OT: Web hosting

What are the best solutions for playing quality video on the web? If you were to build a website from scratch, how would you do it, assuming you want video that plays better than YouTube, Vimeo or any of the other freebies. Assuming the encoding is done well, where would you host it, how would you go about it, etc....? Most movie trailers on the web are amazing quality, are they spending tons of money for that quality? I'm about to build a new site and I'm just looking for input.

Thanks!

>What are the best solutions for playing quality video on the web?

H.264...there are various options for this in Compressor.

>If you were to build a website from scratch, how would you do it,

iWeb combined with me.com...got me this: www.shanerosseditor.com
Oh, I had to register the domain name from GoDaddy.com...painless

Otherwise you can get very cheap web servers, but you have to have decent web ninja skills. I don't...so I use the easy stuff.

>Most movie trailers on the web are amazing quality, are they spending tons of money for that quality?

Yup....but you can get very good quality from Compressor. I used the h.264 LAN settings for my encodes. They are pretty good.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

I'm now using RapidWeaver!

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Most movie trailers on the web are amazing quality, are they spending tons of money for that quality?

Nope. Well, not necessarily, anyway. Back in the day when DVD was the hot new technology, MPEG-2 encoding was as much art as science. The tools that were used to create top-quality MPEG-2 encodings were expensive and exotic.

But H.264 is a lot less finicky than MPEG-2. For one thing, it's so much more bit-rate-efficient that the margin of error is greater. In the old days, the encoder-operator had to strike a careful balance between making a film look as good as possible while keeping the data rate under the limit imposed by the DVD format.

There are three keys to delivering good-looking video over the Internet: Interlacing, scaling and compression.

If you want interlaced content ? PAL, NTSC or 1080i ? to be viewed on a computer screen, you need to deinterlace it. This can be done well or poorly; Compressor gives you a good-better-best choice.

BUT: If you're scaling your footage down, you might not need to deinterlace. If you're taking 1080i content down to 960x540, you can skip the deinterlacing step entirely, since you're effectively throwing one field away anyway. Generally you want to use the best possible scaling algorithm; again, Compressor offers good-better-best.

Finally, compress to H.264 at the maximum practical bit rate for your particular application, using a two-pass encode, with what I think Quicktime calls "automatic keyframes."

Of course, in practice the only way to get the best possible results is to do some tests, and dial in the settings. This is where Compressor is great: Once you've created a "setting," you can apply it to lots of different Quicktimes and know that you're doing the job consistently. When you finally have everything dialed in the way you want it, just save that setting and use it over and over again.

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Most movie trailers on the web are amazing quality

That would be H.264...period (IMHO) Quicktime Pro is more than capable of exporting beautiful compressions without expensive hardware.

I built my site from scratch myself with Dreamweaver & Photoshop (No FLASH animations, no FLASH video). I have an account with a private company called ICDSoft (tell 'em i sent you) and not .mac, vimoe, youtube or a public host. Do some searches on hosting.

My videos are all either Sorenson or H.264 (sorensons are being replaced with H.264s)

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Samples of h.264/Flash encodes I've done recently:

Medium Def 1-M bps: www.VOTalent.tv
High Def 2Mbps: www.HD-VO.com

Both of these were encoded in FCP6, and loaded into Flash CS4 (Takes about a minute), with no re-encode by Flash. If you have Flash CS4, it takes about an hour to learn enough to accomplish this.

More and more of my video clients are learning some flash so they can have some control over their video when it shows on the web.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Let us not forget those movie trailers look pretty darn good before encoding. Big difference between encoding a movie photographed by Roger Deakins then one photographed by me with a HDV camera no matter how much work and craft I put into it.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Travis's examples (as nice as they look & sound) is exactly why I hate FLASH player and will never use it = can't scrub / frame step. No control over the video.

BTW...Mike has a point: Sh!t in = sh!t out.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Definitely H.264- all the trailers on Apple's website are done with Compressor.

Then you want a fast host. We use Cachefly for all the videos on our training DVD site. It's nice because they are optimized for media and it always picks the closest server to play from- depending on where you are in the world.

[www.cachefly.com]


-Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

the web hosting itself has ZERO to do with video quality.

what will result in slightly better quality is if your hosting company provides true streaming service (as opposed to the progressive download that most of us are used to), but that of course comes at a higher price. what will help more is to learn the ins and outs of compresssion and use the right available tools to the best of their ability.

here is an example of one video on you tube:




and the same video just running off my $9/month web host:
[understandinc.com]

granted this isnt an apples to apples comparison. the one on my server is somewhat smaller, i just didnt want to upload 100 megs just for this little example.

but regardless you can see the quality is far better here than on you tube or vimeo or whatever.

i dont know this first hand but im told that companies like apple use like $10,000 compression software wielded by compression experts to achieve the quality they do...

Wayne, I can really see the difference between the two. What web host are you using for $9 a month? Is that video running at true streaming or progressive download?

i use hosting.com which was formerly known as halfpricehosting. but you should get the same performance form any reputable hosting company like the ones others here have mentioned.
i just stay with hosting.com because im accustomed to their setup and have never had any problems...

and im just using progressive download. which is how video is presented on any host absent a proper true streaming setup - and generally if you have to ask, your host probably doesnt offer it. as generally, it aint cheap.

progressive download just means that the video starts playing once a sufficient amount has been downloaded (based on the download speed) to allow a "percieved streaming" performance

Russ,

You have ask the right questions when talking to hosts...like how much bandwidth do you get with that monthly price? If you go over the maximum (lots of downloads), you will PAY. My host is $6.00 per month and I get:

20 GB a month bandwidth
1 GB of storage
15 FTP accounts
15 sub domains
unlimited email accounts
5 domain names (parking)
24/7 Tech Support
...and a ton more

Been with them over 6 years and my site has never gone down once:

[icdsoft.com]

Here's a 30: sec H.264 playing off my site. Pay attention to how fast it loads:

[www.digidojo.net]

Tell them I sent you if you go

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

...btw, if you encode H.264 and select "Prepare For Internet Streaming: Fast Start", it will start playing on it's own anyway so no need to pay extra for "progressive download".

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

"progressive download" isnt something you pay for. thats just a term to describe non-streamed video. which of course is enabled by choosing "Prepare For Internet Streaming: Fast Start"

Wayne & Joey,

Thanks for the info. Right now I'm using webmasters.com ($119.40/year) and I just renewed. But I'm alway looking for something better. The only real problems I've had is when I signed up for true video streaming at $5 a month. I had to keep going into the control panel and do a restart. I got rid of that service.

webmasters.com
1000 GB a month bandwidth
100 GB of storage
1000 FTP accounts
Unlimited sub domains
1000 email accounts
24/7 Tech Support
I don't use anywhere near that!!

But for $6.00 per month with icdsoft.com, might be something I might look into down the road.

Joey, your videos look really good and download pretty fast, even here in Tucson where we have a bandwidth problem due to Phoenix hogging it all... I see you've live or still live in Florida. I'm from Clearwater and St. Petersburg. Moved three years ago. You lived in Winter Park, I love that place. There was a gallery there that showed my art years ago.

Wow, great input everyone, thanks so much!!! After reading everything, a couple questions come to mind:

With H264 does the end user need to be running Quicktime on their computer?

Do you ever run into people who dont have QT and can't play your video? If so, how often?

Eddie,

Yes...my website is geared towards industry peeps that have Quicktime...but believe it or not, I have NEVER gotten a single email saying that someone could not open my clips the entire 6 years I have been with this host. That may be because I also provide a free download link for the most recent Quicktime Player right on my Gallery page so i guess who ever wants to see my stuff does the download & install

FLASH CS4 encodes H.264 in a FLASH wrapper (F4V) so Flash players will play it.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Do you ever run into people who dont have QT and can't play your video? If so, how often?

lol! I had to laugh... Good question. I have friends that use that Bill Gates OS and can't run QT movies online. I tell them to download the QT player and they have a hard time installing it, so they give up. I really can't help them because I have very little experience with PC's. I don't know why it's so hard for some people. It also could be a negativity towards Apple which I've experienced when I lived in Florida.

Installing Quicktime on a PC is not rocket science - just as easy as installing it on a Mac pretty much. Those that have trouble are deep seeded hard core PC folks bucking the "Apple influence" - they just don't like anything "Apple". Oh well. Say La Vee

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

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Russ Blaise
I tell them to download the QT player and they have a hard time installing it, so they give up.

Absolutely, people either don't have the patience to install a program or they don't have the confidence to install a new program.

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Grafixjoe
FLASH CS4 encodes H.264 in a FLASH wrapper (F4V) so Flash players will play it.

It would seem like this would be the way to go for web video directed at non-industry peeps, since most of them still have PCs.

like it or not Flash has taken over the world. Just got to make it work as best you can if you want the whole world watching.

Michael Horton
-------------------

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like it or not Flash has taken over the world.

Don't like it - never will (unless they figure out how to make it able to scrub / frame step). Something else will come along...it always does. Like I said...if folks want to see my stuff, they will "do the nasty" and download QT. Screw FLASH.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I'm on Macs and PCs... Love/Hate them both.

Here's what I've learned over the years. For those who are exclusively on Macs, who intend to play to a general audience (88-90 Percent PCs) you should have this info:

(1) A good portion of the PC audience already has Quicktime.

(2) When you install Quicktime on a PC, it takes over your default program settings in Internet Explorer, even when you tell it not to. On a PC, Quicktime does not buffer-and-play direct .mp3 links while loading, so you need to download an entire .mp3 file before playing. Therefore a lot of PC IT managers and gurus tell people not to download it.

(3) When you install Quicktime, you sometimes end up with Safari and other software you didn't ask for, so a lot of PC IT managers and gurus tell people not to download it. Some IT departments Block any downloads from Apple.

(4) About every third version of Quicktime is problematic (About the same, it seems as on the Mac.), so a lot of PC IT managers and gurus tell people not to download it.

(5) Penetration of Flash is supposedly around 98 percent, last I heard, Flash 10 is around 93%.

(6) Adobe Flash is designed as a presentation plafform - It's not intended for use by video editors, so if you need scurbbing/frame-step, it's probably not a good choice for you, even though you can arrange for that in Flash.

(7) Using Flash gives you total control of your presentation in ways that Quicktime can't.

(8) You can purchase Apple versions of Flash development packages. If you post much streaming media on the web, it would be wise to have knowledge of Flash.

(9) If you don't have a great deal of traffic on your site - progressive download will probably work just as well as true streaming.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

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Quote:
Grafixjoe
FLASH CS4 encodes H.264 in a FLASH wrapper (F4V) so Flash players will play it.

Quote:
Eddietor
It would seem like this would be the way to go for web video directed at non-industry peeps, since most of them still have PCs.

Yep...that's what we are doing across the board on all our EA Sports websites this year. We just had a meeting discussing the unacceptable quality of FLASH video and now that FLASH plays H.264s, our web teams will be implementing an HD aspect FLASH player (640 x 360) for our content that is now being exported from the Studio as 100% 720p.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Never got onto Flash specs much, as much of what i do never ends up on the web (what's this facebook thing anyway? and what's a UG?). kiddin...

But isn't it possible to go larger? Like if it's 1024x576 and when you get it streamable, and with the connection speed these days (apple movie trailers play pretty fast, and high resolution are usually around 5Mb/s), the quality would be pretty good, especially on H.264. Then with an FLV fall back with a lower quality option...

EDIT: Just went to the apple trailers page. It's 11Mb/s for a 1080 vid, and it's 5 to 5.5Mb/s for 720p, and 2.5Mb/s for SD based sizes (not hard to calculate their average bits to pixel ratio). Doesn't stream in real time here, but 720 does pretty alright.



www.strypesinpost.com

Unless absolutely forced, I would never go less than 960x540 for Web video. Sometimes I'm forced, yes; 640x360 seems to be pretty much the absolute minimum. Going any lower than that is just ridiculous. But when a client says "Web video" to me, with no other specification, I give them 960x540 at two megabits and call it a day.

(Yes, I'm aware that I may live in a rarefied world. I'm not saying this is how it should be, objectively. I'm just saying this is how it is for me right now.)

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But when a client says "Web video" to me, with no other specification, I give them 960x540 at two megabits and call it a day.

?

Too big....don't see that aspect ratio. When a client says "web video" to me and give no other specs, I give them full 1280 x 720p (or whatever the master format is) / 59.95 (or 29.97) / H.264 / 8 mbps / Uncompressed 48k stereo audio. Let them ask me to shrink it down or have their webmasters do it for the player. I know they are going to shrink it down because nobody I have ever dealt with plays web video that large.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Yeah, that'd be an equally valid approach to me too, Joey. I go with 960x540 because it's a straight 50% scale from 1080, and folks DO use that format online, I believe. Isn't Youtube using that format now? (I could be totally wrong; I don't know all so much about the youtubes.)

960x540!?!?!?!? - is that end user playback res?

i'd consider that HUGE for web use... most joe-average windows users hardly have 960 viewable width... considering their history pallette and their nearly always underconfigured screen res...