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Offer HN: Help understanding online video

6 points by jon_dahl 16y ago

Online video is complicated. You have to worry about competing codecs, encoding settings, delivery protocols, player technologies, etc. Ask me anything video related. Email address in my profile. (Not mentioning my video startup because I don't want to turn Offer HN into spam, but it's in my profile if you're interested.)

vgurgov 16y ago
Hi Jon, I'd appreciate your advices on my video startup http://videolla.com http://videolla.com! I dont think mentioning Zencoder is spam in that topic, its great! :) Sent you email
- jon_dahl 16y ago
  Got it! I'll respond soon.
arb99 16y ago
hi, thought i'd ask in a comment rather than emailing, others might be interested to. What sort of settings are "best" for flash videos? eg bit rate/resolution? Every time i go to encode in flv i tend to use default settings, never really knowing if its a good idea to increase (/decrease) the bit rate etc? I have some sites where i know most people view the videos in full screen, so want high quality, but at the risk of it running slow (both because of internet speeds + flash videos are choppy on slow computers)
- jon_dahl 16y ago
  Hi! There is no one "best" setting, unfortunately. Here are some guidelines, though. -- You have two real codec options in FLV: VP6 and H.264. H.264 compresses significantly better than VP6. -- Bitrate and lossiness are directly linked. Increase bitrate and visual quality will go up (within limits, of course), and vice versa. -- When using H.264, use Baseline profile if you're concerned about choppy video on slow computers. Main and High profiles compress better, but require more CPU to decode. -- Use one of two encoding modes: 2-pass Variable Bitrate (VBR), or one-pass Constant Quality (e.g. CRF). One-pass VBR doesn't look good. -- CRF mode (for x264) is great. It targets a fixed visual quality/loss, and the bitrate adjusts to match that. Think of it as an "auto-bitrate" feature. This is a really general starting point. Any more specific questions I can answer?

6 points by jon_dahl 16y ago

vgurgov 16y ago

Hi Jon, I'd appreciate your advices on my video startup http://videolla.com http://videolla.com! I dont think mentioning Zencoder is spam in that topic, its great! :) Sent you email

jon_dahl 16y ago
Got it! I'll respond soon.

arb99 16y ago

hi, thought i'd ask in a comment rather than emailing, others might be interested to. What sort of settings are "best" for flash videos? eg bit rate/resolution? Every time i go to encode in flv i tend to use default settings, never really knowing if its a good idea to increase (/decrease) the bit rate etc? I have some sites where i know most people view the videos in full screen, so want high quality, but at the risk of it running slow (both because of internet speeds + flash videos are choppy on slow computers)

jon_dahl 16y ago
Hi! There is no one "best" setting, unfortunately. Here are some guidelines, though. -- You have two real codec options in FLV: VP6 and H.264. H.264 compresses significantly better than VP6. -- Bitrate and lossiness are directly linked. Increase bitrate and visual quality will go up (within limits, of course), and vice versa. -- When using H.264, use Baseline profile if you're concerned about choppy video on slow computers. Main and High profiles compress better, but require more CPU to decode. -- Use one of two encoding modes: 2-pass Variable Bitrate (VBR), or one-pass Constant Quality (e.g. CRF). One-pass VBR doesn't look good. -- CRF mode (for x264) is great. It targets a fixed visual quality/loss, and the bitrate adjusts to match that. Think of it as an "auto-bitrate" feature. This is a really general starting point. Any more specific questions I can answer?