More control over uploaded Video Quality

I'm, still trying to get a balance between bandwidth and Video Quality. The current Flash Module Video Player setting makes no difference to the rendered file size, so it is not making any changes to Video Quality.

A 100% Quality Video at 15fps is exact same size as a 100% Quality Video at 25fps.

If I set it to maintain the exisiting video format the file at 75% 25fps becomes only 2Mb smaller than the original, but looks awesome.

What I was hoping for was that "Keep the Original File Format" would simply convert to MP4 and save it as close to the original video for downloading, which it does. This should have no bearing on the Video Quality of the FLV file for streaming, which it does.

I havn't looked at tweaking the ffmpeg.exe settings manually yet, thats my next step, but wanted to get onboard with the discussion incase you guys know the answers I seek.

Summary: For best quality video I uploaded a HD 25MB WMV. At 75% 25FPS Keep original File format the FLV is beautiful, and 23MB

Turn off the Keep Original File Format and the file is horried regardless of Quality but the FLV is only 1.6MB

So how do I get the FLV to be about half 25-50% the original (which would provide bandwidth savings while providing higher quality than Youtube etc)

Sydeburn

http://cityofmemphis.com register to view videos

Bump!

Zarcon or anyone have a handle on how quality of video is being determined> It is currently a all or nothing and we really need a middle :)

Sydeburnz, Im not sure how to get the quality of the video to your specs without sacrificing the video file size. There is some code in the flash.modules/video/inc/constants.inc.php file that I was playing around with to see if I could get any better quality. You might want to try dabbling with it a bit.

Here is what I did, since the default format to convert is .flv, I tried to change the code in red to something else like wmv (just to test). I was bale to upload the video and it processed it to a .wmv format but it would not play. Here is the area of code I was messing with.

if(!defined("TEMP_FILE_NAME")) define("TEMP_FILE_NAME", "_temp");
if(!defined("THUMB_FILE_NAME")) define("THUMB_FILE_NAME", "_small");
if(!defined("SAVE_EXTENSION")) define("SAVE_EXTENSION", ".mpg");
if(!defined("MOBILE_EXTENSION")) define("MOBILE_EXTENSION", ".mp4");
if(!defined("PLAY_EXTENSION")) define("PLAY_EXTENSION", ".flv");
if(!defined("IMAGE_EXTENSION")) define("IMAGE_EXTENSION", ".jpg");
if(!defined("VIDEO_SIZE_4_3")) define("VIDEO_SIZE_4_3", "480x360");
if(!defined("VIDEO_SIZE_16_9")) define("VIDEO_SIZE_16_9", "640x360");

Maybe you can start with this. Not sure if it is going to work or not though.

Chris

I don't know if this matters but I also noticed the same thing. I think the adjustments only apply to videos you are creating on the fly, like the video comment using the cam on your laptop. Uploading a previously created video is either compressed or not compressed, there is no way to adjust it.

Ok someone point me to the file that calls ffmpeg.exe please :)

Research seems to suggest adding something like -qmin 8 -qmax 8 will set varible bitrate conversion. The higher the number the more loss. So -qmin 1 -qmax 1 should be pretty "lossless" (not practical but something to test)

If anyone else has suggestions or can point me to the correct file/routines I'll tinker.

Additionally, If you plan to only allow flash playback online we need to be able to turn off the various other files it saves.. The other files are only called for Mobile Playback (iPhone App) and Direct Downloads.

Sydeburnz

www.cityofmemphis.com