My quest to get quality HD video with FLV. Help!

[terminalh]

Okay, after spending hours trying to find a solution myself, I figure I should post for some help.

I have an HD camera and I create AVI videos in Sony Vegas. My task after that is to convert to FLV. What I've been doing for a while is converting to FLV using the software "Flash Video MX Pro". I've always used the Flash 8 codec to convert.

That has worked okay for a while, but I've realized my video should be much more crisp for being HD. It's always looked super crisp when objects in the video aren't moving, but when there's movement, it gets pretty distorted. I've been watching videos on NBC.com, and their videos look and load great. I want to achieve that same quality.

Anyway, I tried using both Adobe Media Encoder and On2 Flix Pro to see what my results would be. I ended up getting STUNNING looking video, however the encoded files ended up being HUGE file sizes. And that just can't work. I want to be able to have great looking video but still have the files small enough to where they load smoothly for users.

I also tried a few software programs I saw from here like Super and Avanti, but the results were always super crappy no matter what I tried.

Any advice on where I could start as far as techniques or software would be greatly appreciated. I just want my HD videos to look more like HD!

[Baldrick]

I would convert to mp4 h264 with aac audio( it works fine in Flash players). See https://forum.videohelp.com/topic355179.html

[terminalh]

Hey Baldrick thanks for the reply.

I just downloaded that software, tried to import an AVI file into it and it keeps crashing. No idea why. The AVI files I create from Vegas have the CineForm Codec. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Also, the video player on our website is only programmed to read FLV files, so I'm hoping so find a solution that allows me to have an FLV with awesome quality that isn't too large in size.

[jagabo]

Shoot progressive video rather than interlaced.

[Baldrick]

You can also try use avidemux to create mp4s with h264.

I think you can put h264 in flv also but I'm not sure how though. Maybe using flash professional. But are you sure that your player only supports flv? Have you tried with mp4? Be sure to have an updated macromedia flash player installed.

[poisondeathray]

you can put h264/aac in flv using ffmpeg (but even Adobe recommends .mp4 for this content)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1144019#post1144019

You probably need a directshow filter for cineform, I don't know if any exists. You can probably export out of Vegas using h264 (I think it uses a licensed Mainconcept h264 encoder)

[terminalh]

Thanks a ton for your responses guys. I'll admit though I only understand about half of the stuff you're saying haha. I'm a total novice with this encoder/codec stuff. I tried some of your suggestions but couldn't really get anything working.

The video player on our site was programmed by someone I knew, and it only accepts FLVs. There are also places in our site's database that recognize only FLV files, so I'm pretty sure the mp4 stuff won't work right now. I just tried uploading an mp4 file and the player didn't recognize it.

I honestly hadn't even heard of mp4 very seriously until you guys brought it up. Are you saying that mp4 is what most sites use for high quality flash video, and not flv?

Anyway, my AVI that I convert from Vegas with the Cineform codec looks excellent. I just wish there was a simple way to convert it to FLV and keep the HD quality without having to resort to massively sized files.

[hech54]

Thanks a ton for your responses guys. I'll admit though I only understand about half of the stuff you're saying haha.

In that case....just give Riva FLV Encoder a whirl.
And by the way...you won't get the same quality as your
original footage no matter what compression/codec you use.
Compression = loss of quality.

[terminalh]

Hey Hech,

I've actually used Riva before. But once I got into HD video and used the Cineform codec, Riva didn't accept my AVI files. As far as I know, the Flash Video MX software I have is better than Riva anyway.

I do realize compression always lessens the quality, it's just that there's a fuzziness/distortion to any movement in my videos that I don't see with other professional online media. So I know there's a way to get better looking HD video, I just hope I'm not too stupid to figure it out haha.

[terminalh]

So I think I just realized what makes the video look so good in Adobe Media Encoder etc. It seems as though when there are keyframes placed within every 1 or 2 frames, the quality is superb. I just tried that technique in Flash Video MX Pro, and the quality is perfect. Only problem is that the files are HUGE when there are so many keyframes. Does anyone know how to get around this size issue?

This could be a dumb question, but does the video bitrate have the most effect on how quickly the video buffers for people? For example, say I have the following two video files:

1. A 10mb flv file, video bitrate of 1000, very few keyframes (OKAY quality)

2. A 30mb flv file, video bitrate of 400, many keyframes (SUPERB quality)

Would #2 load better for people since the bitrate is much smaller? Or does load time strictly have to do with overall filesize. I'm just trying to figure out how all the big boys do it, because the quality I saw when I had tons of keyframes is the type of quality that I normally see online, like at NBC.com for example.

Thanks for any insight guys!

[hech54]

Hey Hech,

I've actually used Riva before. But once I got into HD video and used the Cineform codec, Riva didn't accept my AVI files.

Ahh....that's right. Riva is a bit picky on input files.
Another favorite of mine is AviDemux. It has an FLV1 output option
though I've never used it. Might be worth a look. The newest version
of AviDemux accepts much more types of video than the previous versions....
even uncompressed AVI outputted from VDub.

[Soopafresh]

hech54 - true dat, but Cineform is a proprietary commercial codec so Avidemux isn't going to work with the input file.

terminalh - yes, the quality will be much better and if you have the bandwidth, then by all means. Depends on your hosting service and how much traffic you anticipate getting.

Have a look at this: http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/DEMO720_Heima_H264_500K.html

And this site is applicable to what you want to do:

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

[jagabo]

So I think I just realized what makes the video look so good in Adobe Media Encoder etc. It seems as though when there are keyframes placed within every 1 or 2 frames, the quality is superb. I just tried that technique in Flash Video MX Pro, and the quality is perfect. Only problem is that the files are HUGE when there are so many keyframes. Does anyone know how to get around this size issue?

This could be a dumb question, but does the video bitrate have the most effect on how quickly the video buffers for people? For example, say I have the following two video files:

1. A 10mb flv file, video bitrate of 1000, very few keyframes (OKAY quality)

2. A 30mb flv file, video bitrate of 400, many keyframes (SUPERB quality)

No, the reported (or selected) bitrates are wrong. The 30 MB file has ~3x the bitrate of the 10 MB file (assuming they're both from the same source video). That's why it's ~3x bigger. The all keyframe (or very short GOP) video looks better because it's encoded with a much higher bitrate.

In general, at the same bitrate, a long GOP video will have a higher quality than an all keyframe video because predicted frames require far less bitrate.

Other issues regarding compressibility:

Larger frame sizes require more bitrate.

Higher frame rates require more bitrate.

Noisy video, high action/motion video, fog, splashing water, fire, smoke, strobe lights, etc. (anything that causes many pixels to change from frame to frame) all require more bitrate.

Bright video requires more bitrate.

Highly detailed video requires more bitrate.

[terminalh]

Hey again guys,

Thanks a lot for the great links Soopafresh.

Okay I did a test. I know it sounds stupid but I was trying to figure out if load time for our progressively downloaded videos is determined by the kbps in a file or the overall file's size. I encoded 2 separate flv files from the same 5 second video.

1. The first was 300kbps with keyframes in every frame. Ended up being 3.6mb in size. Looked awesome, but obviously WAY too big.

2. The second was 700kbps with keyframes every 10 frames or so. Ended up being 672kb in size. Didn't look that great, but better file size.

So I uploaded both of them to my server, and the second video loaded MUCH faster in the video player. So am I right in assuming that ultimately, how well a video loads on someone's computer is totally dependent on the overall file size of the video?

I was hoping it was somewhat dependent on the kbps, because I'd much rather have larger video files with keyframes in every frame than have smaller video files with less quality.

So I guess I'm still clueless, because I've seen super high quality videos online to where it looks like they have keyframes in every frame, and the videos also load very quickly.

Any last words of advice before I give up and go back to my old ways?

[jagabo]

What you're not getting is that the encoder is not delivering the kbps you asked for when using all key frames.

file size = bitrate * running time

If the running time is the same the 300 kbps file should be less than half the size of the 700 kbps file. Your "300 kbps" file has ~5 times the bitrate of the 700 kbps file.

[poisondeathray]

How did you read you kbps? its obviously incorrect. Filesize = bitrate x running time. Assuming you are using the same video, your reported bitrates cannot be correct for 300kbps @ 3.6MB and 700kbps @ 0.672MB. That must be what you entered. But what you actually got is much different due to keyframe insertion. Use mediainfo to determine the actual bitrate.

Were your tests done with vp6 / flv?

High keyframe frequency was important with that old style flv because of it's low quality and "keyframe popping" because of lack of deblocking. So you were forced to insert more keyframes and use higher bitrate with this old format. They are often 2-4x larger than using h264/aac for the same quality at streaming bitrates - no joke.

You will get much better quality and smaller filesize with h264/aac in mp4 (or you can use .flv if you use ffmpeg to "squeeze" the elementary streams into .flv container)

VP6 @ 350kbps


x264 @ 350kbps


Have a look here at some examples from smok3 from Doom9; the first one is @500kbps. Use the drop down menu to see more (some are HQ, high bitrate examples). You will notice there are some muxed x264 .flv examples as well

http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php?moviename=movies/imax_mute-x640y368.mp4

The "loading times" you mention maybe due to:

1) bandwidth either server upload or client download bottleneck (high bitrate videos will slow loading times, obviously)

2) complexity of encoding (e.g. many b-frames and pyramids with h264 may cause studdering on slow PC's, but even a 3-4 year old pentium 4 should be able stream SD h264 content no problems with Adobe Flash Player - if you are using a different player things maybe different)

[terminalh]

Ah okay, that makes sense. Thanks a lot for explaining that jagabo.

So I do understand that aspect, but is there some way to produce videos with many keyframes that can actually be reasonably downloaded by people? Is that where something like a flash server would come in? I don't really know how that works.

[terminalh]

Thanks poisondeathray! I'll definitely read up on what you're talking about with the h264/aac. Our site's video player only accepts flv with videos that we upload right now though, so I may have to look into changing our player to read mp4 too. Although I saw a couple of you mentioned ffmpeg can somehow put mp4 into flv or something? I'll have to look into that as well.

[jagabo]

h.264 was recently added to the FLV spec. You might look for some updated conversion tools.

[seeminglee]

H.264 has indeed been added to the FLV spec, and starting with CS4 the Adobe Media Encoder can encode to H.264 directly and with the MP4 container.

Relevant info from Adobe Live Docs highlighting the differences for the three flavors of encoding options for flash videos: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AdobeMediaEncoder/4.0/WS053EA898-B158-4c20-8147-FE0881119BE2.html

H.264, On2 VP6, and Sorenson Spark video codecs
When encoding video using Adobe Media Encoder , you can choose from three different video codecs with which to encode your video content for use with Flash Player:

H.264 Support for H.264 video was incorporated into Flash Player beginning with version 9.0.r115. F4V video is a container format for the H.264 video codec, also referred to as MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Encoding). The H.264 video codec provides higher quality video at lower bitrates than the Sorenson Spark and On2 VP6 video codecs used by earlier version of Flash Player, however, it is more computationally demanding than either of these codecs.

In addition to the F4V container format, Flash Player 9.0.115.0 and later versions support files derived from the standard MPEG-4 container format. These files include MP4, M4A, MOV, MP4V, 3GP, and 3G2, if they contain H.264 video or HE-AAC v2 encoded audio, or both.

Note: If you need to use video with alpha channel support for compositing, use the On2 VP6 video codec; F4V does not support alpha video channels.

On2 VP6 The On2 VP6 codec is the preferred video codec to use when creating FLV files you intend to use with Flash Player 8 and higher. The On2 VP6 codec provides:

* Higher quality video when compared to the Sorenson Spark codec encoded at the same bitrate

* Support for the use of an 8-bit alpha channel to composite video

* To support better quality video at the same bitrate, the On2 VP6 codec is noticeably slower to encode and requires more processor power on the client computer to decode and play back. For this reason, carefully consider the lowest common denominator of computer you intend your viewing audience to use when accessing your FLV video content.

Sorenson Spark Introduced in Flash Player 6, the Sorenson Spark video codec can be used to publish Flash documents requiring backwards compatibility to Flash Player 6 and 7. If you anticipate a large user base that uses older computers, use FLV files encoded with the Sorenson Spark codec, as it is much less computationally demanding to play back than either On2 VP6 or F4V video.

I've just converted a normal MP4 using Adobe Media Encoder CS4 and I'd have to say that I'm not entirely impressed with the performance. The same file was converted with similar settings but much faster using XviD4PSP, for example.

You did however mention that you are using Vegas, and being a Vegas Pro 8 user myself, I think that you should be able to achieve good results with the included MainConcept AVC export option which exports the MP4 directly (which is H.264 btw).

More info H.264: it is the best codec available as of now (2008-12) for the best quality and minimal bitrate. Read more about H.264 on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264

Cheers,
See-ming

[BobAchgill]

Okay, after spending hours trying to find a solution myself, I figure I should post for some help.

...

Anyway, I tried using both Adobe Media Encoder and On2 Flix Pro to see what my results would be. I ended up getting STUNNING looking video, however the encoded files ended up being HUGE file sizes. And that just can't work. I want to be able to have great looking video but still have the files small enough to where they load smoothly for users.

...

Any advice on where I could start as far as techniques or software would be greatly appreciated. I just want my HD videos to look more like HD!

I am curious if you tried the VP6-S (designed for HD) preset when you encoded your HD file using On2 Flix Pro?

I am in the same boat as you. I need to stick with .flv format because of my web player is hard coded to use flv.

I am wanting to step up to HD and it appears that On2 Flix Pro is possibly the only answer and yet maintain the .flv footprint. See the white paper... http://www.on2.com/file.php?195

Just for lessons learned ... I compared Riva encoder and a few others that convert to flv and quality degraded at the point that motion began or ended. I guess that is what the 2nd pass encoding, which On2 does, helps. Maybe one pass has a hard time predicting when motion will either start or stop. The 2nd pass knows when it will so can touch up accordingly.

Honestly I would like a cheaper alternative to On2 Flix Pro, though and still get the 2nd pass and .flv foorprint. Have you run across one? Does the VP6-S preset help the size a little? In my test on a non HD clip the VP6-S vga size was 20 percent smaller than the same clip run using VP6-E at a 1000kbs (non HD standard) Maybe when encoding a real HD file the preset VP6-S will do even a better job since that preset is tuned for HD encoding.

[jagabo]

I am wanting to step up to HD and it appears that On2 Flix Pro is possibly the only answer and yet maintain the .flv footprint. See the white paper... http://www.on2.com/file.php?195

Wow, imagine that. A white paper from On2 find's their own codec is the best.

[BobAchgill]

I am wanting to step up to HD and it appears that On2 Flix Pro is possibly the only answer and yet maintain the .flv footprint. See the white paper... http://www.on2.com/file.php?195

Wow, imagine that. A white paper from On2 find's their own codec is the best.

Yeah I know... more like a "yellow paper".

The point I am trying to make is ... i read the whole way through these appends and never saw once someone suggest a all flv footprint solution for HD. Is that right??


The "yellow paper" explained it well for me...that if you want to continue using .flv file extention but in HD quality you will need flash player 9 and VP6-S encoding provided only by On2.
I guess if the existing player is real simple then there may not be a big issue with changing out the player to support non .flv extentions. Though if player puts any flash overlays on the video then as I understand it you have to stick with .flv.

I would love for someone to set me straight on this forum that there is competition out there to ON2's support for .flv with HD because it means there might be a cheaper alternative to consider for encoders.

[jagabo]

FLV fully supports h.264 video with AAC audio now.

[BobAchgill]

FLV fully supports h.264 video with AAC audio now.

So what encoders will do this besides on2 Flix Pro?

[jagabo]

So what encoders will do this besides on2 Flix Pro?

I don't deal with FLV myself but I understand ffmpeg can put h.264/AAC in FLV. I would assume Adobe's tools can do it too.

[sdsumike619]

hech54 - true dat, but Cineform is a proprietary commercial codec so Avidemux isn't going to work with the input file.

terminalh - yes, the quality will be much better and if you have the bandwidth, then by all means. Depends on your hosting service and how much traffic you anticipate getting.

Have a look at this: http://www.flashvideofactory.com/test/DEMO720_Heima_H264_500K.html

And this site is applicable to what you want to do:

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

That is insanely good quality on that demo for 500kb/s - How did he do that?????

[poisondeathray]

He used x264 , maybe some prefiltering. You can look at the settings used when the video is downloaded (metainfo is read in mediainfo)

Format                           : MPEG-4
Format profile                   : Base Media
Codec ID                         : isom
File size                        : 15.5 MiB
Duration                         : 3mn 53s
Overall bit rate                 : 555 Kbps
Encoded date                     : UTC 2007-12-02 17:30:57
Tagged date                      : UTC 2007-12-02 17:30:57

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 6 frames
Codec ID                         : avc1
Codec ID/Info                    : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                         : 3mn 53s
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 482 Kbps
Nominal bit rate                 : 500 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 1 970 Kbps
Width                            : 1 280 pixels
Height                           : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16/9
Frame rate mode                  : Constant
Frame rate                       : 25.000 fps
Resolution                       : 24 bits
Colorimetry                      : 4:2:0
Scan type                        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.021
Stream size                      : 13.4 MiB (87%)
Writing library                  : x264 core 56
Encoding settings                : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=hex / subme=7 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=6 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=0 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=abr / bitrate=500 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30
Encoded date                     : UTC 2007-12-02 17:30:57
Tagged date                      : UTC 2007-12-02 17:30:57

Audio
ID                               : 2
Format                           : AAC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version                   : Version 4
Format profile                   : LC
Format settings, SBR             : Yes
Format settings, PS              : Yes
Codec ID                         : 40
Duration                         : 3mn 53s
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 70.4 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 78.8 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Resolution                       : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 1.96 MiB (13%)
Encoded date                     : UTC 2007-12-02 17:30:57
Tagged date                      : UTC 2007-12-02 17:30:57

[sdsumike619]

It looks really good.. Then again it was HD footage to begin with so it was already high quality..

[poisondeathray]

It looks pretty decent, given the bitrate. But there is quite a bit of detail loss and blur, parts where the image starts to break up, unavoidable at ~500kbps video bitrate for 720p25 with that type of content (some movement, panning, scene changes). There is no way in hell that vp6 will look even close at those bitrates & resolution.