Not to mention, Flash in general leaves us Linux folk behind in some ways.. it has gotten better lately, and adobe/macromedia promises to have flash9 native at some point. But still, we'll always be a second or third thought when it comes to making sure we can use it. People on 64 bit machines still don't have a working solution, iirc, and that is really just poor.

I've given in to installing flash to see things like Youtube and google video, but I went for months before without even installing it, and was pretty comfortable without it. Google Video is even better because it lets me download them in their original format, something i'd love youtube to be able to do..

Dave: Don't forget that two of the other formats he mentioned don't have Linux support at all (WMV and Quicktime), outside of using unlicensed codecs. I'm glad that Adobe is providing support for Linux at all, being as it is such a niche player on the desktop.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can select the quality in FLV videos. Maybe Youtube just selects a bad quality to reduce bandwidth consumption ?

Argh -- I'm torn because I love seeing all the videos on YouTube that are watchable nowhere else, but I HATE the video quality! I'm really seriously anal about good video quality and YouTube clips are just so abysmally awful! I wish there was a way to offer a link beside each video where, if the user wished and it was available, a better quality clip could be accessed.

It is possible to encode Flash video with a higer bitrate and get pretty decent quality. Maybe not 480p, but still much better than your sample. Especially with the new On2 video codec, which is now included with Flash 8. Check out some samples:

<a href=" http://www.on2.com/video_samples/flix-video-samples/ "> http://www.on2.com/video_samples/flix-video-samples/</a> ;

(No, I don't work for them or anything.)

The problem is that Youtube encodes video at a *very* low bitrate so that it will be easily viewable by the masses, even for people on lower bandwidth connections. It would be nice if Youtube provided a higher bitrate option (like 800k), but that would just cost more in terms of server load and storage space, so it's probably not worth it to them.

What we really need is some sort of standard... ...oh.

Actually, what would really interest me is why the 'standards' have fragmented? I mean, Quicktime and WMV are proprietry (and therefore remain separated for commercial reasons), but is MPEG not like JPEG - a community standard?

Shouldn't there already be a defined input (your video) and output(your file/stream) and back again. Would this mean codecs are entirely about getting between those points as fast as possible? And if someone writes a codec that doesn't create already defined output, then it doesn't match the standard. Did I miss something?

Hmm... are we prime for the return of .GIF?! No, I kid. I hope that format stays as dead as it seems to be. At least professionally. I honestly wish I could convince everyone to stop using Flash all the time, too. ESPECIALLY for "intros" to their site. Every time I hit a site and I run smack into the intro before the content, I want to stab a puppy.

YouTube encodes at the lowest tolerable bitrate for a reason: $$. If I can provide an 800k stream to a user, that means I can dish out a 200k stream (overhead not included) to four users for the same price.

If 95% or more of my users wouldn't complain, why should YouTube improve the quality? All it does it blow out the bottom line.

Personally, I only use YouTube for it's intended purpose: quick, get-the-point-across videos.

Any particular reason you chose to make Windows Media look bad on purpose?

I recently had problems with home videos freezing during playback in Windows Media Player that I couldn't fix. I worked around the problem by using a different player - Classic Media Player from http://www.free-codecs.com just plain worked first try. And it doesn't have the bloat and crap that you get with WMP.

Seems like you are using the concepts of "Flash Video" and "YouTube's Implementation of Flash video" interchangeably. They are not the same.

YouTube implements lower fidelity flash video for many reasons -- some of which are the simplicity-quick-start-fast-download aspects which have made their "simplicity" model so successful -- while other codec/implementations worrying about other 'more important' factors have not seen similar success.

Here is an example of some of the more recent HD type video stuff flash can be used for (where appropriate ;)

http://www.progettosinergia.com/flashvideo/flashvideoblog.htm#111006

Would like to see you update this post to clarify that flash video can do much more than YouTube does with it -- your description really does muddle the developer conversation since you are such a 'goto' resource.

Well, I really stopped caring about the codec hell since I discovered mplayer.

<< Actually, what would really interest me is why the 'standards' have fragmented? I mean, Quicktime and WMV are proprietry (and therefore remain separated for commercial reasons), but is MPEG not like JPEG - a community standard? >>

If by "community standard" you mean free and/or open, the answer is a resounding no. Implementations of MPEG encoders and decoders potentially owe royalties to MPEG LA, although there are also stipulations for distributed media in a number of forms. The royalties are also quite steep--it is substantially cheaper to licence WMV than it is to licence MPEG.

JPEG is "free," but that doesn't stop companies from attempting to assert patent rights on portions of the JPEG process (as Forgent Networks did in 2002). Simply put: image compression formats are too complicated to not have multiple patent claims. Video codecs are even worse. Even open source video codecs like Theora are fraught with difficulty, because patent holders can review the codebase, and assert patent rights against companies using Theora.

In short, no free beer here. Move along.

It would probably be easy enough to compare these formats using a video file of the same size. That would better indicate the relative quality.

Have a look to this article:
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_rise_of_flash_video_part_2/

==
Why Flash video stinks
Some folks take issue with Flash video, and they do have a point. There is a lot out there that makes watching Flash video a painful experience. They talk about pixelated and jerky video, and point to poorly re-compressed YouTube content as evidence that Flash video sucks. These shrill claims are misguided, but many people hear them and blindly agree that Flash video stinks.

> offer a link beside each video where, if the user wished and it was available, a better quality clip could be accessed.

YouTube (and most other media companies) doesn't want people to download videos. They enforce streaming-only by bringing the hammer down on users who publish ways to save the videos in files. Like so:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/15/huh-youtube-sends-techcrunch-a-cease-desist/

> Any particular reason you chose to make Windows Media look bad on purpose?

That's how it looks via the Yahoo Transformers HD page. ( http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/transformers_hd.html ) I'm not sure why they force it into a 4:3 window when it's natively widescreen.

Lack of quality can be an *intentional feature*, as other commenters have pointed out.

Well hell, i just go about blindly, completely ignoring the codec hell and installing crap at random to make things work. Quietly hoping for better days (as i'm sure 95% of people are doing). Well maybe not quite that eccentric, but anyway.

honestly no power on earth could get me introduced into the vastness that is "codec-usability" -science.

I recently tried a software that would recodnize (and possibly even install) what codecs i lack. The software was called G-Spot, and no offense to the people who made, but i couldn't understand anything about the UI. Everything related to codecs is simply made too difficult. And i'm frustrated to the point where i just want to kill myself.

After getting that out of my system i'd like to give a big hand to the people who made the Flash video. Great job!

Also, DefilerPak kicks your butt, codec-wise... Usually...

funny... using a great professional codec like Sorenson you get exceptional quality... so don't complain that it can't be done... of course it can ... here's to Flash and all ofus Artist/coders who can now make a respectable living !

Jeff:

Bad example. You should have chosen something else. As a nerd, I an afraid that I must *demand* my Transformers trailer in 1080p on my widescreen monitor. You should have used that racist Kramer video as your example instead. Who cares about quality there?

P.S. Did you notice that the giant robot coming out of the pool is Shockwave!? Awesome! (You wouldn't have if you saw the YouTube version.) I'm afraid I'll have to call in to work hung-over on 7/5/07.

-D

YouTube still uses the Flash 7 Sorenson codec. HQ Flash 8 video is sweet. They need to upgrade or get left behind.

Click this one to go full screen
http://staging.mutoid.nl/fullscreen/index_cars.html
Cars Trailer - Mutoid.nl

http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/demofullscreen123.html
demo fullscreen

http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/demofullscreen345.html
demo fullscreen

http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/demofullscreen321.html
demo fullscreen

On Linux, there are several scripts floating around that use wget and ffmpeg to extract the MP3s out of YouTube videos, but unfortunately you only get mono sound. Anyone have a command-line way on Linux to convert the mono sound into simulated stereo using delay, reverb, and different EQ on left and right channels?

Installing a codec often breaks compatibility with a player.
Codecs can and will crash on just one single frame in a video stream.
Installing a codec replaces similar codecs from different vendors.
Codecs can have dependencies on other codecs.
One word: Subtitles.

Codec hell is real.

It's almost like codecs are DLL's or something! ;)
....and you lose(jeff) h.264 <is> MPEG-4. ;)

"Flash Video "just works", and it's never more than one click away from 98% of the web browsers on the planet. It'll never win any quality awards, but it's still recognizable as video. Therefore it wins by default."

I think it's just a coincidence, but the first thing that came to mind when I read this was Windows. Ha ha.

"It'll never win any quality awards, but it's still recognizable as video."

As one highly appreciated Macromedia exec. put it, "It's all in the art of the encoding". If you don't think Macromedia did their homework and felt they could encode video with VP6 and make it comparable to anything else on the web then you have to be bias or ignorant.

I think the google-video approach is better, there flash-video quality seems just a little better , but the major thing is that they provide a download option, so you can view movieclips off-line and on your iPod, which is very handy. So the have both, the flash-player that just work for the people that dan't care about codec/quality and just want to see the clip, and they have a downloadable MP4 version that is better quality and better for portable video-devices to play.

no it was macromedia (back in the days..)

if you want to be 99% free of that codec hell try use VLC only once found file format that it can't play http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

With your YouTube example, as with all YouTube vids, the quality can be much improved (still not good) by clicking the small mystery-meat button on the bottom right (the left one, just to the right of the volume) to show the vid in it's "original" (not quite) format.

Might as well give Youtube the best of what you have; a near 100mb file at 30fps, 320x240, and with reasonable aspect ratio, even for clips that are a few minutes long. You can also play with the -crop option of ffmpeg before you do the conversion because in many cases you can have a pixel per pixel retension and avoid any sheering and stretching from an aspect ratio conversion process.

So for example, your DV example of 720x480 can benefit from a 40pixel crop left and right, then when its resized to 320x240 it is really coming from source material of 640x480.

Like any other video codec, compressing to FLV requires a person to know what they are doing. There are many settings that, with some tweaking, can produce both a really bad and a really good result. FLV8 in particular is a highly-optimized video codec. Things like blocking, keyframes, bitrate, framerate, and many other things can be adjusted to produce a very high quality FLV. The quality of the encoded video also depends on the quality of the source, and unless the same source video and similar encoding settings have been used to encode into different formats, end-result comparisons aren't reasonable.

> Anyone have a command-line way on Linux

Mencoder and ffmpeg should handle standard Spark (v7) video in flv fine, and you can convert to avi or your choice of format simply enough. Bleeding-edge versions now have VP6 (v8) support as well.

> Also, DefilerPak kicks your butt, codec-wise... Usually...

It also has the wonderful quality of kicking your system's butt, causing instability, video crashes, and installing all kinds of outdated and a few quasi-legal codecs. Thanks, no. Most codec packs simply perpetuate the problem they set out to solve or create new ones.

ffdshow is a great way of circumventing codec hell on windows, without being at the mercy of VLC's and mplayer/mpui's... less than fantastic guis, though its own configuration could use a cleanup. (Fair disclosure, I help develop it.) I'm all for the flash-in-browser revolution, though, I think it's the best thing to happen to truly open streaming video ever. Youtube's extremely sub-VHS perversion of it doesn't mean other services can't build out their own, and google video's is rather decent quality. Flash is everything Java once promised it'd be.

In comparison, Quicktime is hideous on anything but a Mac and is very picky about what it plays back, WMV is windows-only unless you can work magic with Wine, Real is dead, and VLC (which can also stream in-browser) doesn't have much market penetration.

VP6, like Sorensen Video 3, is based on drafts of h.264, and it competes well compared to xvid & divx, however it does tax the system for HD playback. Sorensen Spark, which Youtube converts everything to, is much simpler than divx and much lower quality. Just by Youtube switching codec and paying a little more in fees we could get at least roughly VHS quality, like your wmv version, at the same bitrates. =\

Then again, a lot of what gets posted has pretty atrocious source quality anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter at all.

The FLV video format that the flash player uses allows variable bitrate. When you create an .flv you choose the bitrate, which determines the visual quality. YouTube simply encodes all uploaded video at a low bitrate to ensure quick streaming and to limit bandwidth.

The comparison between a quicktime 480p or larger video and a standard YouTube .flv is seriously flawed.

Well I agree with the premise of this article. I just spent at least a hundred hours trying to figure out what codec to use for digitizing my home movies. Each one had their problems. Some wouldn't sync the audio correctly and others were just crappy unless you spent hours and hours tweaking settings.

I eventually decided that I would use WMV. Even though the quality wasn't quite as good as a DV-2 video, it was about 1/15th the size and I am guaranteed of being able to find a computer to play them back on 20 years from now. None of the other options came close to producing the same quality and peace of mind.

So in the end I settled for slightly lower quality but gained the ability to play them pretty much anywhere I needed to. But the pain of coming to the decision is what is the crux of this article. It just shouldn't be that darn hard.

For most consumers, convenience wins over quality.

Take a look at the last thirty years of electronic gadgets.

8-tracks and then cassettes significantly reduced the market share of LPs, because they were convenient even though they represented a backward step in quality.

CDs replaced LPs and cassettes: CDs beat LPs on simplicity and convenience, even though some audiophiles still prefer LP quality. CDs replaced cassettes on quality and convenience - no rewind, the ability to skip directly to tracks, durability.

Cable TV supplanted broadcast because people were sick and tired of adjusting their antenna every time they changed the channel. How many people have just basic packages?

DVDs replaced VCRs because of superior quality and convenience - no rewind, easier to store, etc.

Digital cameras have replaced film for their convenience, even though only recently have digital cameras approached the quality of 35mm film.

MP3 players (including the iPod family) represent a step backwards in audio quality, but consumers are choosing the convenience of carrying their entire record collection in their hand over quality.

This, of course, is dangerous to both the consumer electronics industry and the movie studios. HDTV does not offer any particular convenience advantages. The videophiles will of course purchase HD theater systems, but it will take much longer for HD to supplant standard TV. And HD DVD is in even worse shape. Blu-Ray plus HDTV is not compelling to most consumers. Most people are satisfied with their conventional DVD and conventional TV experience, and the HD options are much more expensive without offering the one feature that they will pay for - additional convenience.

What WMP skin is that and where can I get it?

LOL. Flash ubiquitous? Keep drinking that Adobemedia propaganda Kool-Aid. Yes, _some version_ of Flash is installed on computers, but it's rarely 8, or even 7.

I used to work for a company that provided a streaming video based application, and absolutely zero percent of our corporate customers had a version of Flash installed higher than 6. Zero. Whee!! Corporate machines these days are locked down so tight users can't even change the desktop background, let alone upgrade their Flash version.

Also, third-party Flash based hosting is expensive (and no, YouTube is _not_ a host). I suspect it has to with the ridiculous software prices for the Flash server software (starting at US$4500). Not to mention even the damned encoding software costs money.

> Digital cameras have replaced film for their convenience, even though only recently have digital cameras approached the quality of 35mm film.

Even the best digital cameras are not even close to the best 35mm film. I'd say it's about 10% there. A Hasselblad, for instance, which although not 35mm, will completely destroy any digital camera's picture quality. It's not even a contest.

> MP3 players (including the iPod family) represent a step backwards in audio quality, but consumers are choosing the convenience of carrying their entire record collection in their hand over quality.

A properly encoded MP3 will sound the same, even to the pretentious audiophiles at the Home Theater Forum.

> A properly encoded MP3 will sound the same, even to the pretentious audiophiles at the Home Theater Forum.

When played back on which equipment? Inferior speakers, headphones, earbuds, DSP's, etc. can drastically change the listening experience. How well does your iPod play back MP3's encoded in VBR at extremely high bit rates?

Interestingly, a superior set of headphones can be a worse listening experience. For example, where the source is old vinyl, and the capture and conversion equipment is "consumer quality", will sound better on a cheap set of headphone because the much narrower dynamic range will muffle out a large amount of the artifacts in the recording.

-Ed

> A Hasselblad, for instance, which although not 35mm, will completely destroy any digital camera's picture quality. It's not even a contest.

Can you cite recent sources to support this? I've read a number of articles from photographers who no longer use film because the quality is equivalent, and in some cases, better with current digital cameras.

Basic camera physiology will give you the answer:

http://experts.about.com/q/Cameras-3213/Medium-Format-v-s.htm

I can give you real world experience. We needed to make some billboards for work, and we had to get a photographer that could use medium format cameras. We actually went through three other photographers that claimed their 10MP cameras were "good enough", but it wasn't true at all.

> When played back on which equipment? Inferior speakers, headphones, earbuds, DSP's, etc. can drastically change the listening experience. How well does your iPod play back MP3's encoded in VBR at extremely high bit rates?

Oh please. I've played back MP3s on major audiophile equipment costing > $100K. For cripe's sake, I've played them back on amps that are as as big as a coffee table. Guess what? There's simply no difference. None. Encoding has gotten so good that it's a tossup between it and the original. This assumes though that you know what you're doing with encoding - using Musicmatch won't cut the mustard, eh?

Who the hell cares about iPods and their quality. Their "amps" are total garbage - look at the size of the thing, and tell me with a straight face that an amp that size is worth anything at all.

Don't underestimate Macromedia. They are far from stupid.

The .FLV format has MORE to do with how the video enters flash, and its that reencoding that causes the quality loss.

.FLV is quite powerful, but youtube limits the largest resolution possible to 320x240, and limits total file size to 100MB. Check out their uploading FAQ for more details.

You could embed 720x480p directly into a flash document if you wanted.

Load up Flash 8 and give it a whirl.

I have seen very few mentions about video on portable devices: maybe the smallness of the screen would offer a good enough video quality despite of the high bandwith it cant afford ?

foobar,
medium format vs digital is a totally different discussion than 35mm vs digital. The #1 takeaway about all film is how incredibly grainy it is compared to digital, so that even though the physical resolution may be higher, the effective useful resolution is actually lower than the best digital cameras. Medium format makes up for that by just having gigantic film, but 35mm film is nearly the same size as large digital sensors and more prone to noise.

This is a comprehensive comparison, made with 5-year-old digicams (which have considerably improved since) and already 35mm could only compete in certain situations:
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.1.html
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.6mpxl.digital.html

No one is going to argue that digital can match medium format with an experience photographer, though. Totally different world.

@foobar

Although foxyshadis has just done a nice job of demolishing your lofty claims, I feel inclined to chip in.

Within the context of *consumer* gadgets set by RevMike, you claimed "Even the best digital cameras are not even close to the best 35mm film." When challenged, you tried to defend this nonsense by citing an example which did not even involve 35mm film, and was not even about consumers since the image was destined for a commercial billboard.

Okay, so you pretended to be knowledgeable on this topic and it didn't work. The show's over. If the real answer is important to you then do the research.

The theme around here is that we're all trying to discover, build, or adapt technologies that are appropriate solutions to problems. If you are a consumer with some computer savvy, a digital camera is now the appropriate solution to the problem of recording happy snaps. An amateur photographer with professional aspirations is equally served by a DSLR.

You should also understand that image spatial resolution is only one of many factors that lead people into choosing digital cameras, and with present day sensors it's not even clear that film is much better at ISO 100, let alone ISO 400.
Image quality always comes at a price. How many 35mm film cameras have shake-reduction mechanisms? Or near zero picture processing cost?
How many times do people enlarge their 35mm negatives to a print bigger than A3 paper? Probably never, in which case even a 3MP digicam provides enough detail. ( http://www.videointerchange.com/Print%20FAQs.htm )

There's loads of web sites that will show you these things.

flash can be good. Check our site for an example www.rip.tv. You can watch this stuff full screen on a 32" hdtv and it looks amazing for web video.
"A Hasselblad, for instance, which although not 35mm, will completely destroy any digital camera's picture quality. It's not even a contest."

You might be interested to know that hasselblad has gone digital and they even make digital backs to attach to their previous medium format cameras. The film vs. digital debate is over. Digital won.

flash can be good. Check our site for an example www.rip.tv. You can watch this stuff full screen on a 32" hdtv and it looks amazing for web video.
"A Hasselblad, for instance, which although not 35mm, will completely destroy any digital camera's picture quality. It's not even a contest."

You might be interested to know that hasselblad has gone digital and they even make digital backs to attach to their previous medium format cameras. The film vs. digital debate is over. Digital won.

Hi guys,

was a joy reading this bundle of expertise :)

I have got a question:
Is there any possibility of getting all the youtube/gvideo/... flash videos to "real" fullscreen?
Maybe a greasemonkey script or any other solution...

Thanks for help!
Cheers!

You might be interested to know that hasselblad has gone digital and they even make digital backs to attach to their previous medium format cameras. The film vs. digital debate is over. Digital won.

If you can make that statement, then I suspect that everything you know about photography can be put into a thimble with a thimbleful of room left over.

And now the article is obsolete, as YouTube is in the process of converting *everything* to MPEG4 (because of their in-bed partnership with Apple).

So -- is this a good or bad thing? It certainly is improving the quality, but at the cost, yet again, of incompatibility. Still, interesting to see that Flash hasn't won the war on what web video is all about (if you accept that web video and YouTube are, if not synonomous, at least very close).

I'm pretty sure Flash now supports MPEG-4 (H.264)

http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html

That transformers trailer is stretched. You need to add black borders to it so it is a multiple of 320/240, then resize, then upload.

To Tigerix:

You can download the original upload with keepvid.com or with the google video as avi favelet:

javascript:if(document.getElementById('macdownloadlink')!=null){window.location.href=document.getElementById('macdownloadlink')}else{alert('Go to Google Video to download videos as AVI.')};

I've been through lots of encoders and codecs, not to think of converters. you can check out the site: www.xdmotion.com..

on that site there is a hd movie trailer (ironman) convertet to only 20 mb with an amazing
sound and quality.

just thought I could help a bit.

that is the best converter I've bumped into so far.
even better then h264+++

regards
Iris

For what it's worth, Youtube is officially in 720p now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEm8PZ_lUh8&fmt=22
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPcimeiqLE&fmt=22

And my 1.6GHz Pentium M notebook CHOKES on these. I think I'm dropping 5% of the frames during playback at the very least.

Worse is never better. I hate the saying 'worse is better' because it isn't. Flash videos are better because they just work. Sure the video quality is worse, but that is an another, separate, story. I watch my videos as better quality when ever practically and at least somewhat conveniently possible, so flash is not winning totally.

Here is my explanation of why youtube's video quality is degraded and the difference between their Standard, HQ, and HD formats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u99J7RUgsw&fmt=22

"Flash Video quality is, in a word, hideous"

This post was made a long time ago and a lot has changed in the "flash video" world.

For example now flashplayer supports h.264 playback and we also have the vp6 E and S formats and if you know what you are doing vp6 can give you some really nice quality renderings of hd videos. Also there is VP7 and VP8 is coming down the pipe.