flv and mp4 issue
by Chris Blair
on
Aug 27, 2009 at 3:19:09 am
We have a non-profit client that's building a pretty big video based religious website. We agreed to encode hundreds of program length videos for their site and we've provided lots of freebie advice on the site design. We're also helping them setup a Cloudfront account on Amazon's S3 server etc.
The client is GREAT to work with...but the issue is this. The company that's designing their video player interface keeps insisting that using .flv's is better than using H264/mp4 files for playback. Their reasoning? FLV's load faster and our mp4 files are causing slow load times in the video player.
I'm not even sure what my question is except, is there ANYTHING in the encoding of an H264/mp4 file (average of 350kb/sec) that could cause extremely slow load and startup in a flash player or flash player based web page? They even claim the mp4s are slowing down the loading of the page itself, which I find suspect, since when I've built a flash player page, the page and player have to load before the video is even called.
We've built some flash player pages ourselves and we cannot duplicate what the web programmer is claiming so I'm turning here to make sure I don't make claims to the client that aren't true. We tested dozens of formats and codec combinations with them before they built the player page. FLVs were included in the tests and while we pushed for mp4, we let them decide what to use. We even tested our files on our crappy, slow web server along with the designer's own flv encoded files. We used JWPlayer for the player and the mp4 files loaded consistently in 3-4 seconds, the flv's a little faster. But playback performance was identical. Ours played great, the programmer's flv's stuttered and paused and buffered.
As I said, the sizes of our encoded files are tiny (350kb/s avg). They are almost all talking head based shows and they look very good at that rate. The flv files were twice that size and looked worse, and in tests they would occasionally pause and buffer playing from Amazon's S3 server (which the client is using). The mp4 files play continuously with no buffering.
Any feedback is appreciated.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: flv and mp4 issue by Fernando Mol on Aug 27, 2009 at 4:22:04 am
I don't know of any particular problem with mp4, but somebody is having a similar issue in the Web Streaming forum (I just looked, but there's still no solution). So there's a chance that there's a problem with the format.
I see you posted in the Compression forum. I hope you get a better answer there.
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Re: flv and mp4 issue by Alan Smith on Aug 27, 2009 at 1:35:09 pm
The first thing I would find out is whether the people designing the flash page is using the latest edition of flash. There were updates that optimized the flash for playing H264. Second, I would look at using a different flash player for the site. I recommend using the JWPlayer. Great player, quick load time and just works.
Re: flv and mp4 issue by Chris Blair on Aug 27, 2009 at 2:53:37 pm
The programmer is overseas and their English is fair at best. So communicating simple things can take days via email and they're not real receptive to us questioning their coding since we're in their words, "the video guys."
But I'll ask the client to check on the Flash Player update issue.
JWPlayer is what we use and we've never had an issue with mp4's while using it, but I doubt after spending weeks on this they would switch to a different player.
I also believe they build their own Flash Players in Adobe Flash, so while I've suspected all along that their player is the problem, since I'm not a programmer, I can't prove it. We had a local web programmer that builds flash players take a look at the coding (and actually speak with the client while doing it), and he concluded the page code was a little bloated, but he couldn't find any obvious problems. I don't think he actually had access to the player itself to examine it, so if the player has problems, we wouldn't know it.
The programmer has pushed and pushed for flv files, long AFTER the decision was made to use mp4, which makes me think they hadn't ever tested their player using mp4 and just assumed it would work.
Again, I don't know that to be true, I'm just trying to systematically help the client fix his problem. He just wants his player to load and play videos within a reasonable time so visitors don't bolt from the page. Heck, we'll re-encode the videos if that'll make it work, but I don't want to do that if there's nothing wrong with the hundreds of mp4 files we already provided.
As I said, we cannot duplicate what the programmer claims, and we encode videos for other clients using the EXACT same settings and their videos load an play within seconds from their Adobe Flash designed player pages.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
It's in arabic, so might be a little hard to navigate..but the videos are at the bottom of the page. We're not big fans of the page layout or the player design, but that's out of our hands. We're just trying to help the client get the videos working properly.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: flv and mp4 issue by Mike Smith on Aug 27, 2009 at 4:56:22 pm
Hi Chris
Why would you want to be using mp4s / h264s rather than flvs ....? Adobe has modded recent Flash players to cope with mp4s, but it wouldn't be surprising if the player is less fluent with that format than with the format it was initially designed for. The complexity of mp4 / h264 encoding does take a lot of decoding, limiting your easy-play audience to those with newish or fast hardware.
But your example site loads fast enough here, and the video playback, while not as quick to start is some, is not out of the bounds of what else is out there.
Re: flv and mp4 issue by Chris Blair on Aug 27, 2009 at 5:28:05 pm
Mike Smith: Why would you want to be using mp4s / h264s rather than flvs ....? Adobe has modded recent Flash players to cope with mp4s, but it wouldn't be surprising if the player is less fluent with that format than with the format it was initially designed for.
Well the reason for using mp4/H264 over flv is pretty simple. The data rates are almost half that of flv and the quality superior. We're coming up on three years since H264 playback was added to Adobe's Flash player and there have been dozens of updates since then. We stuck with flv's until late last year, but saw huge improvement in stability and performance with mp4 and decided to recommend it to clients this year.
Plus...virtually every major video based online service uses or switched to H264 either late last year or early this year (Hulu, YouTube, Vimeo, and half a dozen others). We've also encoded thousands of H264 videos in the past year for other clients without seeing any player issues, so while we realize an end-users computer has to work a little harder to decode the files, clients have had zero complaints from end-users.
Plus, we gave the web programmer and client a choice and gave them dozens of sample encodes of both flv and mp4 files at various sizes and data rates. They chose mp4 and the programmer had no objections.
So that's the back-story. Interesting you're not seeing any load issues. Many other people testing the site are seeing it though (in the U.S. and abroad). Thanks for the quick feedback. I really appreciate it.
As an aside. One thing we're seeing constantly is web designers not wanting to use mp4s in their sites. They all want flv. My question from a quality and file size perspective is "why?" On all the other sites where we've provided mp4, they've had no issues. No slow loading, no playback issues, no complaints from their clients or the client's customers about playback problems. Why the reluctance on the part of designers to use mp4?
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: flv and mp4 issue by Chris Blair on Aug 27, 2009 at 8:02:23 pm
Thanks for checking it Fernando. It's actually not our site, we just did the video encoding for it and are consulting with the client on getting the site up and running. That's great to hear that it seems to be working as it should from two Cow veterans.
I really appreciate you both taking the time! I'm still interested in hearing thoughts on designers' overwhelming preferance for flv over mp4/H264 video. It kind of reminds me of people's reluctance 6-7 years ago to switch from VHS to DVD, and the reluctance today to switch from tape based video delivery to digital FTP delivery.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
Re: flv and mp4 issue by Mike Smith on Aug 28, 2009 at 4:24:31 pm
Hi Chris
I guess I'll try to speculate, though I couldn't claim to speak for anyone else, let alone the web design community! But please accept this as in good faith, and not (intentional) criticism of any particular view.
Web designers, I guess, are a fantastically varied bunch, and I'd imagine you would easily find people to work any way that you want.
Having said that, some of the considerations on a web designer may be a little different from how you are thinking. The point isn't necessarily to be at the leading edge (bleeding edge?), but to service as wide and varied a range of users as possible, with something neat, effective and legal, as well as easy to maintain.
You'll see I don't have "top technical quality" in that list.
The "we'll do it how we think best and we won't worry about the users who can't keep up" attitude was once a strand of web opinion, but the popularity of that approach took a big hit when leading exponent boo.com crashed and burned.
With photos, no one's really arguing for 32bit psds for inclusion in web pages - though no one doubts that they offer better quality. A raft of fast, scalable vector graphics plugsins - many of them quite small and stable, and offering terrific performance - have been launched, been taken up be a few enthusiasts, but have never made the mass market. So are not widely used by web desigers / developers.
Web video, I feel sure, will become bigger and bigger now for all kinds of communicators, though there remain some issues.
The web of course in its very concept is intended to make content available to all comers regardless of hardware or software platforms they are using - that easy communication for nearly all may be one of the reasons it's grown so fast, massively accelerating earlier internet growth.
Video challenges that a little ; how does it play on a slow machine, a netbook, a non-broadband connection, to a user with more limited equipment or abilities than some? And of course there's the issue of the many users in open-plan offices with systems with no sound cards ... how do we make the video accessible and worthwhile for them ...?
Designers are largely mindful of the lessons learnt when IBM ran into difficulties for not meeting accessibility standards in their Australian Olympics web site - keeping sites compliant with accessibility legislation is important for most designers, and with video that can be a challenge. (There's more at http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html if you want it.)
Formats, of course, move on. Real video gave way largely to QT and wmv, and now to Flash video with the introduction of flv. Yet I, like many, stayed with Sorenson compression on flv for a good while, though VP6 was clearly superior - it was possible to get a decent result with Sorenson, with care, and the flow of complaints from people whose kit struggled with the more demanding VP6 was avoided.
Even at that time OnVideo had VP7 available - a format similar in quality/filesize tradeoff (and system demands) to H264. A number of major studios, for a while, tried running with VP7 - but the need for users to download an additional plug-in outweighed the technical gains, and so far as I know it's not much used now.
In due course, no doubt mp4 and H264 may be everywhere. Eventually. there may be a new game in town that blows them away, or even replaces the Flash player (great quality and flexibility, near ubiquity, but more demanding to deploy than some video formats.) But many web designers will not want to be the first to move ; if a good-enough experience for nearly all users can be supplied, why go for something only a little better, but which drops off some users?
There's a discussion from earlier in the year on a Camtasia site that may offer insight - these people want to go mp4, but as of Jan 2009 were worried about the percentage of users without a recent enough Plash player version . ( No doubt the numbers have improved since January) http://blog.procasts.co.uk/2009/01/less-than-90-adoption-of-mp4-compatible-...
For my part, based in the UK, I don't see much of a case for HD video on the web as yet.
Organisations over here are still almost entirely using SD for production, and on the web, (apart from the BBC, largely VP6) are barely using video as yet, and there's plenty of scope for half-SD video to give a really good viewing experience using VP6. well integrated into a web page
For a pop-out viewer, full SD would offer a lot of quality for computer playback; the way it seems to me just now, excellent web-sized video at small file sizes is achievable with VP6 today. So, why risk cutting off some users by going to a more demanding format?
In some respects, too, perhaps in an old-fashioned way, for me video on the web works best when it's really short, focused and striking, and integrated into a page or site - aiding a browsing experience, rather than changing it to an alternate to TV / DVD distribution.
As of today there are 8 computers of varying ages and specs in the building here ; the two oldest ones (powerful systems in their long-ago prime) sometimes struggle with H264 video files, and sometimes can't play them at all. (Sometimes they can - I don't know what it is in the encoding or file sizer that makes the difference). I don't have a low-spec netbook as yet to test out how that might cope.
As machines drop off the end of their life and are replaced (here and elsewhere), more demanding file formats become the norm. It may be your or anyone's perfectly valid decision not to support older machines, users on dialup or with less reliable connections, who those without the resource or the desire to buy a new home computer while the old one still works. For a lot of web designers and developers, though, the tendency to look, if you like, for the lowest common denominator - something that as close to every as possible can see - remains a powerful one!
Re: flv and mp4 issue by Chris Blair on Aug 28, 2009 at 6:04:17 pm
Yes...helps a lot. And I agree with most of what you say. But the logic doesn't fly very far when you consider YouTube switched to H264 earlier this year. Their success would seem to be predicated on that "lowest common denominator" philosophy.
They certainly aren't re-encoding existing content to H264, but I believe since early this year, all newly uploaded content is now encoded using H264.
Hulu also uses H264 for their HD stuff and I've read even their lower bit-rate stuff will be or has already converted to H264. And CBS's popular streaming of NCAA basketball games used Silverlight, an even less widely accepted technology, yet they had virtually no complaints from end-users about not being able to get their feeds this year.
I think a lot of it comes down to programmers wanting to stick with what they know works, rather than working to implement newer and better technology. Just my opinion, but H264 is clearly superior in quality to any flash codec. And on the project we're working, we're not trying to achieve HD quality, our videos are only 320x240 at an avg. data rate of 300kb/sec. The client likes it because it keeps files and bandwidth usage small (they're a non-profit religious entity), which helps with budget. Not to mention in testing, flv files consitently would pause and buffer multiple times during the 30 to 120 minute programs they're posting. The H264/mp4 files never did even once. The flvs were encoded at an avg of 512kb/sec and reduced to 15fps and even at that data rate looked pretty bad compared to the H264 versions. Yet they were still almost 40% larger file sizes.
Anyway...interesting discussion and I appreciate your thoughtful response. All good info and nothing I'm saying is meant to challenge it.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
www.videomi.com
