Joined: Dec 25, 2001 Posts: 32,972 Location: Liberty City
Posted: Fri 4th Jul 9:07am Post subject: Normal Quality Vs High Quality Videos On Vorb
We're running a test comparing the normal Vorb video quality (512kbps) versus a new high video quality (2048kbps) using the teaser for the upcoming New Zealand mountain bike movie "Sketchy Lines"
Video sample rates are a tricky balancing act between bandwidth and load speed versus broadcast quality. The high quality rate will take 4 times as long to load and use 4 times more traffic (which costs Vorb money to broadcast) but delivers a higher level of definition.
The theory is that as the cost of bandwidth falls and the speed of New Zealand broadband increases high quality broadcast will become more viable. For the time being this is a test and your feedback of percieved quality increase versus load time etc. would be appreciated.
Joined: Jun 09, 2006 Posts: 402 Location: Hiding under desk, Christchurch
Posted: Fri 4th Jul 9:21am Post subject:
ok, so 22sec for the normal to download, watched it and was happy with the look, although thought it was a little blurry.
Then watched the HQ one, took 1min to download, and quality was much, much better. All the blurry gone!
However, being an impatient bugger, I would prefer to watch the normal qulaity videos as they download rather than wait (or pause) for the higher ones to come down.
Of course, at 7pm, on XTRA broadband, things may seem a little slower than at 9am
Havn't got the bandwidth to check em now.
What are you using? h264?
Encoding something recently I had issues with still images not compressing at all politely in a montage section, but with a slight Gaussian blur on them (2px) in compressed and streamed a treat.
the high quality one is far better - especially on the long shots, much more detail on the trees and the general background, which in my opinion makes the rider stand out more.
Much crisper and detailed obviously. I much prefer watching high quality video - as long as it loads without constantly stopping for buffering. Some sites like break.com have some higher def video than youtube for instance, but they constantly have to stop and buffer for me, even on telstra cable plan.
Initial pause before load only a tiny fraction longer than the low res one for me. No load time or buffering issues.
Telstra cable 20g lightspeed plan (10mbit max - but usually runs around 5mbit, as it is right now).
As a side note, I suppose it would be impossible to keep both a low and a high quality copy, and have the low as default, with the high as an option in our profiles? I realize this involves boatloads more flash video conversion cpu time and storage space...
Joined: Dec 25, 2001 Posts: 32,972 Location: Liberty City
Posted: Fri 4th Jul 1:12pm Post subject:
Dilated wrote:
As a side note, I suppose it would be impossible to keep both a low and a high quality copy, and have the low as default, with the high as an option in our profiles? I realize this involves boatloads more flash video conversion cpu time and storage space...
This is my ideal situation - quadrupling the video traffic right now would equal something like 3 terrabytes a month which would turn into a HUGE bill.
So we're not planning on doing everything in High Quality quite yet - though it might be that some featured video will be released in both levels of quality
I can't watch at work - but will be sure to check this out when I get home.
One comment about the current player setup is that the videos look much better (to me anyway)when viewed in "original size". I've noticed that a lot of people (myself included) are adding a comment to this effect when they are posting vids. Is it possible to have the flash player default to "original size" rather than full size? It seems that compressing to 320x240 and then stretching to 640x480 is just a recipe for blurriness.
This is my ideal situation - quadrupling the video traffic right now would equal something like 3 terrabytes a month which would turn into a HUGE bill.
So we're not planning on doing everything in High Quality quite yet - though it might be that some featured video will be released in both levels of quality
Cool sounds good.
Crikey thats some heavy duty bandwidth. Guess you're wanting to keep your servers in NZ due to the majority of traffic being from NZ... shame that you can't take advantage of some of the US deals around, even some of the solid companies with great tech support have high bw dedicateds for a reasonable price. 4000GB/month dual core 2gbRam 2x250gb hdd for US$399 from servint for example. But I'm sure you've already looked at your options
Joined: Oct 11, 2005 Posts: 121 Location: Auckward
Posted: Fri 4th Jul 4:52pm Post subject:
I work in the computer gfx industry so deal with various codecs for quicktime and mpeg ... to be honest I didn't notice a big difference in quality between the two versions, though they were both quick to load. Not sure if the high quality one is worth it for the larger file sizes that may be required?
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