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Best Way To Distribute Video Online?
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Sep 04, 2008 04:21 PM
from the just-assume-others-will-mirror dept.
from the just-assume-others-will-mirror dept.
CHAMELEON_D_H writes "For some time now, I've been working on a short, geek/nerd oriented animation. It's nearing completion, and I'm starting to look for a method to share it with anyone willing to spare a minute. There are dozens of video sharing and streaming sites out there, making my choice very difficult. Looking for the best possible video and audio quality, while still having vast OS and browser compatibility leaves me dumbfounded. Having a download link would be a great bonus. Youtube is the default and most common choice, but has mediocre video quality and resolution. DivX Web Player has astounding quality, but requires users to download DivX's plugin and forces me to find hosting or purchase more bandwidth, as they no longer serve videos via stage6.
Do Slashdotters have any experience with sharing or uploading videos? Problems you've encountered? What do your eyes say about different streaming video sites?"
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Why Not Various Formats & Qualities? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the bottom, he had a list of various Quicktime sizes. One was pretty much HD and he said that if you didn't have a large high quality display that you should just go for the medium version. He also pointed out you could download them by right clicking if (and his provider is horrendous) you got choppy video.
Nobody brought his site to his knees, 90% of the people probably just watched the YouTube video and everyone could watch it.
You could do a similar thing, hell you could even point out that you don't need to install QuickTime or a DIVX codec if you just watch from the portal page or visit YouTube.
Remember, you may be a quality snob but your audience isn't always so I would leave the choice to them. Is there something about your video that makes it look unbearable on YouTube? Is the animation and its features really that detailed and fine?
If it is, I have another idea. I don't know how this works but I buy my Cinematic Titanic dvds from EZ-Takes [eztakes.com] (also known as DVD Wagon) and it looks like they'll sell anything on there for a low price. You could contact a company that sells streaming video or DVD ISOs for low prices like $1 and then just not get anything for profit and use them as a cheap host for your audience. You might not see profits but you'll retain the rights to your video/audio and have a way someone can spend a dollar and get the highest quality possible from you. There's probably a more reliable company to do this through, I just know of EZ Takes.
Laugh in the face of melted servers (Score:2, Informative)
Spend a few bucks converting a high quality source to Flash Video format. THEN:
If you want to host it yourself, check out HaXeVideo [google.com]. Also, Red5 [osflash.org] is supposedly widely adopted.
If you're uncomfortable with open source, check out Wowza or FMS2 - both of these proprietary servers let 10 people watch your video at the same time, and come with plenty of examples. As long as your computer is connected to the internets & you know how to configure a router...
DivX is NO FORMAT! (Score:5, Informative)
DivX is a CODEC (enCOder+DECoder) for the MPEG4 video format.
You can play DivX encoded videos with every MPEG4-compatible decoder.
Every other information is only deliberate disinformation by DivX Inc. to sell you their trash.
But why would you use such an outdated and non-free codec in the first place, when there are enough alternatives.
There are x264, XviD, Theora as video encoders,
Matroska and Ogg as containers,
Vorbis, MP3 and too many other formats and encoders to count for audio.
And nowadays eveybody who watches downloaded films has those on his disk anyway (except maybe for Theora and the Ogg DirectVideo demuxer).
Parent
Re:DivX is NO FORMAT! (Score:4, Informative)
DivX is not just a codec. DivX 4 through 6 do use the MPEG 4 Part II video spec (ASP) but what's important is that DivX defines additional constraints such as limiting the use of different bitstream features and data rates for CE device classes with varying capabilities to ensure a high quality playback experience on a very wide range of hardware. DivX Profiles (e.g. Mobile, Home Theater, 1080 HD) also constrain file format features and valid audio formats for the same reason.
This is why you can buy $50 devices that are certified to play all your DivX files smoothly so long as you've encoded them to the correct profile. Can you walk into a store and easily identify something on the shelf that you're absolutely certain will play any other combination of formats? I bet most people can't.
But why would you use such an outdated and non-free codec in the first place, when there are enough alternatives.
DivX Codec was just updated last month.
There are x264, XviD, Theora as video encoders,
Matroska and Ogg as containers,
Vorbis, MP3 and too many other formats and encoders to count for audio.
x264 is a good codec, but good luck finding a low-cost DVD player that supports it. Xvid is a comparable video codec to DivX and provides compatible output options - i.e. leveraging the support DivX has built in low-cost CE devices. Theora has no CE support that I am aware of, and I don't think CE support of Ogg is either extensive or thoroughly tested by anyone. Vorbis as an audio format is only recently being supported even in PMP devices (sure, you can find a handful here and there).
If the only thing that's important to you is playback on your desktop then sure, do whatever you like. I like creating my media so that I can pass it to friends without worry, watch it on my TV with my $50 TV player or connected device, transfer it to my phone, etc.
Every other information is only deliberate disinformation by DivX Inc. to sell you their trash.
One of the greatest values of DivX is that an interoperable and largely open platform that has been created to bridge the gap from your desktop to the world of consumer electronics. Name any other high efficiency video format openly accessible to the general consumer that almost any software can export to that works on thousands of low cost devices from hundreds of manufacturers. Infact, name some other companies dedicated to making platforms that are so open and accessible who have actually been fairly successful in doing so?
Where is the love? :)
Parent
Re:DivX is NO FORMAT! (Score:4, Informative)
Besides (AFAIK) SD DivX content cannot be progressive
Quite the opposite! Most of it is progressive. Both progressive and interlace (top or bottom field first) is supported. However, progressive is recommended because it requires a much lower data rate for the same quality.
interlaced is not good for desktops (and deinterlacers suck). Therefore if you want HD or desktops then H.264 can be a better choice.
Interlace indeed is not great for desktops, but the DivX Decoder for DirectShow can ask the renderer to de-interlace. On most modern graphics cards you'll get nice 50/60fps bob, which looks really fluid. H.264 is troublesome, especially for 1080HD, because decode requirements for 1080HD H.264 are much, much higher than for 1080ASP, upon which DivX is based. This is because the format itself is more complex (smaller blocks, longer references, CABAC) and due to mandatory in-loop deblock, whereas post-processing in ASP can be adapted based on real-time playback performance.
Not to mention that there is huge amount of devices capable of H.264 (iPod, etc.)
What is "etc."? ;) AFAIK there is iPod, PSP (with some quirks), and there is Blu-Ray, and that's it. Additionally, there are multiple H.264 levels and multiple H.264 profiles and you can't just move content between devices without targeting them appropriate. iPod, for example only supports Baseline profile [apple.com]. High profile decoders (i.e. Blu-Ray) are not required to support all of the features present in baseline profiles.
However, DivX is already working on an H.264 solution designed for interoperability. Check it out [divx.com] ;)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But why would you use such an outdated and non-free codec in the first place, when there are enough alternatives.
Compatibility. Next to nothing uses Theora and Vorbis, and Matroska and Ogg are very obscure container formats that require codec packs to be installed AND only work on a handful of platforms. For example, Matroska only works properly on Windows.
Performance. H.264 and Divx/Xvid are relatively CPU intensive, especially H.264. So if you want to play your video on older hardware or handhelds, these codecs are right out. I still encode stuff in MPEG 1 for this reason.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Compatibility. Next to nothing uses Theora and Vorbis, and Matroska and Ogg are very obscure container formats that require codec packs to be installed AND only work on a handful of platforms. For example, Matroska only works properly on Windows.
Well this sucks. I ripped my entire Simpsons DVD collection, encoded it using x264, and put each episode in a Matroska file using GNU/Linux. And all this time I've just been hallucinating while I was watching them! On my MacBook... My Nokia N800... I'd better run out and get a copy of Windows so I can install a CODEC pack that allows me to watch all these videos in the MKV container--maybe the VLC player? That's a CODEC pack, right? Thank you so much for exposing my apparent Mplayer-induced delusional episo
Re: (Score:3)
I, too, laughed out loud at the Matroska => Windows disinformation, along with the "AVI is not flawed" posting above. Then there's the "no one supports Matroska in hardware" meme.
1) You can play files in the Matroska container on any platform that mplayer supports, and that's quite a few. But like the poster above me, maybe I was hallucinating when I watched those files on my Fedora box. The xine engine also supports Matroska. Have a file in the Matroska container with H.264 encoding, soft subtitles
Re:DivX is NO FORMAT! (Score:5, Informative)
XVid is basically the same as Divx so that is fine, but the rest are weird non standard junk not supported in very much. That's something you reencode to avi as fast as possible if you can't get it in avi to start with.
Non standard junk? x264 is an encoder for h264, which happens to be the standard format for high quality video.
Matroska is the best generic container format (replacing the flawed avi) as well as open standard and open source based. It does suffer somewhat from not being the industry (as in big business) standard, but on merits it is the best on the market, and with the increasing use to distribute high definition content in the scene, improved hardware support is very likely.
The mpeg container format (.mp4 - can't remember its real name right now) is industry supported which means that it is implemented in more hardware, but compared to Matroska it is less flexible. Still, when using h264, I won't blaim any business for going with that format, even though I prefer to use Matroska for all my encoding.
As for Ogg and Theora, they are far less common. Ogg is pretty much dead in the water. Matroska simply won over it at the start, and ogg has never been able to recover from that. Theora is nice in that it isn't patent encumbered, which is a plus for businesses that need to think about licenses, but to be honest it will have a hard time replacing h264 or its older sibling mpeg4 (divx,xvid). The usage for theora lies in specialized software playback such as games, where the playback engine is included and license fees can be troublesome.
Parent
Re:DivX is NO FORMAT! (Score:5, Informative)
Matroska is the best generic container format (replacing the flawed avi) as well as open standard and open source based.
Matroska is nice, but AVI is not "flawed". Lots of people dislike AVI and can't explain why, only that they have heard others also saying that it is "flawed". AVI has supported a wide range of compressors including DivX and Xvid for many years successfully. AVI is certainly not best suited to H.264 but given that AVI, introduced in 1992, stems from IFF, first introduced by Electronic Arts in 1985, you can hardly call that a flaw. The main technical challenge that AVI writers have to deal with is correctly writing VBR audio streams - an issue that has already been addressed for many, many years.
Maybe you can explain why you think AVI is "flawed"?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps "flawed" is not the best word to describe the AVI container format, however it is definitely outdated and no longer the ideal format for modern video/audio. Matroska is without a doubt superior to AVI, with its only flaw being that it is not yet supported by much of the "industry".
AVI has had many shortcomings that have since been overcome by extensions, such as the 2gb file limit (solved by OpenDML). Most importantly for today however, AVI d
Torrent. (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody brought his site to his knees, 90% of the people probably just watched the YouTube video and everyone could watch it.
If the link points to a torrent, the site is even more likely to be able to withstand lots of users downloading the video.
That's what torrent where designed to begin with (before the format became also popular on sites like pirate bay) : to enable content provider to distribute huge files without killing too much bandwidth.
All the poster has to do is to send some way or another (using a plain HTTP link, or sending burned CD-R through snail-mail) the file to a small amount of friends who could all seed the file initially and everything will be ok.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
&fmt=18 (Score:3, Informative)
The secret to YouTube is adding &fmt=18 at the end of the URL.
My fiance just put up her first professional music video, and the quality is pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op11TX0ELIg&fmt=18 [youtube.com]. The benefits of ease-of-distribution, in my opinion, far outweigh the loss in quality.
Plus, as you hit the high levels of quality, you shut out more and more people as the speed increases.
why not both? (Score:5, Informative)
Vimeo (Score:5, Informative)
I mostly see things pop up on Vimeo when people don't want to post them on Youtube for quality reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
I would second that, maybe post it on YouTube for the number of eyes that would see it, and then link to a Vimeo version of the video in higher resolution - you can post at up to HD resolution on Vimeo.
Re: (Score:2)
First and second Vimeo. It is Youtube with decent (very decent in fact) quality. No hassle with bandwidth issues. No problem regarding quality.
Re: (Score:2)
What kind of quality does your animation need? (Score:4, Interesting)
Animation is *such* a broad space. Some kinds of animation don't need much resolution or bandwidth, e.g. South Park. Other kinds might want lots of pixels or at least wide format, but they're still fairly low bandwidth, e.g. cartoons with lots of things in them or landscapy shapes. But there are kinds of animation where you really do need more quality/bandwidth, e.g. you're starting with photo images and doing interesting things with lighting that you want to show off.
Depending on what you're doing, it may be that YouTube, or YouTube in full-screen mode, may be enough, or it may not, and Youtube's been talking about handling higher-resolution video as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The DeadlyPandas [deadlypandas.com] site has quick and easy info about properly encoding a video for YouTube using VirtualDub (skip the initial "game recording" stuff).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the home for almost all of my videos. They won't take AMVs or mashups so I still have to upload those to YouTube. But anything original? Vimeo all the way.
SimpleCDN (Score:5, Informative)
Flat fee per upload. Plus you get 15 credits just for registering.
http://simplecdn.com/ [simplecdn.com]
Their MirrorCDN option is also nice, depending on what you're doing. $.07/GB is less than half of what S3 charges for transfer rates.
imeem.com has pretty darn good video (Score:5, Informative)
Find a bunch of mirrors (Score:2)
It's geek related, lots of people that have bandwidth to share on their Flash streaming servers. Set up a script that round-robins across a bunch of streaming servers. Just use a decent encoder and the quality will be good.
Vimeo (Score:2)
If you want some sort of "universally" available distribution your only real option is Flash. The best flash video site (which even supports HD) is Vimeo, and you would probably find it to be the highest recommended site among video pros.
An alternative is to encode into one of the standard formarts, MPEG-1 probably covers most ground and distribute using Vuze, but that requires your audience download Vuze (aka Azuerus).
Re: (Score:3)
Flash is hardly universal. It excludes those who have any 64 bit OS other than Windows.
Xvid is open source and available for just about any platform. So why not just host the avi on a web server and let people download or stream with the player of their choice?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It excludes those who have any 64 bit OS other than Windows.
Actually, no, it doesn't. Flash is available for most of these platforms. Flash is not available in a 64 bit version for 64 bit anything (including Windows) but neither are the majority of browsers on the market today unless you are an expert. If you are an expert you really should not have a problem at all running flash on your 64 bit computer. I run Flash on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, all of them (sorta) 64 bit OSs.
As it comes to universality, Flash has broader coverage than any other distribution mecha
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Firefox on Ubuntu 64-bit is 64-bit.
Why would ANY 64-bit distro default to 32-bit browsers? Wouldn't that defeat the point of even having a 64-bit distro, and require fragile compatibility libraries?
personal experience... (Score:5, Interesting)
I like blip.tv or vimeo. Both offer significantly higher quality than YouTube. The only hassle with blip is that you have to pay to get "premium" encoding, although the free version works just fine if you're patient enough to wait a few hours.
However, it may make more sense to host the file yourself (you can use something like Amazon's AWS to serve gigabytes of content for hardly anything) using any of a number of excellent embedded video viewers. This gives you absolute control over your media, which is a surprisingly valuable commodity. If your animation turns out to be popular, your site could see hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of visits. That can easily add up to tens of thousands of dollars of revenue. On the other hand, if you upload your film to YouTube, you're going to hand over that advertising revenue to Google and walk away empty handed. Honestly, "social media" sites are a fool's game - You do all the hard work, someone else profits.
Vimeo is the best for HD (Score:2)
Vimeo is your best bet, especially if your footage is HD.
Try the higher quality YouTube (Score:5, Informative)
YouTube has a "high quality" video upload option. I've watched a few - most of them are pretty good. Might be suitable for your purposes, and of course, universally accessible. Check it out:
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=91450 [google.com]
Here's what I've seen done (Score:5, Informative)
Put the crappy version up on Youtube. It lets people see what you're about and whether they'd like to have a better version.
Now here's the trick: in the video description area, include a link to a torrent tracker with the higher quality version. Seed it yourself to get the ball rolling, watch it take off from there.
I've seen people who make game videos do that sort of thing, like when it's show-off clips or game music videos and the like.
The advantage of doing it this way is you increase the stumble-on factor by being on Youtube and people can see your video in seconds. Those who care enough to demand the higher-quality version will have the torrent link and be very happy. All around, win-win. Now aside from using a p2p app and thus directly supporting the terrorists, you're all set.
Streaming does not allow high quality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most users seem to know how to download a video file using BitTorrent, so why not use that standard?
Uhhh... no. Most users don't.
Most users have never even heard of bittorrent.
Bittorrent is not a standard. Not by far.
If you're not giving the masses streaming video, they're helpless.
Even right-click + save is to complicated for a lot of people.
Self fulfilling prophecy? (Score:4, Informative)
I think this [noamr.info] is the video.
I know (or believe, rather) this wasn't your intention, but I am working on the coveted "Commander of the Obvious" award for most obvious solution.
Bittorrent streaming now available (Score:5, Interesting)
You can now stream over bittorrent. This works by prioritizing earlier segments in the file and combining the bittorrent client with the media player.
See here:
http://trial.p2p-next.org/ [p2p-next.org]
http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/27/eztv-allows-bittorrent-streaming/ [ghacks.net]
-molo
Try your best to future-proof it (Score:5, Informative)
duh! (Score:4, Funny)
Youtube has ruined reputation of flash. (Score:4, Informative)
Please don't accuse me of a flash advocate, but it's really not their fault. Youtube encodes video at a lower quality to save bandwidth.
Flash actually support multiple codecs. h.264 is the standard used today for many video encoding needs. h.264 is sometimes used with youtube and flash, but to what extend I don't recall.
So really flash is like any other player. The best way to send video over the internet is to first encode it into h.264
Re:Youtube has ruined reputation of flash. (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, yes! The reputation of Flash. Such a highbrow platform, associated with such professional content as "Punch the Monkey" ads and so-called "websites" with zero HTML content.
Too bad Youtube shattered our image of Flash.
Parent
Don't forget ownership! (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe many of these video sharing sites claim rights to anything you post. You may want to keep that in mind when choosing (if that matters to you).
Try unicornmedia (Score:2)
Infinovision is #1 (Score:2, Interesting)
New DivX site coming (Score:2)
yahoo hosting and on2 video? (Score:2)
Why not use Yahoo Hosting which has unlimited data and transfer [yahoo.com]?
Couple that with On2 [on2.com]'s Flix encoder for making VP6 videos (makes Youtube look like a B&W TV with rabbit ears vs HDTV with a true 1080p source)
there's also a few other choices in terms of hosting that has unlimited data storage and unlimited bandwidth for a reasonable price per month...just use our good friend...google.
YourPerView does higher quality and longer videos (Score:2)
Ask Slashdot (Score:2)
What's the best way to distribute HTML files online?
$5/m unlimited hosting ... (Score:2)
I can get hosting with no transfer limits for $5 per month and there's plenty of ISPs to choose apart from the one I use.
How poor do you have to be to not be able to afford that?
Here's some tips (Score:3, Informative)
For streaming on site:
1.
Convert your movie to MP4 with AAC sound and use some free, open source flash video player like http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player [jeroenwijering.com] for streaming.
2.
Use Vimeo. Very good quality.
3.
Offer Youtube clip and Vimeo and downloads on the same page.
Regarding bandwidth:
1. Offer the movie in 3-4 sizes
2. Use a torrent tracker (either on the server or something like PirateBay), it helps.
If you don't want to use bittorrent and he expects lots of simultaneous downloads, buy a dedicated server with a lot of bandwidth.
For example, FDCServers.net offers some servers with up to 15 TB (avg 50mbps) of download pretty much guaranteed, at about 150-170$.
Keep in mind though, if he wants quality bandwidth (not really needed in this case), 100 mbps link (33TB) usually goes for about 500$ a month.