Real World Video Compression

26August2008

site back up

Posted by andybeach under: Ramblings.

big thanks to mjz for helping get my sql problems sorted out and rwvc.tv restored!

21August2008

Yahoo & Intel Seek to Annoy Us More?

Posted by andybeach under: Announcements.

Yahoo& Intel announced a new chip technology geared towards set top boxes and TV’s that enable a “widget channel.” I’m hoping to learn more about this, but all the screen shots displayed so far just look like interactive versions of those lower thid advertisements that have gotten out of control lately (i’m looking at you USA networks).

Being the geek that I am, I love anytime you make my video more interactive, but please for the love of Odin’s Beard (yes I stole that from Buzz Out Loud episode #792) please do not just implement that interactivity in pop up ads and weather trackers - i have enough of both, thank you.

21August2008

More Silverlight Details from NBCOlympics.com

Posted by andybeach under: Links.

NBCOlympics.com Update

Silverlight evangelist Eric Schmidt stopped in at Channel 9 (Microsoft’s Developer Network forum) and recorded an interview about some of the details that went into how Silverlight was used to present the Olympics, including some of the touchy areas like full screen mode and Geo restrictions. He makes a comment about there being contractual reasons about why true full screen wasn’t implemented and I wish he’d have elaborated, but good info regardless.

20August2008

Watching the Olympics Online

Posted by andybeach under: Links; Ramblings; events.

Let’s start with a disclosure - If you know me, then you know “Sports Enthusiast” isn’t in the profile anywhere. Oh I’ve seen various games both in person and on TV and while I have a strict “run only when chased” policy, I have foolishly been conned into the occasional group activity, but generally speaking, you wont see me discussing the latest touch downs, home runs, or slap shots, sorry. But even with my lack of sports knowledge, even I know from the Olympics and given their big push online this year, I’ve spent a lot of time watching them and even more time reading about people’s reactions to them.
Neal Page has already commented on his likes and dislikes about the experience both on Inlet’s Blog and in other blogs, plus I have read other commentary ranging from moderately good to downright bad at times. And while complaints varied early on, in the past week I feel like those who stuck with it have probably resolved their issues (or maybe they just switched back to TV viewing). In the week and half or so of viewing (and reading about others viewing) it seem like the technology part of this problem has work pretty well, but that the business decisions surrounding it may have failed to meet expectations. With that in mind, let’s recap some of the reported issues I have heard and read about the online video coverage of the Beijing Olympics.

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17August2008

Encoder Shootout - A Comparison of 4 Mac Compression Tools

Posted by andybeach under: Ramblings; Research; Software.

I was recently hassling a new friend(let’s call him Jeff) via email over some quality issues I was seeing in a video podcast he is publishing.  The issue isn’t really a super big deal, but I’m trying to help him resolve it so the production puts its best foot forward.  We are still trading emails about his overall workflow, as I don’t think its the encoder application he’s using, but some minor setting that is introducing the issue i noticed.  

In the course of discussing his problem however, I learned he has been using the El Gato Turbo264 1.3 ($99) to create his final encodes.  His reasoning for using it was primarily the speed bump he got over an export from Compressor (he is using a Macbook Pro for production).  El Gato uses its own proprietary USB hardware with a specialized DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chip to offload (and speed up) the encode process).  The Benefit as marketed by El Gato in a nutshell is to either a) speed up the encode on older machines or b) offload the encode process on newer machines to keep you working.  I had checked this product out briefly when it first came out, but it had been awhile and I wanted to see what both the quality and the encode times were like.  For a baseline, I compared it to the other encoders we discussed in our various e-mails - Apple’s Compressor 3.0.3 (included with Final Cut Studio), Telestream’s Episode Pro 5.0.1 ($999) , & Techspansion’s Visual Hub 1.3.4 ($23.32).  I was primarily just curious about the encode times, however I did want to at least marginally take quality of the encoded files into account, as who cares how fast the compression is if the quality is garbage.  

Methodology

I used the same file in all four applications with default settings or templates.  I encoded the clip to two different common file types - Apple TV and High Quality iPod/iPhone.  Since I have access to both a Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro, I encoded the same files on both systems.  My Macbook Pro is a 2.33 GHz dual core with 2 GB of RAM running 10.4.11.  My Mac Pro is a 2.66 GHz quad core with 5 GB of RAM running 10.5.4.  Each system had the same versions of the 4 encoding apps as fresh installs with default templates or default settings (VH doesn’t really have templates per se).  The clip used is a DV-NTSC clip from Zoom In Online that I also used in writing RWVC (this is the original posting at ZIO).  The clip is approximately 6 minutes long.  Although it is letterboxed in the source, I chose not to crop or customize the settings in anyway as I didn’t want to introduce any additionally processes into the encode pipeline.  I ran each encode separately with all other applications closed so nothing could take away from the encoding process.

The results after the jump!

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