Anyone a pro at hosting HD video on your websites? Thanks!

[tanglewood]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to figure out or maybe confirm something and this forum seemed to be my best shot at doing that, so here goes...

I'm hosting some videos on my website and have been using standard def capture and then pulling them into after effects and/or premier pro, then exporting them to flv format. I'm ending up with around a 30MB file for around 10 minutes of video. (don't quote me on that, it's just from what I remember)...

I've been looking around at some other websites where other people have HD videos on their sites. The quality difference is outrageous as everyone would guess, so I started to play around with the same process I outlined above.

I shot a 1min video in HD (AVCHD), pulled it into premier pro, and went to export as a high-def flv and it was
over 100MB in size.

So I threw on the breaks and went back to these other websites that I have seen in HD and started poking around (I'm a web programmer during the day)...

What I found was that these videos were in the mp4 format, and that they were being streamed from cloudfront.net.

So being the techy I am and having an amazon account already, I created an S3 account as well as a cloud dist. I tested this CDN with my flv files and wow, they loaded faster... surprising right?

So I then figured that this was all there was to it. Convert to MP4 (smaller compression) and then host it on a cloud front.

So when I went to export my 1min video as an MP4, the file size was around 28MB!!!

I had just watched an HD video on another website that was 16.5min long. Even being hosted on a cloud front, that's still a 462MB file by the calculations of what my exports are on that 1 min video.

So I guess my question is this... am I right about the file sizes? Is a 450MB HD file pretty much standard when putting it on the web? Seeing all the HD vids on youtube makes me question that.

Or, am I missing something on the conversion? I'm sure it's going to depend greatly on the width and height, but that 16.5 min video I mentioned had a width of about 842 (if I remember correctly).

I just want to make sure that I'm going about this in the right way.

The camera I was using was a Sony HandyCam HDR-SR12 and I imported the MTS file into premier pro, then exported it with the default settings of the MP4.

I have a new camera arriving today (been looking at upgrading for the past 3 months) and it is the JVC GY-HM100U, which records directly in mov and MP4 formats. Just looking for a little "Video Help" here... (no pun intended)

Thank you all in advance.

[poisondeathray]

There are too many factors to discuss that affect the final quality

Filesize = Bitrate x Running Time

The video complexity will determine how much bitrate you need; if it's a video with a lot of motion or noise, it will require more bitrate (thus larger filesize) for "similar quality". If it's a static video (e.g. an interview), with very little motion, and shot cleanly, it might require very little bitrate)

FLV, MOV and MP4 are just container formats. They can hold different types of audio and video compression. If you use old/weak/poor compression, it will look worse at the same filesize.

h.264 probably offers the best quality/compression ratio these days, and is commonly used for internet streaming, even by sites such as youtube, vimeo, etc... It can be "packaged" in FLV, MOV or MP4. You can use mediainfo to determine characteristics of a video

Content hosters often re-encode the video to different specs. e.g. if you upload to youtube, they will re-encode. This means there are generational losses, and less control. Not sure about the host you were referring to.

There are big differences in quality of pre-processing the video. e.g. if you shot interlaced AVCHD, you would deinterlace to progressive before web delivery. If you used Premiere, the quality is atrocious compared to other deinterlacers. It leaves big jaggies and aliasing artifacts, which also "eat up" more bitrate. A slight denoise or preprocess before encoding and uploading can reduce your bitrate requirements

[tanglewood]

Ok, so I have a lot more to learn than I had thought... no problem, I'm like a sponge.

Are there any tutorials on here that I can look at that would help me understand what you said about the slight denoise or preprocess before encoding?

If I shouldn't be using premiere, what would be a better option? Final Cut? I have a macbook pro I can mess around with.

Thanks again...

[poisondeathray]

unfortunately it's a huge topic, so I don't know of any good specific tutorials for preprocessing It comes with experience and it's a delicate balance between eroding too much detail (when you denoise too heavily), vs. targeting just the "unwanted noise". And surprise, surprise, FCP and PP pretty much suck at denoising as well...

FCP is just as bad at deinterlacing as PP (I haven't upgraded to CS5 yet, so maybe they've improved it?). Just how bad is it? Well if you search there are a bunch of comparison threads, here's one (it's much worse in motion with the actual video, you get shimmering artifacts as the jaggies coalesce). Note you can choose to blend deinterlace instead, but that's bad in other ways, it becomes blurry as it combines fwd/back frames.
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/309073-SD-Interlaced-Footage-for-Flash-Broadcast

I've found the only "good" deinterlacers are found in avisynth , but the learning curve is a bit steep, and it takes alot longer to process for the better quality deinterlacers.

It would be better for web to shoot native progressive - I don't think your 1st camera has that capability, but the HM100 certainly does

Finally, this last point is obvious , but - it's hard to speak in general terms, because different footage usually requires different specific treatments

[tanglewood]

I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate your insight. I'll try the native progessive as you suggested. I just got the camera about 30 min ago and I'm messing around with it here in the office. It's quite a camera from what I had. I encoded one H.264 file with a 2 pass VBR at 1.5Mbps Target Bitrate and it came out ok for the 1min shot in the office. Although shooting a video walking around outside will probably not produce this same result, but it did cut the file size from 23MB (3Mbps) to 12 for the 1 minute video.

Makes sense though (half the bit rate). Bitrate seems to be the major factor in producing the actual size of the video. I'm assuming the trick is to adjust other things around this bitrate so that the quality of the final encoded video is the best it can be at the desired bitrate (in relation to the final size).

I can live with 12MB per minute for HD. That would be about 200MB for a 16 - 17 min video. On a CDN that should be no problem.

Thanks again.

[poisondeathray]

Makes sense though (half the bit rate). Bitrate seems to be the major factor in producing the actual size of the video. I'm assuming the trick is to adjust other things around this bitrate so that the quality of the final encoded video is the best it can be at the desired bitrate (in relation to the final size).

Just to reiterate, it is the ONLY factor (along with running time)

Filesize = Bitrate x Running Time

The content of the video will dictate what bitrate is "appropriate" or "required" for the video too look decent. Handheld, shaky footage shot in lowlight (causing grain and noise) will require a lot more bitrate, thus the filesize will be huge in order for it too look a certain "quality level." This is where the pre-processing comes in

You should also pay attention to shooting technique , lighting etc.... all the production techniques can help later on (e.g. shoot on a tripod or use steadicam, use proper lighting etc...). Even in post, there are stabalization software (e.g. deshaker , or motion tracking/stabilization in AE). It's almost always better to shoot it properly in the first place, than to try to fix it in post later on.

[tanglewood]

Switched down to 720-24 and that alone cut the file size. I can get 14mb 1min at 2mbps bitrate.

I'll try and not post every little "cool thing" I come across (cool to me)...

Thanks again.