page
with an easy way to get back into the tour, as the iPad does NOT open
new windows in the browser (ie no target="_blank" option).

[VGeorgie]

Originally Posted by tatyana

...and Flash video is now H.264 as well, just in their container. And if the iPad sees the flash version of the file, it will not play it. And Youtube has released an HTML 5 version of their site with H.264 versions of all the videos, I read about it on Cnet recently.

You can create a basic H.264 file in an MP4 container that will play on most everything, including Flash. These should work on the iPad and iPhone, too. The MP4 container format is about as universal as it gets, and coupled with H.264 video AAC audio would have a wide audience.

You'd write your HTML to use HTML5 if you chose to put your "MP4" video in a windowed player on your site, the way most Flash players work. HTML5 is not required to play these videos if the platform has a video player that supports it, and virtually all do.

There are several examples on the Web of fallback code that will first try Flash, then HTML5, and finally provide a link for playing the video in whatever player is associated with MP4 files.

[fatfoo]

Good luck.

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[BuggyG]

I've been looking into that myself. And we will be emailing the affiliates soon and see what their thoughts are on it. And will be talking witht he rest of the staff and how they'd like to add that as an option for future updates to add to our mp4 downloads in the members areas

[DamianJ]

Originally Posted by Davy

I partially agree. I was pretty shocked when I first read the license for h.264.
Nobody keeps them from charging license fees once this is an established and wide-spread standard.

Or you use x.264

?

[VGeorgie]

Originally Posted by DamianJ

Or you use x.264

?

Encoders have always been subject to the licensing fees. The licensing fees that are "waived" right now is for PC-based decoders. MPEG LA gets licensing fees for hardware decoders and certain other applications.

It's highly unlikely they'll suddenly start charging for the PC (and Mac) side since it's Microsoft and several others that hold key MPEG-4 patents. MPEG LA represents a consortium of patent holders, and many of the holders are the ones using it for free.

[Shap]

The MOVs we have on Twistys work fine on my ipad. No need to make an ipad specific site.

[Why]

if you want your video to work on ipad, embed a quicktime player instead of a flash player when the ipad is detected in the agent field.

html5 will very likely support flash(in addition to other formats) but dont your panties in a bunch just yet, it isnt expected to be a standard till at least 2016. So id say that jumping ship because Apple sold a million iPads is a little short sighted. They will put flash on that damned thing at some point.

keep your eyes peeled for VP8, i think it will the game changer.