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Video Formats for non-Windows Users?
ccdotnet asks: "I look after a small web site for a rising sports star. We have a small number of short videos in .WMV (9) format available for download. These .WMV files are typically 3-5 MB in size (we do a "low res" and a "hi res" version). Each video is typically 1-2 minutes and 320x240. The site gets maybe 100 visitors per day. Our outbound hosting bandwidth is _very_ limited, so although we are keen to cater for non-Windows users (around 7% of our visitors), I've struggled to find a suitable video format which doesn't blow the size of the file right out. Ideally I would like to keep these files at a similar size but at the same time want to maintain a reasonable video quality. Are users of other platforms just out of luck? What non-Windows/Mac video formats can people recommend so that I can deliver this content to people who can't play .WMV for one reason or another?"
A few years ago, playing .WMV files might have been problematic for users who didn't use either a Macintosh or a Windows-based operating system. Now, with MPlayer and its derivatives making strides, it's not as much of an issue. Of course, there are still .WMV files that don't play well in Mplayer, but what suggestions would you have for creating Mplayer-safe .WMVs as well as other, more cross-platform friendly formats?
What's wrong with Xvid? It plays on Windows and Linux (and other things).
If you're concerned about bandwidth, why not Coral Cache things?
I'm thinking XVid - open source, tight compression.
Quicktime might be the best compromise. It's cross-platform, has reasonable file sizes, reasonable quality, etc.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Sounds like a porn site... =) I would think MPEG1 would be decent quality at a reasonable size.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
mpeg. or quicktime.
Why don't you try what others have done: Istead of a straight download, provide a BitTorrent seed? There was a recent story about this on ./ IIRC...
Seems to be more of a standard than .wmv. And every player seems to support .MPG files.
The two that come to mind the quickest are xvid and divx. Beyond that, check out http://www.videohelp.com/ for a lot more info on video codecs.
You could always create a torrent for the larger files, that way the sports fans get to help each other download the file.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Come on, AVI+DIVX!! !ITS EASY!
It keeps the size down and the quality high. There are divx clients for every OS, even Linux.
snowulf.com
"...rising porn star."
AVI is a container format, not a CODEC. Use Xvid, do a two pass variable bitrate encode on your source. Select a bitrate that is suitable for your bandwidth requirements. Divx is also a good candidate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
As a windows user I prefer QT to WMA/WMV files. Mainly because I despise Windows Media Player so much (why should a #%$%# update to a movie player require a reboot!). With QT I can transfer and send the links anywhere and know they will work. Plus, when you blow up the pictures there aren't many artifacts compared to others. (Look at redvsblue)
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Anyone knowing enough to know that they don't want to be using Windows Media Player will eventually need the Xvid codec sooner or later. It the same quality as Divx5 (or perhaps better) but without the spyware associations. And its open source and works in Linux so it must be made of solid platinum according to most slashdot moderators.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I look after a small web site for a rising sports star.
Did anyone else read it as
I look after a small web site for a rising pr0n star.
This could have been a real great story!!
Look at the times you moron moderators!
These can be played on virtually every platform including Mac, Windows, Linux, *BSD, BeOS and other with the free VideoLanClient (vlc).
These produce very high quality along with very good compression.
For some intro how-to's, check out Doom9.org
XViD is on:
- Win32 (MSVC, cygwin, mingw)
- GNU/Linux x86/ppc/sparc/ia64
- MacOSX
- *BSD
- Solaris 8 Ultra Sparc
- BeOS
That covers most of the major operating systems that your users will encounter.
Last I checked WMP could't do it, but that was some time ago. Oh, and I mean an ISO .mp4 file, not just the codec.
Cheers,
Ian
I don't care for WMV files - they are a small step above Realmedia files, but mpegs almost always look better (whether because mpeg is better or because users of the other formats over-compresss, I don't know). You might as well NOT show movies if the quality is too low - it's just frustrating to look at dancing blurry squares - offer hi-res images instead.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Works on linux(Helix Community), mac (www.real.com) and windows of course. And if it is a pay-site and you can afford to buy the encoders you can get professional support as well.
Quicktime using sorenson compression may be your best best.
Its annoying to users to make them have to download another player to play your content. Using native players is the best way to go.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
MPEG, definitely.
Quicktime format would work well, and AVI should be fine as well.
I did some video work for a very well known media company... one 99% of slashdotters here would likely recognize.
Here was my analysis:
QuickTime had the best quality, bandwidth, compatibility for the largest target audience. The player is of equal quality on platforms, and performs very well.
RealPlayer supports more Platforms that QT, but it's player is at different levels on different platforms, so customizing the appearance of functionality may cause some funny behavior on some operating systems.
If you want to make sure 100% of the audience can see the media, mpg is still the best format... though be aware that it's not exactly prefered.
IMHO if you want to get your entire audience, push towards quicktime, and give the option for real player (alternate).
You'll get most of your audience that way, with the greatest quality video, and the least bandwidth.
QuickTime pro is only $29, realPlayer producer basic is free. Players for both are free, and widely installed.
It's very easy to get going on that platform. IMHO it's the best bet this day and age.
If Apple would support Linux with Quicktime, I would push QuickTime 100%.
QuickTime's plugin on Windows and Mac OS X is very stable, and reliable. The media quality is also very good.
Real has compatibility problems on non-windows players. Not everything is implemented on them. Hence they are 2nd class.
I'd say
1. MPEG
2. RM (Real Media)
3. AVI
in that order with a strong pref for MPEG.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
but if you want easy crossplatforming, real player runs fine on linux and on windows and mac too.
I am trolling
Disgruntled Defence Signals Directorate employee, will exchange secrets for diet coke.
Are you Aussie?
If so, wtf happened with that Tampa Crisis thing?
There's lots of suggestions for MPEG...but any MPEG-1 encoding will probably be much larger than the file sizes you're currently using to maintain quality. It does have the advantage of being cross-platform.
You could create some good quality, small size movies using MPEG-4. Older systems might not have the codecs to play that back installed. But, as an alternative in addition to WMV, your Mac and Linux visitors will probably be able to deal with MPEG-4.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
Mpeg4 or divx would be good. Most players/platforms can handle them.
I have a fondness for Quicktime, though, because releasing something in QT just flat-out annoys both Microsoft and Real.
(Yeah, I'm bigoted. But at least my bigotry is based on honest hatred and distrust, not hypocrasy.)
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
Convert your files to Flash video. As much as Macromedia kinda stinks, most people have the Flash plugin installed. Crossplatform and cross brower friendly. http://www.wildform.com/ has a cheap converter. Quality and size dont change much.
I use Discreet's Cleaner (was Media Cleaner) here to compress videos taken of cells through a light microscope. While we save our videos in Quicktime format as we are an all-Mac lab (with one or two unavoidable exceptions) and as the QT Player is free and can be downloaded easily by Windows users, Cleaner can also process other formats as well -- it can create RealPlayer files (but not read them, which drives me crazy when I want to do personal conversion projects on the side... WTF?), MPEG streams, QT files (of course), and so on. It is very good at optimizing video for different kinds of uses (you'd be tuning for web use) and is quite good at compression. It will work with any QT codecs you drop into the appropriate folder, should you be using a Mac; I've never used the Windows version, so I can't give advice there.
It can also do batch conversion -- we set up an entire batch of files to convert overnight, set it going, and walk away. When we return in the morning, it's ready and waiting.
If you encode on a Windows box, use cleaner XL. If you use a Mac, like we do, use cleaner 6.
Be sure to provide download links for appropriate players on your page, if you don't already. Users are likely to not know about vlc and other appropriate players.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Our outbound hosting bandwidth is _very_ limited
This is Slashdot, so don't hold your breath for that URL. Posting it here woud be suicide.We've had good luck with mp4 videos. They'll play back in QuickTime on Mac/Win and seem to have a pretty good quality:size ratio.
Not sure there is a player for them on linux, but I'm guessing there is.
How is the Theora codec doing?
t ml
http://www.theora.org/
And the BBC's Dirac codec?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/index.sh
Baz
If you choose to use Xvid or DivX your users will have to download codecs for those. I'm guessing not too many grandmas and uncles would know how to do this.
I reccomend using quicktime to make mpeg movies which have high quality, can easily be paused, forwarded and "rewound" to any part of a downloaded clip, and can play on pretty much any platform.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I'll second .mpeg4. Although it's newer, I think the majority of users out there can play it. The quality is good but I think the best thing is that it really compresses well.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Although I would never recommend producing RealMedia content for Windows users (I really hate the RealOne player), it's a different matter if your audience is UNIX! Never thought I'd be saying this, but it's actually quite pleasant playing Real videos on Linux/UNIX/Solaris using RealPlayer which actually comes out of Real's open source Helix project. The only platform I know of where there isn't a good player for Real content is Windows.
You can also easily provide a link to Xvid binaries for Windows users, and they just need to run an installer.
Under Microsoft Windows, can a limited user install a Video For Windows or DirectShow codec under his or her own user account? Not everybody uses a box that he or she owns.
MPEG-4 (aka mp4) is the standard everybody's running towards. The wildly popular divx is really a MPEG-4 pre-release spec but their current players handle the release spec. Quicktime on Mac or Windows will play it as will mplayer on linux. Quicktime Pro ($29) will encode is and there are some free encoders on Linux (patents are an open question).
Moreover next-gen DVD's will use MPEG-4 as do cellphones with 3GPP support so you're heading in the right direction for future work.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Take anything this guy says with a large grain of salt. Look at his sleazy sig.
The best choices are Quicktime or mpeg. I wouldn't recommend DivX or XVid simply because the user has to install a 3rd party codec. More often than not, they're just going to skip over it and move on to another page. The hassle of installing the codec will outweight their interest in actually seeing the video. Sure QT is proprietary, but it has the highest market penetration next to standard Windows video codecs. So if you must have a cross platform codec that isn't mpeg, you should go with QT. Also keep in mind, ofthat 7%, the majority will be using Macs and very few will be using *nix. Desipte what the demographic on /. maybe, you'll need to think less like a geek and more like a sports agent. :)
As others have mentioned XviD is a good choice. It's compression and quality is the same as, or slightly better than, WM9 according to Doom9 (codec comparison). It's open-source, but on the downside, it requries you to install a codec and PCs don't come installed with it "out of the box".
Another good option is VCD-compliant MPEG-1. Nearly every modern PC/OS with a GUI comes equipped to support/play it "out of the box", and you can burn it to a VCD and watch it with most DVD-players. On the downside, the compression and quality is not nearly as good as the more modern codecs such as RM10, WM9, XviD, MPEG-4, etc.
Ok, if so many people are anti-BitTorrent then modify my reply to read: "Why don't you provide a BitTorrent seed as well, and ask people to use it instead of the straight download, if they can?"
Why don't you deliver it in flv? There are a lot of flash players and flash is now supported in near all platforms.
t ml
xabi
http://www.flvplayer.com/
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/video.h
Check populicio.us
Why not use RealVideo. I have seen many good sites that stream their content in both .WMV and realvideo to allow everyone to see it.
With the new Helix open source player and RealPlayer 10 realvideo is available everywhere, and real has been a leader in creating good low bandwidth codecs.
I don't work for Real BTW. And I agree with many that XViD would be nice, but if you went that route you would need to provide a link/instructions for people to download/install the xvid codec under windows/macos.
Geeks like us don't worry about installation, but the average user is not going to want to install something that requires a small amount of computer knowledge.
You could do .WMV/real/Xvid and satisfy everyone :)
This is just sig!
AVI is a container format, not a CODEC.
In practice nowadays, most people overload the term "AVI" such that CodecOf(AVI) = DivX, just as "QuickTime" meant Sorenson Video in the QT 3-5 days.
I dunno.. I might have missed it, but last I checked you had to run through whine.
WMP9 (supposed, I can't confirm -- but some WMP product is generating these) creates files with the WMV3 codec, which I have had zero success with playing with any Mac or Linux player except for Windows Media Player on the Mac. To make problems worse, if the WMV3 video is encapsulated by an avi or any other format, WMP for Mac will not open it, as it is limited to .asf and .wmv container formats.
If these guys can do it, so can you!
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Wow, talk about some lousy responses. I'm guessing you want to avoid making users install extra software, right? So BitTorrent and DivX might not be the most favorable solution. Although I think DivX would work well, I think you'd best be served by creating HTTP streamable videos with either RealPlayer or QuickTime. I think most Linux users are savvy enough to play any format, and Mac users will be comfortable with either format. Real has a player available for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. If you think Real is evil like 95% of the Slashdot community, Quicktime would be a great alternative.
And Real does have an annoyance-free version of their player available for Windows:
http://forms.real.com/rnforms/products/tools/red/
MPEG, specifically MPEG 4. You would be suprised at the high compression with still pretty decent quality. It will play in quicktime and other players which go across most popular platforms, Windows, Mac, Linux. If you download quicktime from apple (Mac/Windows) you can compress your raw videos into the proper format with that.
On a side note, thanks for considering the rest of us. I know it can be a headache, but nothing drives me more crazy then seeing web sites designed for only one platform, specifically windows. Good luck.
-- Bored? Check out my Portfolio
I use it on my movie site with smaller videos for movie trailers because it's compatible with Windows, Macs, and Linux. I develop on Mac and Linux (laptop). Unfortunately, the full movies are still reliant on QuickTime. But we hope to change that soon.
Good compression, supported in recent Helix Player, VLC, Mplayer, open source, non-patented and made by good people. I've seen both Redhat and the CC licence website distribute video in Ogg Theora.
None the less, for maximum crossplatform happiness, I'd say one of MPEG, DivX or XviD would be your best bets. MPEG is most portable -- it's available every-damn-where, but is showing it's age in both file size and image quality. DivX and XviD are nearly as available, and better in virtually every aspect.
I run 64 bit gentoo, and Xvid is really the best way to go. All the rm/wmv/qt codecs haven't been properly ported yet for 64 bit. Xvid runs on pretty much everything. I can't watch any rm/wmv/qt stuff with mplayer (yet).
Hi there
Shameless plug here, but Dijjer works great with video, and should significantly reduce your bandwidth requirements. Unlike BitTorrent, it can start playing back the video as soon as it starts download it because it downloads from the beginning. It can even embed videos in a web browser because Dijjer just acts as a HTTP proxy, rather than requiring a dedicated download GUI client. Lastly, distributing a video over Dijjer is dead simple, just make a minor change to the URL you use to link to the file.
Why not remedy the hosting issue while you're at it. Dreamhost is offering triple bandwidth up until February.
While it would be great if EVERYONE had xvid installed, your normal home user likely isn't going to have a clue what xvid is or how to install it. Stick with mpeg, it's the most compatible.
It probably wouldn't hurt to make use of some software like Cleaner as well. With software like Cleaner, you can take in one source video and output a video tailored to the bandwidth your looking for. This will keep the video's quality as high as it can possibly go for the given bandwidth. VERY very useful for getting that 42MB MPEG down to a reasonable size for a 56k home user.
I haven't looked, but I'm sure there are open source alternatives. What's nice about cleaner is it can transcode most video formats (real, wmv, quicktime, mpg...) along with compressing them.
Comparing different export formats (DivX, Real, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, 3ivX, Sorenson Pro, Windows Media, etc..)
As you may imagine I am a QT/Sorenson fan but, a good MPEG compressor is nice and only a little larger if you cut the bitrate down.
Common guys think about it.. "Oh... look at this web site I found! Oh cool! They have videos! What? They want me to download this DiVX thing to play video? Screw that." Seriously. Stick to things that work with the OS out of the box.
If you have a higher-quality source that you can re-encode from, you can use DivX and the quality will be just as good. If you only have the low-quality WMVs to encode from, there is no point in re-encoding them because the quality will be crap. It sounds to me like you tried this already and then discounted DivX as too low-quality, then came to Slashdot. The fact is that re-encoding already compressed files is pointless, might as well leave them as WMV. DivX is actually better than WMV, if you encode from the same source.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
works with windows media player, real and quicktime on all formats. its the mp3 for video. most updated media players add the codec. encoding can be done in any # of ways. the files stay small and the quality is highly customizable still remaining a small size. (i've been providing a # of web based video solutions for a number of years)
Open, well established, good compression, good quality (Its whats used on DVDs) and its been around absolutely ages (therefore not requiring the latest player or plugin). It should run on just about anything. I honestly cant understand why people use proprietary standards when these perfectly good open ones are available.
"... always going forward 'cause we cant find reverse! "
I'm not sure how good the compression is, but the ogg theora format is available for linux. Also, mentioning ogg on /. always creates good discussion.
Pod Six was jerks- Capt. Murphy
I hope that was a joke. It reminded me of all the Microsoft Bigots who want to 'standardize' on Microsoft where I work. BAH!!! Microsoft is the ANTI-STANDARD!
Just because it can be used/played doesn't make it a standard!
This is just sig!
Here it is
For Windows and Mac users it's important to stick with something they already have installed. Those users are less likely to go and install some newfangled codec just to watch a video on your site, so stick with wmv for them.
For Linux users, it's a different story. The average Linux user is much more willing to install something like xvid. For most distros it is already prepackaged.
I would just add an xvid format of your videos. That way, the Linux users can use an open source codec that provides high quality... and isn't any harder for them to install than anything else.
hosting bandwidth is _very_ limited
Good thing he didn't put any links to the website in his post...
hack a day
Whats wrong with *.wmv, it's works fine in linux, kmplayer (mplayer) it plays everything. So I don't see the problem.
I went through a similar process encoding streaming some videos from my recent wedding. My requirements were this:
.mp4 files (both playing them and streaming them). This also works with the quicktime browser plugin. Also, Linux users get to use mplayer without even needing the binary quicktime codecs, since MP4 is an open standard.
- Playable by 95% of Windows, Mac, and Linux users without installing additional software.
- Streamable and seekable
- Decent quality and compression
- Encoded and streamed completely using free software (or at least freely-downloadable software)
The answer was the MPEG4 video codec, AAC audio codec, contained in an MPEG4 wrapper (.mp4 file extension). I could encode video using mencoder (ffmpeg might work too), audio using faac, multiplex using mjpegtools, and stream with darwin streaming server. All these are free. Recent versions of the quicktime player support
1. I use Flash as SWF (FLV is the other Flash container). Wildform (www.wildform.com) or Sorenson Squeeze (www.sorenson.com) work well. For the video you describe, you should get reasonable results at 10kb/s.
A major benefit of Flash is the large installed user-base. It's very friendly to end-users.
2. Do you need video, or would a sequence of clips/slides do the job? A nicely produced set of slides will save a lot of bandwidth.
3. Edit your videos tightly. Do you need 1-2 minutes? I'd suggest making 3 x 20-second clips. Despite claims, RealPlayer or QuickTime buffering are not as good as they say. Real users often still get breaks in streaming - so the shorter the better.
4. Flash also allows good integration of graphics.
xvid compresses wonderfully, and then bittorrent if you're popular enough to have many people downloading at the same time.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
So far, only 50% of the posts in this thread have been reminders about how thise article is about none-winodws users.
So I thought I'd you myself, just in case you missed it, this article is about video-formats for none-windows users, so whatever applies to the windows world is really, really irellevant, because this is after all a article about usage of video-formats in a none-windows environment.
So, did you get it this time? Or should I repeat that it is indeed not about windows, just in case? Just let me know!
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
MPEG is the first format that comes to mind, if QT is not acceptable (no native QT for Linux...yet); but there is also QuickTime for Java which might solve portability problems.
you had me at #!
i recommend you encode mpeg or quicktime, but most anyone can get a good wmv decoder for free with mplayer or vlc (videolan). these players work mac/windows/da penguin and are free. yes, mplayer is a pain to install for a non geek user, but once it's running, you can even read real player streams and windows media streams and other such fun things.
on the encoding side, mplayer can encode mpeg for you for free if you're thinking of ditching wmv.
~fab
I'm not sure how well the new quicktime 7.0 will work with crossover office, as I don't have access to the prereleases (I don't think it's been publically released yet).
But it does provide me with the option of using quicktime in linux, which is great. In addition to that, I use mplayerplugin with firefox, and that takes care of pretty much any media format the web throws at me, thanks to plf (I'm on mandrake).
The site gets maybe 100 visitors per day. ;)
So ahhh... what was that url again? We might need to see the videos to give you a better recommendation. And by "we" I mean ALL of us.
It makes one seem less boorish. ;)
Real Player 10 works on Windows, Linux and Mac. You can just dump WMV and use only Real Format. Also Real 10 now has browser plug-ins for Mozilla/Firefox and IE.
If you are _really_ against using Real, then IMO the next best would be just standard MPEG-1 videos or divx. With divx, you will have Windows, Linux and MacOS X support with no problems.
If you don't go with Real, them IMO go with divX or MPEG-4, and have a blurb on the video page that directs users to the download page for VLC. There are versions of VLC for Windows, Linux, Mac and others. VLC will play tons of content on all platforms out-of-the-box.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
But the people who wouldn't have a clue about third party codecs will be happy enough with the .WMA files, so there's no problem, everyone's happy.
And much better than that godawful quicktime (No I don't want to be nagged every time I play a video).
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
RivaVX has a great free tool for encoding FLV (flash movie) files for distribution on the web. It took a 3 MB mov file of a rally car race and reduced it to 300 KB, and the sound / picture quality is pretty good.
This type of problem is exactly that for which Coral was created -- to help publishers who otherwise cannot handle their bandwidth requirements.
l s
As an example, you can find a partial list of sites which regularly use Coral at our Wiki:
http://wiki.coralcdn.org/wiki.php/Main/Testimonia
If you've watched tsunami videos in the past month, there's a good chance you've probably accessed Coral at one point without knowing it.
(Coral currently handles about 5-8 million requests a day for several TB of data.)
I suggest using Ogg Theora/Vorbis. It's a Free/Open codec and is supported by a lot of players (Totem, MPlayer, Xine, even HelixPlayer). See http://www.theora.org/theorafaq.html for the Theora FAQ.
FYI
For all those that don't run it, Linux can view QT files, but it uses windows codecs or hacked-up ones rather than being officially supported by Apple (much like many drivers wherein the vendors haven't supplied specs).
I know I have seen sites offer vids/demos/peresntations in (small footprint) Flash movies. The quality of the movies were more than satisfactory.
Xvid is an MPEG-4 implementation which, while an open standard, is patented and requires a license to use. Xvid itself is protected as a source-only distribution, which is considered an academic work. However to compile and use it, you need a license. What's more, MPEG-4 has use fees, you have to pay per hour per viewer for media.
Now while they don't know (or likely care) about home usage, something like this will draw their ire if you don't pay the fees.
You can deliver video with Flash/SWF files now. I think that's your best bet.
Containers combine encoded audio and video, and possibly metadata. This usually means interleaving audio and video according to their time in the movie, so during playback your disk doesn't die from constant seeking between the audio and video portions.
Codecs are used to compress the raw audio and video to the desired size, usually reducing the quality (lossy compression).
As a container format, you mainly have the following options:
- .AVI (AudioVideoInterleaved): a really old format that just interlaces audio and video data (even mp3 audio is basically hacked into working with this - badbadbad)
- .WMV/.ASF: Microsoft stuff. Don't use, if you want compatibility with anything but Windows.
- QuickTime
.MOV (MooV actually): Apple stuff. Officially supported on Macs and Windows, but still proprietary - you're not being nice to OSS users.
- RealMedia
.RM: proprietary (see QuickTime)
- MPEG-4: New standard by the people who brought us MPEG-1 (crappy low-res by todays standards) and MPEG-2 (DVD video). It's based on the QuickTime container, but it's a public standard (not proprietary). Costs developers to get a license, though.
- Ogg: Open/Free container format. Great for OSS people, but less known than MPEG-4.
I'd recommend looking into using MPEG-4 or Ogg containers.For video compression, whether you use MPEG-4 or Ogg, go with XVID. Theora is still in development, and everything else is a mess by comparison. (flaming ensues
For audio compression, with MPEG-4 you will want to use AAC or MP3 (not sure about the latter), with Ogg containers go with Ogg Vorbis (best quality at low bitrates, IMHO) or MP3.
By sticking to a standard, but non-proprietary combination, such as MPEG-4/XVID/AAC, you might even be able to cater to all platforms without maintaining multiple formats...
I would go with QuickTime created .mp4 files. They have excellent quality for the file size, play well in QuickTime, and can be viewed in VLC on most platforms if you object to the QuickTime player. Or don't have it, in the case of Linux. The size/quality is better in my estimation than the DivX codec.
YMMV, but I do know that this will work multi-platform.
Rule of the open mind
People who are resistant to change cannot resist change for the worst.
Can they stop ctorrent?
WMV files can have trojans embedded in them that activate as soon as you try to watch the video. They abuse a security problem in Microsoft's DRM crap. I have all the security patches, anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc, and a WMV file installed several different trojans on my Windows computer.
I will not open WMV files any more.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Employer and school environments aren't the only reason to give a user a "limited user" account. On a machine running Windows XP Home Edition in a residential setting, it's common to restrict the accounts of minor children in the house.
If you happened to have installed RealPlayer 10 recently, they've actually started bundling the OGG/Theora codec pack that was previously a plugin.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
For such a small video, the differences between the various encoders is pretty trivial. Most people who are unhappy with the way an encode turns out do NOT UNDERSTAND how to optimize the source video and make the right encoding parameter trade-offs.
Give me two expertly-created video encodes in Real and Windows Media, and 98% of the people can't distinguish between 'em.
So, sure, go ahead and complain about how horrible those media players are, how they practically take over your desktop. But don't complain about quality of a 320x240 video.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
this article is about video-formats for none-windows users
And we're trying to think of a wrapper and codec setup that both 1. is useful for users running BSD or Linux and 2. does not disadvantage users running Microsoft Windows.
is there something stopping you from doing what a lot of sites do and do this (not necesarily with all three):
WMV HI AVI HI RM HI
WMV LO AVI LO RM LO
RAD Game Tools produced the Bink codec. Although I'd guess very few PCs have a Bink player installed already, free players are available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
The encoder is pretty flexible (and pretty much idiot-proof), so you can cut down the quality/bandwidth/size as required. I've only used it for streaming game video off dvd, so I don't know how it performs for the smaller files you're wanting. Might be worth a try, though.
I'd do (H.263) with MPEG 1 Layer III audio ;).
Mac = QT
Windows = Windows Media Player 8+ (I believe or maybe it was 9?)
Linux = mplayer
Newer Mac/Windows side should be able to play it with default applications. I can imagine most Linux distros also come with mplayer also.
Excessive buffering is almost always the fault of the encoding technician. If your 'net connection is healthy and you're buffering all the time, the encode is improperly targeted for your bandwidth.
You need to match the size of the video frame, the frames per second, and the quality of the audio to a specific bandwidth. You can't put a 640x480 video frame in a 100Kbps stream, and expect to get anything decent out of it, for example.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
How about Flash (.swf) with embedded video?
sic
The strategy of some anti-social computer companies is "when in doubt, invent your own". Just fragments the market, and makes things more complicated.
Many people are saying that "quicktime" runs on Linux. They mean some quicktime files, not all, right? I.E., primitive and uncompressed files run on linux; serious compression Quick Time files can not legally be run on Linux.
.DLLs. This obviously means you can only use QuickTime on Intel compatible Linux machines, as the libraries are in binary format.
:-(
They can play complex formats, using a hack that requires Windows
So that's not really supporting Linux in its entirety... at all.
Makes me wonder what type of bandwidth the typical users to the site are on and whether that's taken into account. Is there any easy way to tell with a javascript or something how much bandwidth your users have?
That is really interesting. For me its the other way around. DivX and XviD I'm all good with, but there's no way I'm spending time or bandwidth downloading Quicktime or Quicktime movies. I just skip over it and go to another page.
To be fair, it's not as much the fileformat or quality that disgusts me, it's the player. You actually need a seperate player to play the files. To me that's more or less the definition of a crappy format. If I can't play a videoformat in the player of my choice, the videoformat belongs to the pre-2000 era.
And there's no need informing me of the existence of quicktime-alternative, I know of it, but this is a matter of principle. Maybe I'm borderlining stupdity here, but hey I'm man enough to admit it.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Stupid us, huh? Now mod this post to hell if you like.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Last time I checked, I could play wmv's on both MacOS and FreeBSD/Linux (mplayer). Have the tools that do this gone away now?
MPlayer can parse WMV, and there are WMV7 and WMV8 decoders in LAVC. If you want to use WMV, use WMV7 (4cc WMV1) for best results.
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
I've found Cleaner to be somewhat less userfriendly and stable than Sorenson Squeeze - Squeeze also costs about $100 less. Its does realplayer, quicktime, mpeg files as well as flash SWF and FLV files which are good for cross platform no brainer plays-in-a-window video files. You can also set it up as a watchfolder renderer, so all you have to do is drop new videos into a watched folder and it will automatically render all your set formats.
/MPEG options. your best bet is probably to provide multiple format options to hit the widest audience, which can be batch rendered with Cleaner or Squeeze.
I see a lot of suggestions here for torrents, divx, etc which are not as wide spread and userfriendly as WMV / QT / FLASH
air and light and time and space
I don't think wmw is the way to go. Maybe it can create a small file, but quality is horrible, and it only works on windows. I'm on a Mac and support for Windows Media is supposed to be there. Sure, i have the player. But what good is it if the image stops whenever it pleases, you can't scrub, etc.
I would go with either Quicktime or Mpeg. I would encode using Sorenson. And speaking of which, why not flash video? It uses Sorenson already, runs on Windows/Mac/Linux no problem, it streams, etc...
Also, if you have limited bandwidth, consider just streaming instead of a direct download. Why? Maybe the user doesn't want to see the entire video for whatever reason, they can just stop it and save you some bandwidth.
also they don't offer version for xp without itunes anymore(on their site at least).
;)
Yeah they do! You just need to know what to click
If you goto the Quicktime Download Page you're given radio buttons for XP/2000 with iTunes, 98/ME, and MacOS. Below that there's a drop box to select your language. Below that there are three links. Click the link titled "Quicktime StandAlone Player"
This will give you Quicktime without iTunes. It'd be nicer if they had a radio button, but the link isn't really hidden, either.
(BTW, AFIK, Quicktime for Win98/ME is the same as 2000/XP. iTunes just doesn't work on 98/ME, that's why there's two seperate radio buttons.. you should be able to use the 98/ME link just fine, but I might be mistaken...)
I can view it via the MPlayer plug-in to Mozilla Firefox.
also they don't offer version for xp without itunes anymore
e /
Wrong:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalon
Also, yes, it's "nagware", in that it brings up the stupid "Why go Pro?" screen on launch. But you never have to pay for it. All of the included uses (playback, etc.) are free.
I have a question, dose anyone know how Ogg Theora stacks up, I haven't been following the Ogg development to closely lately. Is Ogg Theora fully functional at this time, if so how dose it stack up against other formats as far as quality and file size? I'm a really big Ogg Vorbis fan, and I would love if the masses stated using this wonderfully technology.
On Linux, it's relatively painless to install RealPlayer.
Also, most of the media players on Linux (xine, totem, etc.) support DivX out of the box.
You are full of shit and/or don't understand how to use ffmpeg.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
We recently went through the same exercise. Our requirements were:
- Reasonably high quality at a relatively low datarate.
- Video and audio formats should be open standards.
- Primary target is Mac OS and Windows, but would be nice to play on other OSes, such as Linux and Solaris.
We found everything we were looking for in MPEG-4 (Part 2) video with AAC audio.
We recommend two solutions for players:
- QuickTime Player, for Mac OS and Windows
- VideoLan Client (VLC), for Mac OS and Windows, but also many other operating systems
This has the advantage of providing a free, supported, full featured player for the vast majority of visitors (i.e., Mac OS and Windows), but also offers a reliable free open source player for many other platforms, in addition to Mac OS and Windows.
Soon, we'll be switching to H.264 (AVC or MPEG-4 Part 10), for which free playback support will be available in QuickTime 7 for Mac OS and Windows. Playback support will no doubt be added to the likes of VLC.
I found this page recently, it has a listing of example file sizes for a bunch of different formats, data rates, and frame sizes/rates. I found it really useful when trying to convert a high quality source file to a certain size for the web.
My recommendation for a good cross-platform format is still MPEG-1. Will play on pretty much anything, and the quality is decent. You can get better compression with MPEG-4, but not all players can render it properly.
I think Ogg/theora is really a great choice because it's free (beer && speech) and most people that use realplayer10 have it installed already (this is true especially in Europe now that windows is not bundle with windows media player annymore, it's going to be bundle with realplayer :)).
Also there is that cool JAVA applet here http://mirror.fluendo.com/hq/ with this you DON'T NEED to have theora codec on your computer, the applet is free and open source too. Plus theora is evolving very quiclky with cool features added every day
download and burn linux with one click on windows
I'm amazed people have been so brainwashed into not knowing anything other than wmv.
.mp4. (Or ogg/ogm or mkv if you're looking for a really good but quite obscure container).
There are a lot of open solutions that are far better than wmv.
MPEG4 is obviously the quick answer (for now). You can use either ffmpeg or xvid to encode a nice ISO standard mpeg4 stream.
If you're looking for standalone files, avi is perfectly decent. It ain't great, but it's the most widely understood wrapper around. But you could also easily use
MP3 is the quickest easiest and most widely understood audio codec for now.
If you want streaming you could go for anything from the quick and simple ffserver (comes with ffmpeg) all the way to darwin streaming server. Both of which work well.
If you're worried about windows users, a link do get vlc is just as easy as getting a user to install quicktime. And it'll be more useful to them.
It just really riles me how companies pushing proprietary systems can push themselves into these markets.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Use Ogg (Theora + Vorbis). Codec for windows are available. Real player supports it. VLC can also be used. On *nix, all players (mplayer/xine) support it. And most importantly, its Open Source. As its adoption increases, its support will grow automatically.
Have you considered embeding videos in a flash file? Here's an article on Macromedia's web site (I think they acan handle the /. traffic). My company considered flash video before eventually deciding to go with a Windows Media streaming solution. Hope this helps.
I find it hard to believe that you can't find *some* economical solution to your bandwidth restrictions, but what do I know?
Like some others, I think you should provide some torrents for download. Even if some of your visitors can't use bittorrent for whatever reason, other visitors who use the torrents will ease your bandwidth use.
I don't like QuickTime. The plug-in and player always start up with the volume set to maximum, and if I accidentally start up the QT plug-in in my web browser it hijacks the focus so that the keyboard shortcuts I usually use with my browser don't work until I grab the mouse and click on the browser's title bar.
I like Real media even less than QuickTime media. I simply won't download Real media.
My preference would be for MPEG files (I don't care if it's MPEG 1, 2, or 4) with AVI files as my second choice. The XviD codec seems like a good choice to me. So your visitors may have to download the codec? QuickTime and Real Player need to be downloaded, too, so what's the difference?
That's my two cents.
-Rich
I've had problems in the past getting .mp4 files to play out of the box on both Linux and Windows systems. Certainly it can be done with the addition of some codecs or whatnot, but then you're back where you started, and it's no improvement over the .avi wrapper format, which has been a standard for quite some time now.
So, ah, why the weird new container format?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Problem with installing flash on linux is that you now have to deal animated adverts. I don't mind ads but don't wiggle or pop up or walk across my screen when I'm trying to read. I don't care what you do to those windows shleps, don't do it to me. :)
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Look into converting the videos to swf files for Flash. I didn't see anyone suggesting this, and i know it sounds bizarre at first glance, but it is possible to convert movies/embed them into flash and play them. A friend of mine is a flash developer with a leading company and they have done this to amazing effect. If you drop the framerate slightly and work with this, you have the MOST cross-platform example out of everything mentioned, and it can be reasonable quality.
Not to bash Quicktime, but no, it's NOT cross-platform, it is available for Windows and Macs, and, if you want to get hackish, you use Crossover Office to run it under Linux - not a real solution. If you think downloading the xvid codec is a pain in the butt for your visitors, imagine telling them to install Quicktime's nagware.
At least flash is available on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Not sure about other platforms, but in most cases using flash movies won't require anyone to download extra components, since flash penetration is a lot higher than Quicktime or even Windows Media. In fact, Firefox will auto-install the flash player on Linux or windows (dont know about Macs offhand) with two clicks.
-Jay
I'm watching news on www.cbsnews.com in RealVideo and so far - so good: good quality, player is available for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, what else you need? I don't believe there's another good enough cross-platform format available. The one important thing is not to use the plug-in format, since it might not work on all platforms and in all browsers. Just my 2 cents :)
I would say MPEG. Why? Well, at the sizes he is talking, teh file sizes would nto be all that bad. I would say do JUST MPEG unless the WMV's are that much smaller and most people use them. MPEG works on just about any platform and is a no brainer for just about everyone. MEPG4 is not...yet. DIVX is NOT. Also, what ever the Ogg folks are doing isn't acceptable either because, ideally, you just want it to work and this would require codecs beinginstalled and what have you. Failing any of this, another decent choice is Quicktime...unless supporting other FOSS operating systems is a must. Then I would still choose good ole MPEG. Until soemthing truely multiplatform(so easy, any brain dead idiot can view em) comes along, it's your best option.
Gorkman
Older versions of WMV are pretty well supported cross platform now-a-days, but there's still plenty of other options:
.. don't touch it.
DivX or XviD is cool and probably one of the best options, but then you rely on your end users to have the necessary software.
Quicktime is also a decent format but requires the use of a proprietary player (thus relying on the end-users software again).
MPG would be ideal for cross-platform stuff, but it has compression limitations and might not get to be as small as a WMV file (and maintain the quality).
Real Media -- sucks ass
One other option (I'm not too familiar with this..) what about a flash media player? 99% of the browsers out there probably has Flash installed. You could have users stream the videos straight off your site.
Hope that helps
-Adam
So, what kind of porn is it?
A great cross-platform solution would be Theora via Flumotion -- you can watch in a java applet or advanced users can play the stream directly in your player of choice if you have the codecs installed.
501 Not Implemented
Jeremy Wariner recently won the 400m Track and Field gold in Athens:
http://www.jeremywariner.com/
The link is not clickable so we don't slashdot him.
A 'video' clip of a 400m race should take about 1 minute, and this guy has a bunch of them, of course he runs the quarter in well under a minute...
Disclaimer - I work for RealNetworks on Helix Player / RealPlayer for linux
RealVideo 10 is definitely worth a look. There are players for Mac, Windows, Linux desktop, Linux Embedded, and Symbian. People can create additional players for new platforms in the Helix Community. RealAudio 10 comes in several flavours, including lossless and multichannel.
The producer apps page may be a good place to start if you want to try out the encoder.
Check out Helix Player
First look at other sites that offer different options. The largest of these are movie sites. Most movie sites almost always offer quicktime videos.... Then it's either .wma, or real. I think real is bogus (but this is a personal thing).
I would give quicktime the slot for a good canidate. Really do look around though.
I design alot of contest sites for major movie houses, the client always asks that it is put into quicktime.
Mpeg4 produces some of the best video around. It adapts well to streaming and when compressed correctly produces superior output.
Xvid does a good job if not overly compressed.
Stay away from real based formats. Real based codecs produce some of the worst video on the web I have seen.
I've got both of those and no such luck (plus Totem and Kaffeine).
:(
Maybe the sites I've visited are using codecs that aren't supported.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
MediaFrame is an open source Java player that doesn't require plugins ad supports Mpeg-1 and Mepg-4. Fucking cool technology and free to air to boot.
You just posted on slastdot, you are going to have a hell lot more then 100 vistors a day for a while.
Flash is one of if not most widely distributed plugins on the web, and its an auto installer in most cases. FLV videos can be setup to stream through flash movies fairly easily now and are usually decent quality when compressed properly. (they use a codec created by sorenson called sorenson spark). you can even easily setup .FLV playlists and streams using a bit of php and mysql. Mind you , Im a flash junkie and I think flash can solve just about any problem on the web... which it can!
here are some free players too http://www.flvplayer.com/
great encoder at:
http://www.sorenson.com
and the obvious:
http://www.macromedia.com/
MPEG is the lowest common denominator. I am talking MPEG2. Then, Quicktime .MOV is the best possible option for mac users.
Please stay the hell away from Real. All of you - the entire web.
Thank you.
I know a lot of media companies seem to like Quicktime, but I think that's because they are probably Mac based. On Windows QT is unstable no matter what audio/video CODEC is used. I'd go with one of the MPEG standards because everyone can play those.
When H.264 becomes widespread - read - when Quicktime 7 comes out - you'll be in the pink.
It scales very well, and looks more better than anything else at any rate. Its quite the codec.
I've seen first hand files and worked with betas on QT7. It hands down pimp slaps Sorenson and WMP 9 files.
Plus, anyone can watch it on anyplatform.
Until then, I suggest you use DivX or 3ivX - and provide download links to both. 3viX is great quality and its every platform compatible and its free for the playback component.
Windows users are happy - your 3ivX files play in WMP, Mac users are happy, your 3ivX files play in Quicktime, and Linux users are happy because it plays in XAnim
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
What's the problem with WMV? I use xine and I can play most WMV-files just fine.
It may not be format but as long as the format can be reverse engineered it's more than feasible.
-- Alper
How come noone has mentioned OGM as a container format?? Last I checked it was the best cross platform format out there. It's completely compatible with Mpg4 and Xvid and the documentation on how to use it seems adequate.
Of course, I get around all that by using IrFanView as my Quicktime player.
It's not the format, it's the codec. Linux is capable of playing WMV with software such as xine, mplayer, or aviplay. The problem lies in the availability of the underlying codecs in which the video is compressed and encoded.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
At least as important as the codec is easy access to the multimedia file without needing a plugin.
Getting various multimedia plugins working on non-Windows OSes is painful. When you can't get the plugin to work, digging through 17 layers of javascript to find the link to the multi-media file is a royal PITA. I *love* it when sites provide a direct URL to the media file. Even if its WMV.
Use some variety of MPEG4 (divx, xvid, 3ivx, etc.) and if the filesize is too large, provide CORAL or BitTorrent links to help let your downloaders share the burden.
Try flashblock: http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic =45.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
I see an apparent confusion in the force. We should differentiate between the player (the Quicktime player from Apple) and the file format known as Quicktime. The Apple Quicktime player is indeed nagware. But as other posters have already noted, there are non-nagging players available, whose legality may or may not be on the gray side. Here it's probably also important to differentiate between the Quicktime file format (the container) and the different Quicktime codecs (the content). For example, a Quicktime file can contain the Sorenson video codec made (in)famous by the trailers you download from Apple.com or the so-called Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) codec supported by many older digital camcorders before the advent of MPEG 4 (yet another QT-embeddable codec). The Sorenson codec has since been reverse-engineered by the terribly underrated FFmpeg project, and non-Windows lusers can now view such Quicktime movie without being nagged (hearing them may still be a problem though).
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
Sorenson makes an awesome product called 'Squeeze' that compresses video files (Quicktime/AVI/etc.) into flash Video (MUCH better than you will on your own). I recently compressed a 20mb Quicktime trailer to a 8mb one with minimal to no loss of quality. The best thing about Flash Video is that Flash has a higher penetration rate than any other plug-in and does away with cross-platform compatability issues.
Get it here. However, it seems to have problems playing some specific files that lock up Media Player Classic. I have no idea what's up with that. Others are seeing this too.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Sorenson Sparkhttp://www.sorenson.com/solutions/prod/comp_w in.php/ is a heck of a little codec for small resolution streamable content. The software is available for both Windows and Mac and the compression suite allows you to put video directly into a flash based media player for streaming. Is this an open codec in the spirit of open software? not on your life. but it delivers small video in small bandwidth with really nice quality. If handling streaming bandwidth doesn't float your fancy you can additionally offer the flash file for download for offline viewing in any modern browser.
If *I* was the one downloading the file I wouldn't be too happy about that but if I were someone who just wanted to view it I'd be very happy.
You can also embed the video into Flash and and save it using the Flash 6 plug-in. You will be compatible with 94% of the population with one version. The Sorenson compresion in the newest version is very good. I've had good luck with this way of putting small chunks of video.
Seriously man, 2 clicks - not that hard. Add to that the page title is "XviD.org
my sig could kick your sig's arse...
QT and WMV movies don't play on Linux? Hello, MPlayer codecs.
Use Coral http://www.scs.cs.nyu.edu/coral/. This is exactly the kind of application that it was designed for. Everyone wins, bigger video file sizes, lower bandwidth use. Just link your videos with ".nyud.net:8090" appended.
Hopefully this isn't a redundant post, but don't have time to read through all the comments today.
It's more like pesterware. The basic version is free, but they're always trying to sell you the more enhabnced version. Kind of like a door-to-door salesman that keeps coming back. The trick of setting the clock forward and then back is an ugly kludge for an ugly problem.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Xine 1.0 supports wmv out of the box. It is included with slackware 10 and totem movie player uses it without a problem. I'm not sure about mac support. My point is that wmv support is not that bad at all, though browser plugin support is. It is possible to use wmv multi-platform
First of all, Linux != Linux/x86
Second, there's more non-Apple and non-Microsoft than Linux.
Third, CrossOver Office is not free as in beer nor as in speech whereas the Quicktime player for OSX and Windows doesn't cost a dime.
Fourth, its quite laggy... its a dirty hack. Not one to recommend people to use because 'it works'. no, rather one to recommend because 'there's simply no other viable solution and you're dependant on the people who chose for Quicktime instead of something else'.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
I've had problems in the past getting .mp4 files to play out of the box on both Linux and Windows systems. Certainly it can be done with the addition of some codecs or whatnot
I don't know if this does also apply to mp4-streaming, but I have encoded some MPEG4-based AVI-files using mencoder (the encoder which is packed together with mplayer).
If I use MPEG4 as the output codec, the movies cannot be played on a vanilla Windows XP without additional codecs. If I use MSMPEG4, they can - and they can still be played under Linux without problems.
According to the documentation of mencoder, the files will be 10% larger using MSMPEG4 instead of MPEG4, but I guess this is still much smaller than the same quality in WMV.
It doesn't work with any advanced (read: Sorenson, etc...) codecs on anything other than Windows and MacOS. Sure, you can try asking people to get Crossover Office to view the content- but I wouldn't be placing bets on the outcome being other than most people telling you, "What part of 'NO' do you not understand...".
I would suggest something along using Ogg Theora as there's very likely to be a player amongst all platforms in question (Real Player??) and it's most definitely in a similar class for overall compactness of the content.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Considering that there's a group of the community that runs on PPC hardware (and ARM hardware, etc...) you can't just glibly assume that they can play the stuff with MPlayer. How hard is it to understand that there's a comparable codec/transport framework and there's players that can act as a plugin, etc.?
Ogg Theora's in the same basic class as most of this stuff and there's pretty much at least one player that can act as a plugin on each platform that matters and can have the same situation for the edge case platforms.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I hate to say it, but after some experimentation transcoding movies on Linux and Windows, I have to say that the WMV9 format kicks the arse of XviD (QuickTime is a joke) in terms of quality and filesize.
One example that floored me was a DV AVI that I converted to WMV9, it came out as a lovely looking 700Kb file.
Converting the same AVI to XviD came out as an artifact-filled 5Mb file (looked like a VCD MPEG) and took twice as long to encode.
I just don't understand how WMV9 was faster, looked better and was smaller by so much (plus I don't have to tell my friends to go search for a Windows binary of XviD).
#include <sig.h>
I realize this is Slashdot but please, no Quicktime! If you aim for non-Windows users you aim NOT only for Apple users. That includes not only for Linux/x86 either.
An interesting compare between the quality of current codecs is available here: http://www.doom9.org/codecs-104-1.htm
While XViD doesn't work well for streaming on-demand,that doesn't appear to be what you want. You could combine the movies with a Torrent and add a notice that you prefer people to use that instead. By doing so whereas also providing a HTTP link you still allow people from e.g. AOL or Universities or Broken Firewalls to access the data.
OGG Theora ain't tested over there, but OGG Theora is based on VP3 and can be used for streaming on-demand content. Its completely open source, not patent encumbered (XViD is) and its API is now stable.
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
People need to understand how this works.
When you connect to a server of any kind, like the HTTP server on slashdot.org, you are connecting to that server on a specified port. You are connecting to THEM, so you don't need a port open and accepting connections locally.
This is the same with BitTorrent. You are connecting to peers, and peers are trying to connect to you on a certain port.
So, Port Open clients can get connections from Firewalled clients.
And Firewalled clients can connect to Port Open clients.
But Firewalled clients cannot connect to Firewalled clients.
So, even if you are behind a firewall, YOU CAN USE BITTORRENT
PLEASE mod this up, so I never have to see that naive argument again.
If you want things that run everywhere, end especially on mplayer, why don't you just encode it with mencoder?
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Sorry about going slightly off topic. :)
Is it just me or WMV just works with MPlayer or VCL
on Linux? At least I never had any problems watching
WMV on my Gentoo using one of those programs.
Maybe I am just not aware of some WMV variations that are not supported?
I'm pretty sure you have to fork over the $30 bucks for a QuickTime Pro license to get the "Full Screen" option in the view menu.
.mov file, but it's certainly not worth that much to everyone.
That's why some of the arguments about the nagware version being a player vs the pro version being an editor/transcoder/whatever are kind of bogus. The nagware version is more like a purposely crippled player (along the same lines as the free RealPlayer).
For me it was worth the $30 to get full screen viewing and the ability to easily save a stream as a
Interesting reading this thread.
...(everyone should complain to Apple about that) and the not playing FS until you paid (though there is an easy hack) it has a nice looking, professional and thankfully unobtrusive front end which is much more than can be said for Real or the dreaded WMP.
Go with QuickTime. It is tried and tested
Apart from the nag alert
Anyone here ever used WMP on a Mac? Don't. Read the reviews on Macupdate and version tracker, it is a complete joke on the Mac. Thanks M$
I think embedding movies in SWF is a nasty idea. It is not easy for newbies to save them or play them again like that and is kinda messy.
That said if you don't want people to easily be able to save the movies there is a good case for Real Player too.
But for general stuff I would always go with QuickTime and have used it for 4 years publishing on the web with very little complaints from Windows users (I work on Macs)
Also QT files using Sorenson 2 and 3 play back fine with MPlayer or VLC in my experience. I assume therefore (could be wrong) that they would play back on Linux too.
Presentation is everything. I guarantee that gets modded +5 informative with proper (any, for that matter) punctuation and capitalization. (SHOUTING and dozens of consecutive exclamation points !!!!!!! midsentence doesn't count. This isn't eBay.)
The shot at the moderators at the bottom won't help you, either, no matter what your comment says. Such comments are always off-topic, never constructive, and certainly not going to contribute to a POSITIVE mod on the post.
Finally, nobody really cares about moderating up an AC. Log in and put an identity (even a fake one) behind your comment and its credibility improves tenfold...and at least the mod points go somewhere, that way.
And now watch as I get blasted for being off-topic (as I should be). >8)
I guess Flash is a victim of it's own success, but IMHO Flash is the most abused web technology out there. I have to keep it installed to view some of the funny Flash animation and game content that is out there, but it also enables some of the most annoying and intrusive advertising out there. Flash ads are the second most annoying kinds of ads after pop-ups and pop-unders. Flash-based websites are also the single most annoying type of website. You won't miss hardly anything by disabling pop-ups, but Flash is still a necessary evil if you don't want to miss out on some fun and occasionally useful things.
If you use Firefox, try Adblock: http://adblock.mozdev.org/
Java applet that streams Ogg Theora video: Fluendo.
Reported on Slashdot.
Once you select a standard format (there are lots of good suggestions for different reasons here - Quicktime, Real, WMV), size should not matter if you host your video files with a service that specializes in video hosting. There are several out there that are decent, but Streamload is the best I've seen in terms of bang for the buck.
You get unlimited storage and up to 40 GBs of bandwidth per month for $40 (I believe plans start at $5 a month if you don't need that much) and you can control everything through an easy web browser interface. There are other services too... just type 'share videos' on Google to find a whole bunch of them.
I don't think the ogg video format is done.
Quicktime, DivX, XviD and RealPlayer all requires downloads, XviD is probably the least(?) pain the in ass and works on all OSes so use that.
Either force people to actually get the codec (it's not that hard...) or just post both WMV and XVID versions of the video. No harder than that.
In the middle of 2004, according a New York Times quote of a Gartner report on desktop operating systems, "By the end of the year, Linux will be running on 1% of the desktop PC's worldwide, compared with 2.8% for Apple MacOS, and 96% for Microsoft Windows."
Is there a more current report from Gartner or maybe IDC? I know IDC often favors Linux in the numbers, so Linux (all platforms) may edge out MacOS (all platforms)...
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
RV10 > WMV9 > MPEG-1 That's the rule.
This is exactly what happens when using Firefox... you guys tout Apple as being so damn great, and yet they make web pages that really, really don't like anything other than IE quite often, and they make products that only work if you install THEIR software... isn't this exactly what is supposed to be so bad about MS?
I've managed to squash down full length movies into surprisingly good quality CVDs (China Video Disc format) at 352x288 (PAL) that fit on one disc, far far exceeding the quality of VCDs which normally only fit an hour per disc. Just as a data point I find allowing massive range for bitrates and using a _fixed_ quality increases the quality and decreases the size. Note that setting a fixed quality improves the efficiency of every next frame's encoding if the quality level does not need to be adjusted.
I guess if anyone reads this they'll probably want to know the settings I use. Here's a sample of the mpeg2enc CVD quality command.Note the max bitrate is set to the max of CVD/SVCD format (2500) and quality is set to 5. If the file is too big I simply increase the quality number till it fits. The extra settings for quality (-4 1 -2 1 -r 32) increase the encoding time dramatically but significantly decrease the overall bitrate.
The learning curve for this is somewhat steep but the reason noone does this is the application coders seem so wrapped up in mpeg4 encoding they forget why mpeg4 is actually a low bitrate codec, and mpeg 1/2 are standards we can use here and now.
I mean yeash... if MS did this it'd be all 'Can't Microsoft get their act together, I mean... MAN, they suck and all!'
But because it's Apple you say "Geeze, you're dumb, you can't even be bothered to look through the source of the page.."
Ahhh, double standards, love 'em.
(And by 'you' I mean the collective Slashdot 'you')
"I will not open WMV files any more."
You might as well have said you will unplug your computer from the Internet. After all:
* All of the Windows viruses and worms come from the Internet
* All of the infected MP3 and WMV files with trojans come from the Internet
* All of your anti-virus software failed (AGAIN!) to do its job (melissa, iloveyou, stages, lindoze, nimda, and now wmv trojans) until after the fact
* All of your desktop computers infected with Windows viruses (with notable exceptions of Blaster and their kin) got infected because you opened some file with some program that you ran on some Windows PC with full administrator access
* All of your desktop PCs got infected with Windows worms (including Blaster etc) because you didn't turn on the built-in firewall in XP, or didn't spend the lousy $60 on a broadband router with a built-in firewall
So, what are you waiting for? Have you unplugged from the Internet yet? Because if you DON'T take responsibility for your own computer's security, you're only going to have all this happen to you again and again until you simply unplug yourself. Free Yourself From The Matrix! Take The Red Pill! Unplug Yourself!
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
It's unencumbered by patents, totally free, offers quality comparable to xvid and supported out of the box by the latest Realplayer, mplayer, xine, vlc and many others I'm sure. The ogg container format which you would typically use it with makes it even possible to add multiple subtitles inside the video container.
Yes, the encoder is still in alpha but the bytestream format is already finalized and you'll always be able to play the videos you encode now. I've encoded some demos with ffmpeg2theora and it seems to work well, I like the quality I'm seeing and nothing strange has happened.
My recomendations:
real (with available codec),
quicktime (with available codec),
A special tip:
Flash Streaming Video Format.
Requires a special server, but it's the fastest streaming format I've seen in action. And it runs on all plattforms that Flash supports. So you've got Linux and Mac covered aswell. And this actually _is_ a good application for flash.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
.AVI [...] mp3 audio is basically hacked into working with this
.OGG, and supports streaming, internal DVD-type menus, and the like.
Not exactly. Constant bitrate audio works fine with AVI. Variable bitrate audio, MP3 or not, requires a bit of hackery (you needed to mux with Nandub back in the day; I don't know what the tools are now), but it still works.
MPEG-4 [...] not proprietary
Wrong. I don't care if it's freely available, it's still proprietary. There's a discussion on meta-Wikipedia on this. Like MP3s, they're patent-encumbered.
No, this likely doesn't make a grain of difference to your average video content provider. But it can matter to some people. (Like Wikipedia policy wonks, who tend to be rather religious about using open formats---Vorbis audio instead of MP3, for instance.)
MPEG-anything isn't open. It's licensed in a relaxed way, but it ain't open.
You also left out Matroska. It's free and open, it works, is no more difficult to support than
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I forgot to mention. XviD is an MPEG-4 codec. As such, it's proprietary. Oh! And AAC is an MPEG standard as well. (That's why it's on DVDs.)
So, in fact, no part of your MPEG-4/XviD/AAC combo is non-proprietary.
Now, something like Matroska/Dirac/Vorbis or Ogg/Theora/Vorbis would be free and non-proprietary. But it tends to be unsupported. Which, really, is the rub.
But, hey, if you don't care about the free-as-in-speech implications (and for a lot of uses, it's stupid to care about them) then go right ahead. But don't confuse free-as-in-beer and non-proprietary.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I must have had an old version of QuickTime, because the OSX 10.2 machine's QT player barfed on the MP4 files I got. (They were from Apple's site, if I remember, so they were likely good.)
I fail to see why we need another proprietary container format like MP4 when those of us fortunate enough to own general-purpose computing machines can use Ogg or Matroska.
Also, AVI is hardly "abandoned". It's not used for streaming video, but unless you're getting anime, any TV-rips you score from BitTorrent are either VCD MPEGs or XviD AVIs. Also, if you're pulling miniDV tapes in over FireWire, there's a good chance you're capturing to AVI if you're on a PC. (MOV on a Mac, but that's pretty obvious...)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I know Flash is closed and so on. But for now it is the only plugin that works flawlessly (a bit slow on Linux) in most browsers. So you take a MPEG file, put it on server use Flash (rendered on client) to pull it over and stream it right to client browser... Have you actually though of people downloading entire of one of your clips but watching only few percent of it? Well with streaming they download only if they watch - so if they actually stop watching they don't consume bandwith.
Or maybe go for Real streaming services - the clients run fine on Windows and Linux. But they don't get installed by default - client has to download it - hey but as you've stated you only care about your own bandwith so if somebody has to grab 10MB installer (no problem for me) from *other* site it should be not a problem for you... With Real you get streams that automagically (ignore *buffering* comments - Real technology is quite advanced and working) change their bitrates to match client connection...
I'm very surprised to see how many people want to fix the problem I don't have: the Windows users of this site are quite happy with the video quality of .WMV, and so am I. I'm not only happy with the video quality (these are sporting videos - lots of motion) but very happy with the file sizes.
Everytime I've tried MPEG, the file becomes 2-3 times larger and I simply cannot put that online.
I will certainly look into QT and Real, as these seem to be credible options albeit at a cost.
What I have learned from your feedback, is that viewing .WMV on a non-Windows platform is actually less of a problem than I thought it was. Clearly there are .WMV viewers for other platforms out there I wasn't aware of. As these users are inclined to fiddle and install new stuff anyway, leaving .WMV as my standard might be the best approach.
For the bandwidth side of things, why not introduce your users to bittorrent?
There's a serious problem with codecs and the way it works within Windows as far as I'm concerned.
;)
.fucking.shambles. >:(
A good friend of mine used to rave about the Amiga and I never understood why until the last few years >:(
The way it _SHOULD_ work is there should be some kind of "codecs" folder within the Windows directory where you simply drop a DLL or some such and then Windows is "compatible" with that file type in _ANY_ bloody application, instead of forcing poor chumps to have to install the following to get most things working
Divx 3d
Divx 5
vlc player
media player classic
quick time (or quick time alternative)
real player (or real player alternative)
Windows media player 10 and all bonus codec packs.
What a
QuickTime Player can play MPEG-4 content with no licensing burden (because Apple has already paid the cap to MPEG LA).
Try Handbrake. I've only ever used it on OS X, but it's been ported over to Linux as well. Debian packages are even on the download page. Very simple application. Does one thing and does it really well.
Wasting your time since 1997.
For the benefit of all of your suggesting the sports star is in fact a porn star, I will conceed that this sport does involve a (very) long and hard, somewhat pointy object. But not the one you think.
I really don't see what all the flamebait is about. Putting executable code "launch this page, run whatever scripts are on it" is a terrible security flaw to put in a data format. That JPGs, MP3s and whatever have had some flaws in the their reference decoders are bugs. WMVs are a security menace by design.
To say that you should stop using the computer because you don't use one poorly designed format, is like saying you should never light another candle because one incompetent manufacturer made a holder that was a fire hazard.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
ffmpeg is open source, works on all platforms, and supports formats that are already popular, so many players will understand them.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
And make a bittorrent version available for the times your site cannot cope with the traffic, torrents just might get trough when the http server is congested.
One of the main advantages of MPEG-4 is that it is good at low bit rates and high bit rates.
This is especially true of MPEG-4 part 10, aka H.264. H.264 targets mobile devices and HD-resolution devices. A broadcaster of Japan named MBCo already broadcasts in MPEG-4/H.264 to handheld devices. They are using encoders from Envivio
MPEG-4 part 2 / ASP is older, but also good. 320x240 is definitely large enough a resolution for the encoder. ASP (Advanced Simple Profile) is supported by QuickTime since maybe version 5 (not sure).
Remember that Spanish company that was covered on Slashdot a while back, called Fluendo?
:)
They had developed an open source streaming server called Flumotion, which supported Ogg (Theora video with Vorbis audio).
Even cooler, they have also released a Java Applet called Cortendo, which can play back such streams from a Flumotion server within any Java-enabled browser. It doesn't need any third party player or plugin and it is fully based on open source en open formats!
Now how cool is that?
They have a publicly accessible continuous demo stream running, showing them at work in their office, although the stream is sometimes down. I checked it out once, and the video quality is quite impressive.
It's free, it's open source and it allows people to view your streams with minimal effort. Why not try this option?
This is their web site.
If it is satisfactory, don't forget to support these guys. They've done some excellent work on this and their decision to release their code under the GPL license should be rewarded!
Ah, I finally found the Slashdot article here:
Theora Codec Ported to Java
Also, this same technology was used to webcast the GUADEC conference in Norway a while back.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with this company or its employers in any way.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
there are alternative distributions of realplayer and quicktime that play in the good old mediaplayer classic perfectly fine - just get the codecs and ignore their spyware wrappers (players) completely.
Gekido's Lair
I run a website, http://www.learncadfast.com that has video downloads and the best format I have used so far is MS MPEG-4. My customers use the popular mplayer with a simple gui frontend to view the video files.
At some point, somebody's probably going to do a Java implementation of BitTorrent that you can put on a web page for use without installation.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Take a look at the intent of each of the popular formats available today and then consider what will be expected of your visitors in terms of installed software.
.RM files that aren't video files at all, but pointers to videos online that have long since been removed. Admittedly, I never learned to make the most of Real Media, but I believe You can also do better than this. QuickTime, except QT is very solid with great quality even at lower bitrates. However, I have always found the QuickTime implementation on Windows to be piss-poor as compared to how it is on the Mac. Maybe others would agree. Still, I wouldn't write off QT totally. I've never seen many questions concerning optimizing Real Media or WMV-9, or QT for that matter, so I can't comment about your support options with these codecs.
MPEG1 is a universal tried and true standard, but you can do better when it comes to streaming. MPEG2 was not designed for low-bandwidth transmission. I'm assuming you would like to maximize quality as well as support dial-up visitors.
MPEG4 is designed and intended for transmission on low-bandwidth devices, and would be equally suited to streaming over the Internet. I would say that this is the preferred format for streaming video. Now you need to choose an implementation of MPEG4.
WMV9 is easily the lowest common denominator if you figure that most visitors are on Windows, but obviously that would lock out a lot of other people, which you don't want to do. On the upside, developing WMV9 video is cheap, easy, and fast. The tools are all free. The Windows Media Video 9 Series Encoder can accomplish a lot in a single pass than. It can be a pain to work with in Virtual Dub though, so for batch encoding I'd recommend some of River Past's video tools as helpers. Real Media is good, but some people may have objections to using the RealPlayer software due to some of its features (popups, cookies, etc. etc.). Not every computer I come across has it installed. Unfortunately, I often have
Xvid offers great video quality at low bitrates. It is open-source, you can count on it being around a long time, but it's not as well known outside the OSS and videophile communities. You'll want to provide a link to a binary install of the codec to make things easier on your visitors. DivX also offers great video quality at low bitrates. DivX is cross-platform with a codec available for Mac, Linux, and Windows. It appears that Xvid has beaten DivX on live action videos (films, television, etc). I believe DivX is better on animation though. The player is a small download. The software is pretty reliable. There are a growing number of certified DivX playback devices, so if you support DivX, you might be offering your visitors some added value in giving them a video format they can take with them.
On the downside, Xvid and DivX both require more time and attention to the transcoding process than does WMV9. You could easily do a single pass transcode with either, and the results will be okay, but DivX really doesn't hit its sweet spot (min. size and max. quality) unless you do a triple-pass. I don't know if Xvid does any better after a second pass. The DivX encoder will cost a small fee, but then you are free to use it all you want. You also get more tweaking with Xvid and DivX than with WMV-9 and (in my opinion) QT, but that means you may spend more time per video than you want in order to perfect things. On the upside, I believe DivX offers a tool for helping you to churn out fast high-quality videos, and both the Xvid and DivX communities are filled with people who are more than willing to offer tips and suggestions. 3ivx is the lesser known MPEG4 codec. It is a great suite that includes MPEG4 tools as well as an AAC encoder. For a more thorough comparison of these last three codecs, see the Doom9 website:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-104-1.htm
Avoid Microsoft's ASF/MPEG4 VKI codec entirely.
Ignore my user number. I've been here longer than most of you. (on Slashdot, in Purgatory, and at most retail checkouts)