Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet...
by JLN2112
on
Jan 22, 2007 at 10:55:06 pm
What is the best format (Windows Media, Quicktime, or Flash) to view HD video on the internet? I would like to post some clips on my website. I want to be able to show the largest screen possible, but find the happy-medium where it streams smoothly for high-speed users.
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Michael G on Jan 22, 2007 at 11:25:04 pm
For HD Windows Media files are most likely to find compatible playback with Media Player on Windows computers the most common HD compatible player out there in Internet Land.
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Michael G on Jan 22, 2007 at 11:29:24 pm
In terms of screen size and quality versus data rates my guess is that H.264 is likely to give the best result but I haven't compared it directly to WMV files with the same pixel ratio & data compression. Double pass variable bit rate encoding will help reduce data rate whilst maintaining best picture.
YOu will need to experiment as you haven't specified what you are using to encode.
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Kevin Shaw on Jan 23, 2007 at 3:11:37 pm
My recommendation would be Windows Media at 720p or 540p resolution using a bit rate of at least 600-700 Kbps, or up to double that if you think your viewers' internet connections can sustain it. You could also try using H.264 in a Quicktime wrapper for better playback on Macs, but that's more processor-intensive for a given resolution - and hence less likely to play on older computers. In either case it's probably best to avoid 1080p resolution for internet distribution at this time.
By the way, note that Windows Media is a compression format as well as a file wrapper type. H.264 may be increasingly popular in the future, but Windows Media seems to be more widely used today.
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Ed on Jan 23, 2007 at 6:40:31 pm
If you have the time and server space, you can do what we do, give your viewers
some or all of those options.
We typically provide a 300kb WM9 and a 700kb version, as well as 300kb and 700kb
QT. Although it's a great codec, for general viewing we've stayed away from h.264 so far because viewers need QT 7 installed.
We'll start using it more soon. For now we use Apple's MPEG-4 implementation or SV3 Pro more often.
We used to post a Flash video too, but just like QT7, we're waiting for more people to have Flash 8 installed
so we can compress to the On2VP6 codec. If you don't use that codec, Flash video sucks for quality.
If you go the multiple format/bandwidth route, make it as easy as possible for your viewers to select
which they want. A small button for each choice is better than text-only.
The other advantage of at least one QT and one WMV is that you can optimize the gamma for PC
and Mac, so viewers see the video at it's highest quality.
HTH,
Ed
We compress at different settings depending on the project, but a 300+kbs 320x240
video might look like this:
15Frames/sec Deinterlaced
A little sharpening
Gamma tweaking
Audio (for H.264) would be AAC at 40-64kbs, mono or stereo depending on the source,
32-48Hz sample rate, volume adjusted
A 700+kbs file would be 480x360, maybe full 29.97, deintelaced.
Audio at higher rates and possibly stereo.
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Ken Hodson on Jan 26, 2007 at 6:13:45 am
Any level of HD is a lot to ask for streaming download. Definitely don't do 1080p as virtually no one has a display capable of viewing it, so that would be pointless. I would say go 480p as we all know how well a DVD can look, and you wouldn't have to compress the hell out of it.
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Tim Wilson on Jan 27, 2007 at 7:19:09 pm
First, congratulations for even considering HD on the web! It drives me insane to see tiny movies that look like garbage when blown up. There's just no reason for that these days.
Most monitors these days, even for home use, can accomodate 720p (1280 wide), but I don't ever want to see another pro clip less than 720x480.
[Ed]"We used to post a Flash video too, but just like QT7, we're waiting for more people to have Flash 8 installed so we can compress to the On2VP6 codec."
Agreed that Flash is the way to go, but I don't think you need to wait for folks to update to the latest version. In the course of even moderate surfing, most folks already have. Even if not, the Flash player is painless to update -- one click to go straight to it, a super-speedy download, and it doesn't even require the browser to be restarted.
Contrast this with QT, which can be a bear to download, includes iTunes whether your visitors want it or not, etc. No disrepect for it as a production format, but a nightmare for heavy lifting on the web, imo.
Going with Flash gives the advantage of saving a lot of server space -- with 98% of online computers already having Flash installed (compared to 84% and 64% for WMV and AT respectively), no need to clutter your server with multiple codecs.
Thanks again for wanting to post full-sized video, whatever format and resolution you settle on!
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Kevin Shaw on Jan 28, 2007 at 4:29:07 am
I'll re-emphasize my recommendation to consider 540p (960x540) as a good option for downscaled HD output, since it's exactly 1/4 the resolution of 1080i/p source and hence should transcode neatly compared to other options like 480p. It also demonstrates (marginally) that you have something better than SD content, since anyone with a widescreen DV camera could output 480p.
Re: Best quality for viewing HD on the Internet... by Ed on Jan 28, 2007 at 3:13:41 pm
In my business, I have to be sure my corporate clients can view what I post. Adobe's own (probably inflated) numbers say that Flash 8 is on 85-90% of computers in the U.S. In the corporate world, that percentage is probably much lower.
As is mentioned here on the Cow many times, it's the corporations that drag their feet with updating or installing players. Most companies do not allow their employees to install any player or to update what they have, so we're staying away from Flash until the real penetration numbers look better.
I agree with the comment about the QT pain-in-the-butt-install-everything-approach.
Ed
"[Ed] "We used to post a Flash video too, but just like QT7, we're waiting for more people to have Flash 8 installed so we can compress to the On2VP6 codec."
[Tim Wilson] Agreed that Flash is the way to go, but I don't think you need to wait for folks to update to the latest version. In the course of even moderate surfing, most folks already have. Even if not, the Flash player is painless to update -- one click to go straight to it, a super-speedy download, and it doesn't even require the browser to be restarted.
Contrast this with QT, which can be a bear to download, includes iTunes whether your visitors want it or not, etc. No disrepect for it as a production format, but a nightmare for heavy lifting on the web, imo.
Going with Flash gives the advantage of saving a lot of server space -- with 98% of online computers already having Flash installed (compared to 84% and 64% for WMV and AT respectively), no need to clutter your server with multiple codecs."
