Lean Mean Streaming System for website

[greymalkin]

Hello All,

I'm trying to stream a select few (maybe 10 - 20) videos on a wordpress site hosted by dreamhost.

The video's are podium/presentation material so very little bitrate is required. I took the content from DVD and ran it through xvid4psp to create a very lean video file:
Video: mp4 (h.264, 300kbps VBR)
Video Filters: resize (704x480 --> 480x360 lanczos4resize) | de-interlace (yadif) | 3D temporal denoiser
Audio: mp3 (64kbps VBR)

This takes me from an almost 2gb file to a decent looking 166mb file with a very lean 364kbps requirement.

The problem is when I upload it to my website and try to stream it I'm having all sorts of issues:
1) If I just link to it and let my computer open the default video player it starts playing quickly but it's very choppy
2) If I use the JW flash player and embed it on the page it hangs forever like it's loading the entire thing before playing..it's also choppy.

My actual download speed is of course WAY higher than 365kbps, but I'm wondering if the problem is that my hosted site isn't optimized for video streaming?
Is there a free streaming service that would allow me to upload this video without trashing the quality more?
OR
Is there some special setting I need to set when encoding to make it more "streaming friendly"?

just trying to get some tips from someone who's been there and done that

[TreeTops]

You know I would try Vimeo and use the embed code they provide. They have good quality, even HD. Be sure to look at their compression hints page for the proper upload format for your vid.

[poisondeathray]

2) If I use the JW flash player and embed it on the page it hangs forever like it's loading the entire thing before playing..it's also choppy.

moov atom has to be at the beginning for it to play immediately
http://www.datagoround.com/lab/

I think yamb does this automatically too (puts metadata at beginning)

[greymalkin]

poisondeathray...good to know!

I guess the video hosting sites at the very least add this gem to the video file to make it start up right away. I'm worried it still might be choppy after adding it though..I'll try to test it out tonight.

If it's still not satisfactory I'll give vimeo a shot and make sure I'm adhering to their encoding standards so it doesn't re-encode on upload.

[poisondeathray]

vimeo re-encodes like youtube . If you were going to use something like vimeo, then upload a much higher bitrate

rarely do you get choppy playback at those bitrates you are using for sd footage in flash . If it plays fine locally in a media player, try playing it locally through flash and html page - it's likely something else like browser configuration

[lordsmurf]

hosted by dreamhost.
wondering if the problem is that my hosted site isn't optimized

Dreamhost is a well-known lousy "unlimited" type of host.
Better hosts exists: List of Suggested Web Hosts

Though a streaming CDN like Vimeo is an obvious choice, too.

[greymalkin]

thanks ls, unfortunately we paid for 5 years with them

I got the streaming video to work well with the mp4 fast start tool..thanks! Now the problem is no matter what streaming player I use the audio won't play! It's a standard mp3, 64kbps, 16 bit, 44.1khz file. I originally used an .aac audio file but the players kept squawking about that so I thought I'd go to something more widely used.

[lordsmurf]

AAC is equally standard as MP3.
More so, in fact.

Five years of suffering
vs cutting your losses and moving to a better host.

Never pay more than 1-2 years in advance.

[greymalkin]

ok trying again with .aac

rub it in lordsmurf! . No really if it were for profit or some other business venture I would defnitely eat it and start over, but the site will mainly just be text/images and only very infrequently have video. So other options like vimeo/etc. could be used in this situation.