Video Casting problems

If I could only get the stinking video to render correctly it get the video on the web for you to view. But I am having a lot of troubles, not with Apple Quicktime, but with the format of the original copy.
The problem: MPEG-2 cannot be converted to Quicktime directly, either through Final Cut, Premiere (PC) or Quicktime Pro(mac or PC). For some reason it just won’t render the audio.
My options:

  1. Have the video encode on a mac with the help of this program.

    2. Bad:
    Having to transfer the video to a mac to do the encoding through Export2QT, which turns out to be very fast at encoding the media.
    It wouldn’t take too much time to do but it would be tedious.

    Good:
    Control, even though it would take more time then having an application do it for me I would know exactly what is going on if something broke down in the process. Especially since I would be doing it at home; I would hate to have to go to the bridge to try to re-initiate/error correct.

  2. Have a mac capture the video in h.254 directly using Quicktime Broadcaster.

    3. Good:
    FREE
    FAST, not only would there be no render time but it would be easy to create an automater workflow to upload the files to the server or even have Jared create a program that would upload and post it to WordPress.

    Bad:
    Will need another dedicated machine to capture the video. At theB we have a mac mini that could possibly do this but the times we need it for iChat AV we would have to do option 1.

As you can tell I don’t really know what I am going to do because we have to capture in MPEG-2 and I need to get h.264 for the VideoCasting.

Also, going with another codec for the video cast is just not an option. I know I may seem like an Apple geek right now but the only reason I had to start doing Pod/Videocasting was because iTunes did it all, letting me, for the first time, deliver media to the masses without being tech support. Dealing with questions/explanations on how to use bittorrent, DivX, or any other superior possibility is something I cannot do. Honestly, we live in a one click world, and iTunes is the only thing that can do one click audio/video delivery for the user.

Blog

July 08

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About the Author, Dan Cameron:

I'm the owner and solution engineer , a web solutions company that specializes in web development including WordPress.

I started my first blog in 2003 and transitioned to WordPress in 2004. Since moving to WordPress I've written a few plugins and themes for public consumption. Lately I'm busy engineering/building/coding and have only been able to share a few code snippets.

If you're in need of some web development, web design or custom WordPress plugins and/or themes contact me, I'll be happy to discuss it with you.

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  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    Can you send me a small cut out (like a minute or two) of the MPEG-2 file?

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    No, I would have to cut it at the B. And if I am there doing that I might as well give you the entire Mpeg2 file because it’s better to test a large file rather then a small one. Renders rarely fail on small files. Maybe I will get you the files tonight.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    Why can’t you capture to avi and then render the mpeg2 and the h.264 separately from that?

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    <ol>
    So:
    <li> 1) Time</li>

    <li>2) Quality, capturing in the best quality is ideal. MPEG2 is not the best quality but it is the best quality that we would ever distribute or use. And we are not going to capture in a better quality and downsample it, that would be stupid, see number 1.</li>

    <li>
    3) VideoCasting is not a higher priority then our archives or creating DVDs.</li>

    </ol>

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    MPEG2 is the codec for DVD, as you know, so when we need to burn a DVD, which is pretty much every week, we doen’t have wait, no encoding nesecarry. Having all of our nights archived in MPEG2 is by far the best solution and there is no way we will capture to any other codec unless…there’s no way.

      So:

    1. 1) Time
    2. 2) Quality, capturing in the best quality is ideal. MPEG2 is not the best quality but it is the best quality that we would ever distribute or use. And we are not going to capture in a better quality and downsample it, that would be stupid, see number 1.
    3. 3) VideoCasting is not a higher priority then our archives or creating DVDs.
  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    needs a DVD burned that quickly (as in before they leave for that night), but that is up to you.

    But, anyway, to test that program from #1, you should run through some already recorded sessions as a trial run. If it works, we could start right now posting older sessions.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    We will have to stop talking in person, since it interrupts the flow of our blog conversations…

    Anyway, as we talked about I think either option (1 or 2) above would work, with #2 probably being preferable since then you wouldn’t be re-compressing the mpeg file.

    Either way, I think it could all still be automated. If you still wanted to review the file before it is released, we could have it just post the podcast WP post in draft mode, and then once the file(s) are verified you could just go in and publish the draft copy (and add text, etc.)

    I still say that no one needs a DVD burned that quickly (as in before they leave for that night), but that is up to you.

    But, anyway, to test that program from #1, you should run through some already recorded sessions as a trial run. If it works, we could start right now posting older sessions.

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Jared: I am going to need that application after all.

    It will just need to sync the directories on windows maybe mac later and if you want it to post a draft go for it.

    Thanks.

    I am capturing it on the mac mini then I have to down sample the h.264 file on the PC. I might just look into a mpeg2 h.264 program on the pc so I don’t have to capture on the mac at all but then I have to worry about the encode times.

    Never ending journey.

    Did you check it out yet?

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Oh, and I had to burn 3 dvd last night. so there.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    want them that fast, but I continue to maintain that no one needs them within an hour or even that same night. It’s all about setting expectations and boundaries. Sure, you can get people DVDs that quickly, and if you continue to do that then that is what people will expect of you (and get pissed if you don’t do it). But if you (for good reason) tell them that they will have to wait a day or two, then they should accept that, and in fact they’ll have to since they have no other alternative. Sounds kind of cold, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

    Just think of Scotty of the original enterprise; he always told the captain that whatever he asked was impossible, that way, when he came through he was a hero, and if he didn’t, no skin off his back, because it was an unreasonable request.

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Jared: I am going to need that application after all.

    It will just need to sync the directories on windows maybe mac later and if you want it to post a draft go for it.

    Thanks.

    I am capturing it on the mac mini then I have to down sample the h.264 file on the PC. I might just look into a mpeg2 > h.264 program on the pc so I don’t have to capture on the mac at all but then I have to worry about the encode times.

    Never ending journey.

    Did you check it out yet?

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Capturing to MPEG2 still will not change. It’s not that people request it but if we need to burn a DVD I don’t want to wait.

    Capturing to AVI is just something that I don’t see us doing, ever.
    1. It takes too long to burn a DVD. Yes I could say it will be ready next week but after you start the encode someone has to be there to save the file and put the DVD in. I am NOT going to go during the week to make a couple clicks and put a blank DVD in the tray. That’s dumb.
    2. Drive space. We already have way to much space taken up by the MPEG2 files, this is the smallest; at the best quality you can get, unless you want to re-encode; see 1.
    3. Even if I encode to AVI I still have to re-encode the AVI to H.264. So what is the point. So I can do it all on the PC? There has to be another way. Which I will look for today.

    About the app.: that’s fine no problem. I rather have you work on the Kiosk computers first since a couple brats are unplugging the computers from the wall to log into the guest account so they can surf the net. So, the app. isn’t really that big of a deal.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    Re: the kiosk computers – Ya, James was telling me about that last night. I don’t know who they are, but I applaud them for their efforts. I will see if I can swing by and pick up the computers sometime this week and set them up properly, like I wanted to do from the beginning but just never got around to. I am pretty sure they will not be able to get around anything once I do that. It will be a fun little game we’ll play. Of course, I’d rather they didn’t unplug/replug them while they were running, but they will soon stop that once it won’t work for them anymore. One thing we may need though is locks on the doors of the kiosk stand, because James was also saying they were opening it up and poking around inside there.

    Re: the avi, I was just thinking that because if it’s uncompressed AVI, then you would only be doing one level of compression going to h.264, rather than compressing to mpeg2 then recompressing to h.264 – I would think there would be quality issues there. If that’s how you did the 7/3 video, it doesn’t look to good, but I will check out the 7/10 one later to see if that’s any different. I was thinking that you would still do the mpeg2 capture for the DVDs and then have a separate capture to avi on the mini, just for the h.264 encoding.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    OK, I will try to start on it soon. My side-project back burner is getting a little full (because I am busy with real work), and there are things on there that I put on a long time ago, but I will hopefully get to it soon.

    What are you capturing in on the mac? I will try to download last nights video sometime today. The one from the 3rd looked pretty bad, but maybe that one was done differently. I would worry about doing mpeg2 to h.264 because of the re-compression; do you have the HD space to capture uncompressed AVI?

    As for the 3 DVDs, I’m sure lots of people want them that fast, but I continue to maintain that no one needs them within an hour or even that same night. It’s all about setting expectations and boundaries. Sure, you can get people DVDs that quickly, and if you continue to do that then that is what people will expect of you (and get pissed if you don’t do it). But if you (for good reason) tell them that they will have to wait a day or two, then they should accept that, and in fact they’ll have to since they have no other alternative. Sounds kind of cold, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

    Just think of Scotty of the original enterprise; he always told the captain that whatever he asked was impossible, that way, when he came through he was a hero, and if he didn’t, no skin off his back, because it was an unreasonable request.

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    about the same as an uncompressed AVI especially since the quality of the h.264 is going to be a lot lower then the MPEG2.

    So 7/3 quality was not because of re-compression issues it was because of the settings I set it at.
    I am not going to put full quality h.264 on the web it ends up to be around 500megs per hour.

    And once again I am back to not knowing what I am going to do. Either converting the MPEG2 or capturing straight to h.264 then compressing that again because I can’t capture at a lower quality or bitrate. Either way I have to convert the capture.

    The options again:
    1, Convert the MPEG2 to h.264 which takes 8-10 hours but still not that long to setup. But might not be able to compress on a PC (biggest problem)
    2. Capture to h.264 on a mac. Compress that full quality file on a PC or MAC to a lower quality low bandwidth file for the net.

    I like the option 2 since I can re-compress on a PC but I don’t like taking up two systems during service to capture. Two systems means 2 computers to deal with on a Sunday night to start and stop at appropriate times. And option 1 just takes too long to convert but if I just took it home set it up Sunday night or Monday morning then the video would be up by the latest Tuesday.

    I think I just convinced myself to convert the MPEG2 file since the good outweighs the bad:
    Good:
    1. Less stress on Sunday night capturing.
    2. only one designated computer capturing.
    3. NO quality lost.
    Bad:
    1. Have to take it home to encode.
    2. Take longer to encode but still a couple click initiation.

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Oh, and maybe I can find a MPEG2 to MPEG4-10 (h.264) compressor for windows on the web somewhere. Or I can hire someone to make it and sell it myself.

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Teh real question now is. How big is too big for a video download?

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Capturing to MPEG2 still will not change. It’s not that people request it but if we need to burn a DVD I don’t want to wait.

    Capturing to AVI is just something that I don’t see us doing, ever.
    1. It takes too long to burn a DVD. Yes I could say it will be ready next week but after you start the encode someone has to be there to save the file and put the DVD in. I am NOT going to go during the week to make a couple clicks and put a blank DVD in the tray. That’s dumb.
    2. Drive space. We already have way to much space taken up by the MPEG2 files, this is the smallest; at the best quality you can get, unless you want to re-encode; see 1.
    3. Even if I encode to AVI I still have to re-encode the AVI to H.264. So what is the point. So I can do it all on the PC? There has to be another way. Which I will look for today.

    About the app.: that’s fine no problem. I rather have you work on the Kiosk computers first since a couple brats are unplugging the computers from the wall to log into the guest account so they can surf the net. So, the app. isn’t really that big of a deal.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    Re: the kiosk computers – Ya, James was telling me about that last night. I don’t know who they are, but I applaud them for their efforts. I will see if I can swing by and pick up the computers sometime this week and set them up properly, like I wanted to do from the beginning but just never got around to. I am pretty sure they will not be able to get around anything once I do that. It will be a fun little game we’ll play. Of course, I’d rather they didn’t unplug/replug them while they were running, but they will soon stop that once it won’t work for them anymore. One thing we may need though is locks on the doors of the kiosk stand, because James was also saying they were opening it up and poking around inside there.

    Re: the avi, I was just thinking that because if it’s uncompressed AVI, then you would only be doing one level of compression going to h.264, rather than compressing to mpeg2 then recompressing to h.264 – I would think there would be quality issues there. If that’s how you did the 7/3 video, it doesn’t look to good, but I will check out the 7/10 one later to see if that’s any different. I was thinking that you would still do the mpeg2 capture for the DVDs and then have a separate capture to avi on the mini, just for the h.264 encoding.

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    about 7/3. It isn’t the re-encode that is giving the poor quality. It is the file size that I limited it to. It’s around 50megs and I think I will double it for now on. This weeks is just about the same quality, unless you view the high-quality file. There is another one that I will upload today that I am encoding with a multi-pass, which should help. I am still trying to get the best quality and size straightened out.

    Capturing to the codec you want is the best. It’s faster and there is no encoding that needs to be done after to degrade the quality any further. The MPEG2 is the first level so if we were to encode to h.264 from that it’s still going to be about the same as an uncompressed AVI especially since the quality of the h.264 is going to be a lot lower then the MPEG2.

    So 7/3 quality was not because of re-compression issues it was because of the settings I set it at.
    I am not going to put full quality h.264 on the web it ends up to be around 500megs per hour.

    And once again I am back to not knowing what I am going to do. Either converting the MPEG2 or capturing straight to h.264 then compressing that again because I can’t capture at a lower quality or bitrate. Either way I have to convert the capture.

    The options again:
    1, Convert the MPEG2 to h.264 which takes 8-10 hours but still not that long to setup. But might not be able to compress on a PC (biggest problem)
    2. Capture to h.264 on a mac. Compress that full quality file on a PC or MAC to a lower quality low bandwidth file for the net.

    I like the option 2 since I can re-compress on a PC but I don’t like taking up two systems during service to capture. Two systems means 2 computers to deal with on a Sunday night to start and stop at appropriate times. And option 1 just takes too long to convert but if I just took it home set it up Sunday night or Monday morning then the video would be up by the latest Tuesday.

    I think I just convinced myself to convert the MPEG2 file since the good outweighs the bad:
    Good:
    1. Less stress on Sunday night capturing.
    2. only one designated computer capturing.
    3. NO quality lost.
    Bad:
    1. Have to take it home to encode.
    2. Take longer to encode but still a couple click initiation.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    I still think you should at least do a test between uncompressed AVI to h264 and mpeg2 to h264. The test wouldn’t be that hard to do, and I think you would end up with a better quality. Especially if you are doing multipass, the better quality the original the better it will turn out I’m pretty sure.

    Even though the mpeg2 is still “better” quality than the h264, it’s still a lossy compression method, and already contains compression artifacts before you start putting it through to do the h264. If it turns out I’m wrong (after the test) then oh well.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    As for the size, I would just look at other video casts out there (are there any in iTunes now)?

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Lets get this straight. We will NEVER capture to uncompressed AVI.

    1. I am not going to convert AVI it to MPEG2 for DVDs; NEVER.
    2. If the capture is solely for the video cast then I would capture to that codec. I would rather capture to h.264 at full quality and then down sample it. a) it’s smaller, in case I have to move it somewhere. b) it’s a lot faster to re encode. 3) No (visable) quality loss.

    You might want to try the new video from last night. Not the HQ since it’s down. And if you complain about the quality of last nights then you are crazy, because you are probably watching them full screen; not good. Just double click the video in the lower left window of iTunes and a new window will open.

    I think I will keep it at 90kbytes per second and at 15FPS. That runs about 80megs for an hour which is descent for downloading.

  • http://firefox.blogcarnival.com/archives/2005/07/video_casting_p.html Firefox

    Video Casting Problems

    It’s iTunes or the highway for this publisher….

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    I still think you should at least do a test between uncompressed AVI to h264 and mpeg2 to h264. The test wouldn’t be that hard to do, and I think you would end up with a better quality. Especially if you are doing multipass, the better quality the original the better it will turn out I’m pretty sure.

    Even though the mpeg2 is still “better” quality than the h264, it’s still a lossy compression method, and already contains compression artifacts before you start putting it through to do the h264. If it turns out I’m wrong (after the test) then oh well.

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    Lets get this straight. We will NEVER capture to uncompressed AVI.

    1. I am not going to convert AVI it to MPEG2 for DVDs; NEVER.
    2. If the capture is solely for the video cast then I would capture to that codec. I would rather capture to h.264 at full quality and then down sample it. a) it’s smaller, in case I have to move it somewhere. b) it’s a lot faster to re encode. 3) No (visable) quality loss.

    You might want to try the new video from last night. Not the HQ since it’s down. And if you complain about the quality of last nights then you are crazy, because you are probably watching them full screen; not good. Just double click the video in the lower left window of iTunes and a new window will open.

    I think I will keep it at 90kbytes per second and at 15FPS. That runs about 80megs for an hour which is descent for downloading.

  • Pingback: Firefox

  • JaredB

    Note to self:

    Don’t mention AVI to Dan (henceforth known as the “MPEG nazi”) anymore…

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    AVI reminds me too much of M$ for some reason.

    I do love AVI though, DivX and all.

  • http://freepressblog.org JaredB

    I don’t think AVI is related to Microsoft (they have their own funky video formats). Also, be sure not to confuse “DivX” (the video codec) with “DIVX” (the evil early attempt at DVD DRM).

  • JaredB

    Note to self:

    Don’t mention AVI to Dan (henceforth known as the “MPEG nazi”) anymore…

  • http://scatteredthoughts.us Dan

    AVI reminds me too much of M$ for some reason.

    I do love AVI though, DivX and all.

  • Dave Z

    H.264 over H.323 is my world at work for now.

    Dan, thanks for trying. I went to try the VC out and no go, my home pc is 98….
    I know, I know

    will try it out when I can get the laptop free from the kidz.

  • Dave Z

    H.264 over H.323 is my world at work for now.

    Dan, thanks for trying. I went to try the VC out and no go, my home pc is 98….
    I know, I know

    will try it out when I can get the laptop free from the kidz.