Split, cut, join without recompression

Sometimes even crude jumpcuts are better than trying to gather nearly forgotten source files or recompressing an old madly-compressed live stream archive. Split, cut, join without recompression at PVC  shares a few apps that can make quick work for those looking for a low-cost way to provide free content for social media.

Fabio Sonnati on H.264 Transcoding

Streaming Media is carrying a summary of Fabio Sonnati's Adobe MAX/Milan session in Back to Basics: H.264 Transcoding for Flash. According to author Tim Siglin:

"his session used examples from Main Concept’s Reference encoding tool since this is the encoder used in Adobe Media Encoder CS4 as well as the Flash Media Encoding Server (which is a branded version of Rhozet Carbon Coder that itself uses the Main Concept H.264 encoder)."

"Use VP6 as a fall-back strategy," said Sonnati, "to cover 99% of the audience, since H.264 can be viewed by 90% of the audience (that have Flash Player 9 v3 or Flash Player 10)."

Check out the specifics in Back to Basics: H.264 Transcoding for Flash. Maybe Adobe will post the video of Max sessions as promised when the dust settles. Some of the details of Fabio's work were discussed here earlier, including compression examples by Fabio:
- Heima (720p) @ 500Kbit/s
- Heroes (720p) @ 500Kbit/s
- Heima (1080p) @ 1500Kbit/s

720p: the web video gold standard

Many web video services are now serving HD 1280 x 720; we'll see how much it'll cost to stream millions more video from the cheap Christmas "flip" cameras at rates 7-10 times the original YT bandwidth. Facebook is also letting you embed on other sites now. YouTube hasn't acknowledged their HD (link/format "&fmt=22"), but they added a "watch in HD" link if the uploaded content was that size. Maybe they want to avoid Hollywood's reaction to seeing stuff in HD; see Big Buck Bunny.

Techvideoblog has a quick Online video sites HD quality comparison. He misses YouTube quality level "&fmt=06" mentioned here last month in YouTube gets HD & quality confusion, and there's tangerine in with the oranges, but I've never even visited referenced sites SmugMug or Sevenload.

Here’s an interview Robert Scoble did recently with Chris Putnam, a leader of Facebook’s video efforts, who discusses the move to a new codec and other aspects of the upgrade.

YouTube gets HD & quality confusion

Update 12-05-08: YouTube added "watch in HD" for 720p movies.

It seems YouTube does HD at 1280 x 720 now, so you don't have to use Javascript to tile 4 Youtube videos like Mr. Doob (who's also a Pixel Bender). Yesterday there was an interesting Techmeme blog swarm originating from a Kottke.org post on YouTube quality; here's an excerpt:

"I got an email from a YouTube engineer who tells me that format 18 isn't even the highest quality you can get. Check out Dancing Matt in format 22, aka 720p. Furthermore, some videos don't have a format 18 version (if the uploaded movie doesn't have sufficient quality, for instance)."

Sometimes "high quality" is HD H.264 in stereo ("&fmt=22"), or smaller (480x360, 4:3 frame aspect ratio) in H.264 stereo ("&fmt=18") or H.263 mono ("&fmt=06"). Format 22 is not always 1280x720 -- the tag is ignored if there's no HD movie uploaded, as with David Kalb vs LeBron James - Horse (HIGH QUALITY), where format 22 seems like format 06.

YouTube advice is scarce and haphazardly released. Upload advice is simply 640x480, 30 fps, MP4 with a 1 GB limit, though other sizes & formats are allowed. It seems that you should upload the highest resolution possible because YouTube saves the original upload to spin off better copies later apparently.

Download helpers, like KeepVid, Video Download Helper, GreaseMonkey scripts, Better You Tube, Safari's Activity window, etc., seemed to be a bit inconsistent in reading "normal" and the various high quality download options -- or I got confused looking at the metadata for YouTube files read by K-Multimedia Player, VLC, and Media Info (Win & Mac, via Brian Gary's YouTube Encoding: Locked & Reloaded).

Looking at Kottke's movies... it seems there are 4 formats on YouTube this morning for the Where the Hell is Matt? (2008), which has a 16:9 frame aspect ratio. Other formats for videos uploaded at different resolutions, like the download of David Kalb vs LeBron James, fall into the definitions a bit different:

normal quality
(320 x 240 @ 250 Kbps, H.263 video, audio mono 22.5 KHz)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY
file size = 11,295 KB
320x180, H.263, 344 kbps
MP3, mono, 16 bit, 22 KHz

high quality "&fmt=06"
(320 x 240, H.263 video, mono 16/44.1 at 96 Kbps)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY&fmt=06
file size = 33,587 KB
480 x 270, H.263, 30 fps, 1024 kbps (total file)
MP3, 96 kbps, mono, 16 bit, 44 KHz

high quality "&fmt=18"
(480 x 360, H.264 video 512 Kbps, stereo 16/44.1 at 128 Kbps)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY&fmt=18
file size = 20,784 KB
480 x 270, H.264 (3GPP), 29.97 fps, 632 kbps (total file)
AAC LC, 125 kbps, VBR, stereo, 16 bit, 44 KHz
(VLC says the file is mp4a, 29.970029, 44.1)

high quality "&fmt=22"
(1280 x 720, H.264 video, 16/44.1 KHz stereo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY&fmt=22
file size = 75,320 KB
1280 x 720, H.264 (3GPP), 30 fps, 2296 kbps (total file)
AAC LC, 232 kbps, VBR, stereo, 16 bit, 44 KHz

high quality "&fmt=18" *B
David Kalb vs LeBron James - Horse (HIGH QUALITY)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqiGrWBRqE&fmt=18
file size = 34,691 KB
480 x 270, H.264 (3GPP), 29.966 fps, 629 kbps (total file)
AAC LC, 125 kbps, VBR, stereo, 16 bit, 44 KHz

high quality "&fmt=22" *B
David Kalb vs LeBron James - Horse (HIGH QUALITY)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuqiGrWBRqE&fmt=22
file size = 18,098 KB
320 x 180, H.263 (Sorenson), 29.966 fps, 328 kbps (total file)
mono, 16 bit/22.050 KHz
flvsource : cdbp

Mac Encoder Shootout

Andy Beach's blog Real World Video Compression (book review) posted Encoder Shootout - A Comparison of 4 Mac Compression Tools -- and the $23 app seemed to do well.

Download YouTube Videos as MP4

Sorta repetitious but still requested... more in a previous post.

Google Operating System noted Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files, which gives you a bookmarklet script to drag into a browser bookmark bar that you can use to easily grab the mp4 on a YouTube page.

Encode & download YouTube MP4

Google Operating System (which often looks at YouTube) explains how to Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files, while Brian Gary explains aspects of encoding in YouTube Encoding: Locked & Reloaded at Ken Stone's FCP website.

Previous tips link, including (YouTube Tricks & Hacks) are here.

Update: By the way, you can submit FLVs that won't be reencoded if they are less than 250 kbs; set the upper limit to 246 since some encoders are often not exact.

The higher quality MP4s (AVC) are created at around 600 kbps (up from 350), 480x360 progressive, with AAC stereo 44.1 Khz at around 120 kbps.

Safari nets YouTube videos

There are a ton of ways to gather YouTube videos, but not all let you grab the new higher quality ones. On the AE-List, Brian Maffitt of Total Training offered a way to gather YouTube videos using Apple Safari (not the best browser), even the new higher quality ones:

"Use Safari [it works on Mac and Windows]. Open up the activity window in Safari, then load the YouTube page. You'll see the asset show up in the activity window, and it will be obvious because it's the only one that shows you streaming progress. Just double-click [or option double-click and rename the download] on the item in the activity window (you don't need to wait for it to finish streaming) and it should automatically download. You can do this with regular FLVs as well."

Update: On Windows, Control+click in the Safari Activity window downloads the file as HTML. If you then rename it to FLV or MP4, the file plays in Adobe Media Player, K-Multimedia Player, Real Player, FLV Player (as flv), and VLC -- but not QuickTime Player. Only VLC is incapable of scrubbing. When I tried the same process in OS X 10.5.1, I could download the file as HTML, couldn't play it.

YouTube quality bump

YouTube responds to Hulu with YouTube Everywhere, live video, and TiVo, but also with higher quality video according to the YT blog; see YouTube Videos in High Quality. A low quality version is also transcoded and made available to the low end, and a preference is available on the user's account.

The new spec is 480x360, up to 900 kbit/s A+V (1 GB upload size limit), but getting stereo hasn't been a sure thing. Various players think the hi-qual clips are h.263 or FLV only as well as h.264, and some of them at least won't play in QuickTime Player when relabeled as .mp4.

Wired has a handy summary of some of the work done by YouTubers who watched the transition for the last few months.

In the old system, it seems you could get stereo if you submitted a movie (FLV or other) with a lower data rate than their threshold for resampling, which is 350 kbps. According to a thread on Video Help, "if you use mencoder, this code is simply amazing for stereo audio, and often gives you a lower average than 96 kbit/s (what they use now):

-oac mp3lame -lameopts vbr=2:q=8:aq=0:mode=1:padding=2:lowpassfreq=16300 -channels 2 -srate 44100"

Pushing Flash H.264 to the limit

Fabio Sonnati of Flash Video Factory posted several notes and some demos of his tweaks for Flash H.264 on his blog, Flash Video Optimization and Tools. He got great results on the 720p High Definition (1280x720x25Fps) plus HE AACv2 audio @ 500Kbit/s (for full-screen, double click on the movie) and for the YouTube size at 124 Kbit/s. YouTube encodes at around 350 for its lo-res version.

Fabio is using a mix of (parameters that hopefully CS4 will have) "Ffmpeg, x264, Mencoder and Nero AAC. Here some parameters used: 5 reference frames, 5 B-frames, authomatic B-Frames, B-pyramid enabled, adaptive macroblock type, advanced Trellis on, Subq=7, advanced exagon search, deblocking filter with custom alpha e beta parameter, three pass encoding...".

Update: Adobe has an HD Gallery to showcase other work, and CamcorderInfo posted Round-up: Watch HD video. Sorry, but "Operation MySpace" leaves a bad taste.

Don't forget this issue according to Adobe: "One important thing about playing an H.264 video file as progressive download is that the moov atom needs to be located at the beginning of the file, or else the entire file will have to be downloaded before it begins playing." You can fix this with QTIndexSwapper (an Adobe AIR app by Renaun Erickson).


...Later Fabio presented at Adobe Max 2009,

Hardware encoders for h.264 and MPEG-2

The Elgato h.264 USB thumb drive encoder was mentioned here a few months ago and has competition from a $3,495 PCI-E card and from a similar device also priced around $100. Actually, I kinda wonder if the Elgato is the same product under a different label as Instant Video To-Go by ADS Tech (from April 2007), who claims "With software conversion often taking 4 -10 times longer than real time, Instant Video To-Go video transfer accelerator converts up to 5 times faster than real time..." The Editblog's result with the Elgato device weren't that good. [update from MacWorld: same USB device but branded for different OSes, Elgato takes the Mac side while ADS retains Windows]

ADS Tech has another product that accelerates Adobe CS3 Production Premium applications. Pyro Kompressor HD is a $3,495 PCI Express "solution that accelerates HD MPEG-2 and HD H.264/AVC encoding up to eight times faster than software-only video compression." According to Macworld, the $3,495 package "supports watch folders for job automation, upscaling and downscaling, frame rate conversion, custom settings, chapter support, batch encoding to handle multiple tasks, drag and drop, control over target output file size, and muxing, or combining, streams from different input files ...and includes decoders for DV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, H.264, AVCHD, AVC-Intra, VC1, DVCPRO 25/50/100, DVCPRO-HD, JPEG2000 and YUV files, along with import support for DirectShow and QuickTime files."

The technology behind this product by Ambric is the world's first teraOPS-class processor.

Adobe ships Flash Player with H.264 video

Emmy Huang and Tinic Uro , Justin Everett-Church, and the Flash Dev Center have the Flash Player 9 news with tons of further references.

And it's already being used by a big player; see NewTeeVee's Hulu Adds HD. Beet.TV noted details on the Hulu blog.

The release covers h.264/AAC audio on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and "improved performance through multi-core support for rendering, hardware scaling in full-screen, multi-threaded video decoding, a new algorithm for image scaling, and the Flash Player cache for local caching of common platform components to reduce SWF sizes and app loading times." Also, there's new stuff on Flash Media Server.

As noted here a few days ago, Tinic Uro previously mentioned a 'fast-start' trap on files compressed as h.264 in tools like AE and Premiere. For now "the moov atom (which is the index information in MPEG-4 files) is at the beginning of the file....you have to wait until the file is completely downloaded before it is played back. You can use tools like qt-faststart.c written by our own Mike Melanson to fix your files so that the index is at the beginning of the file." In Apple tools (or in CS3 with File>Export>QuickTime), you just check the "Fast Start" box.

MainConcept, acquired by DivX, releases MPEG Pro HD 3 plug-in

NewTeeVee explains:

"MainConcept is one of the important players in the H.264 codec business and counts Adobe, Corel, MobiTV, Sonic, Sony, and Panasonic as its customers. This is why it is particularly significant (albeit small in terms of dollars) deal. DivX (DIVX) makes a living by licensing its codec, now used in 40 percent of DVD players sold around the world, thanks to its 'ability to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.'"

Update: from The Genesis Project, "Main Concept, a company that Adobe has long worked with just announced and shipped their MPEG Pro HD 3 plugin for PC. This new package delivers a variety of new editing capabilities to Premiere Pro 2 and CS3 users including AVC-HD...In addition to AVC-HD, it supports a variety of Sony formats including XDCAM, XDCAM HD and now XDCAM EX." All for just $500.

Adobe adds H.264 support to Flash; AMP delayed

Danny Prinz on the AE-List noted that Adobe announced a Flash Player 9 beta will enable "the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content through the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player and pave the way to expand rich media Flash experiences on the desktop and H.264 ready consumer devices. The latest update for Adobe Flash Player 9 will be available in beta for download today on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com/."

Update: Adobe's Tinic Uro San has extensive comments and technical details, and Aral Balkan has a FAQ with commentators grumbling that Adobe is using a proprietary RTMP protocol and disabling RTSP support to sell server software.

John Dowdell follows up to clarify an important point, 'Here's the fuller quote from Tinic: "Video needs to be in H.264 format only. MPEG-4 Part 2 (Xvid, DivX etc.) video is not supported, H.263 video is not supported, Sorenson Video is not supported. Keep in mind that a lot of pod casts are still using MPEG-4 Part 2. So do not be surprised if you do not see any video." He's referring to H264 video here, in its various implementations. The Sorenson Sparc codec works in the Player, same as before. I understand how this passage could read the other way though. But the Sorenson reference in this passage is to flavors of H264, and does not affect the world's existing FLVs.'

Update 2: Beet.TV has more info, including comments by Adobe's Ryan Stewart on ZDNet and by NewTeeVee. Beet.TV also provided the interview below with On2 CEO Bill Joll on H.264, and another Joll interview Adobe's Flash Video to Play on Mobile Phones. There's yet another at Joll interview (8/23) at Seeking Alpha.

Click To Play

Update 3: Beet.TV also notes that Adobe Media Player has been delayed until 2008.

VIXY: save and convert FLV on web

Services like KeepVid let you to save an FLV from it's website.

VIXY goes a step ahead and lets you submit an url then they convert the video and download the converted file automatically to your hard drive. VIXY allows you to convert a Flash Video FLV file (Youtube movies,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online.

Movavi Online is another converter, and Unplug, a Firefox extension, can be very handy too.

ffmpegX for 640x480 h.264 in updated 5G iPods

ffmpegX 0.0.9x was released, adding an "iPod H.264 w640" preset to support new high-resolution 640x480 h.264 in updated 5G iPods.
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