H264 works, but just barely.

I was up all night (as some of you have guessed) screwing around with all this.

I am not impressed with the current state of the H264. It isn't displaying any differently than Sideburnz mod did before it came out.

I think the potential is there but I have no idea how to configure it to get that extra clarity and stream speed I am looking for. I wish someone with knowledge of this kind of video setup would jump in here and help us.

I upload a rather large video (143 megs, HD quality .wmv file) Once it's done processing and you click the play button, it can take up to 5 minutes for it to start playing. I have a wireless 5MB connection (both ways) with an average 28 ms ping rate and my site is hosted on a HostForWeb VPS which (as far as I am concerned) should eliminate any questions about available bandwidth.

Anyone?

Does anyone know how Facebook presents their videos? That's the quality I am looking for.....

Just out of curiosity, what's the running time of your 143MB video?

Some other questions I have, is what is your server's connection speed?  That's a really important thing to know, but many hosting companies don't like to give you that information up front for some reason.  A VPS isn't really a good choice when serving up HD videos.  VPS is just another name for shared server.  You probably have 10 or more sites on the same physical server sharing a common connection to the internet.

About 6 1/2 minutes. And I agree with you, the server itself might be the bottleneck. I am looking into that.

Have you looked into the Divx Web Player?
http://www.divx.com/en/software/divx-plus/web-player

143 MB for a 6 1/2 minute video?  You're joking right?  What's the frame rate and resolution?

It was a test video and it was taken straight out of my Flip cam.

Resolution  1280 x 720

Duration 6:49

Bit Rate  3173 kbps

Audio sample size  16 bit

Channels 2 (stereo)

Devices like this are the devices of choice for a very large percentage of people who post vids on the net. This system really needs to perform for these if it's ever going to be successful. I can provide you a link to the same video uploaded to facebook, it is LARGE and CLEAR and sounds great and it loads in a matter of seconds.

Sure, I can open up my Vegas movie maker and work wonders on it and make it smaller, faster and better sounding but that's not the point here.

That over-complicates this.

@SkyForum - Maybe you noted this elsewhere, but are you doing your tests on a server with the old version of ffmpeg, or the new March 2010 version?  Still trying to resolve for myself if that makes a difference.

BTW, as your comment about Facebook points out, for our sites to be competitive we have to be able to provide the type of services people are coming to expect from daily experiencce on sites that are establishing industry standards.

I have a VPS and I have my own RMS and ffmpeg. I am using the new ffmpeg that Ray developed..

...and you are dead on the mark about keeping up with industry standards. I know that competing dead level with facebook is never going to happen for me because I don't have a few billion dollars to throw at problems like this but we should at least be able to come close.

My VPS is on a node served with a 100mbit connection but like you stated, they are very closed lipped about what or whom I am actually sharing that with. They did tell me they have a rather robust RMS for their shared setups so we're going to hook my site up to that and see if anything changes.

I do see a dedicated setup in the near future if I have any success with this site at all.....

And yes, I have. It's one of the projects at Labs.

RE:

Yes, I would like the link.    The reason you can start watching that video immediately on Facebook, is because it's delivered from a real streaming video server.  You don't get that with a static implementation of ffmpeg.

Not just a video streaming server, but a cluster of them. And they aren't cheap on the hardware, either.

 What are we talking about? A couple grand to purchase my own streaming server?

If you want to match Facebook, anyways.

That, and a 1Gbps connection speed.  You can lease a 1Gbps server for under $1,000 per month.  Either that, or be a little more realistic in the video quality and file sizes you want to serve up.  With my dsl connection, it would take me an hour to watch that 6 minute video of yours.

You still have not said what your servers connection speed is.  That is really important to know.

People need to stop comparing themselves to Facebook for everything that they do.

Anybody wanna chip in on one of these: http://www.fdcservers.net/dedicated_100gbit.php

A little cheaper: http://www.fdcservers.net/dedicated_10gbit.php

For those on a tight budget: http://www.fdcservers.net/dedicated_1gbit.php

Entry level servers: http://www.fdcservers.net/dedicated_100mbit_servers.php

I'll make the ChipIn widget.

"You still have not said what your servers connection speed is.  That is really important to know."

Yes I did, my VPS is on a 100 mbit node.

Those prices really aren't that bad! Between 5 or 6 of us, we could serve preatty decent for about $50 a month

RE:

OK.. I missed that post.   The prices are good, because they are not a reseller... you're dealing directly with the data center.  I've had my eye on those guys for a while, but right now I don't want to deal with server management.  Ten D7 sites on a 1Gbps server would probably have better performance than any one site would have on a 100Mbps server, as far as serving up videos.

We'll call it: Mammalbook.

Also, does anyone know an Australian who's keen to hack into my server?

 Well, I'm in. I may be lacking in tecch saavy but I do gots a little money stashed away.....

I thought you were all joking, to be honest. Anyways, I wish I could contribute to this "Gigabits" fund, but I'm the guy who invested in Enron after hours.

RE:

Sometimes, I can't decide if some of your posts are just way over my head, or if you have just lost your mind.

RE

OK.. I'm in too.  However, I know J. S. about setting up a server to run Dolphin.... or setting up RMS... or FFMpeg... or FFserver.

Use Linspire.

We just need to find someone smarter than us and offer him/her a deal....

The best team captains always know J.S. (as you put it) they just learned early to surround themselves with people that have the requisite skills needed to do the project.

I recommend ray and Deano be added to the team.

I nominate Sonny Bono.

Words of wisdom.

/DM

It's simple. Someone with an Australian IP address attempted to hack into my server, but failed miserably and tripped the alarms.

In that case, who do we know from AU?

No idea. I'm going to create a graphical user interface in visual basic to track the hacker's IP address. Them I'm going to send out my elite team of kangaroos to eliminate the target.

Wasn't me :)

Ah, so it was you. My marsupials will be within range in twenty minutes.

I'm Aussie, but I do not fall into the Low Life Category.

There's no need to talk about my uncle in such a rude manner.

What was the before and after sizes of the Test Video? -qmin and -qmax are going to affect H264 quality just as it does in FLV mode. The default was something like -qmin 13 -qmax 51 or something which will look horrible. Try -qmin 3 -qmin 6 if you havn't already. I didnt read the whole thread, just blasting through.

I tried adding qmin 3 and qmax 6 but it created a problem and the video wouldn't load. I think it's because of -qdiff 4. In my fickle brain, this setting limits the spread of the video quality to 4 points between qmin and qmax. Since there aren't 4 points between 3 and 6, the video failed to load. Once I changed ot to a larger spread, the video started playing again.

I also found some info on a couple geek sites that recommend a qmax of anything less than 9 is asking for trouble. I finally ended up with a qmin of 6 and a qmax of 25. This came as a result of load times that were horrendous as I tried to make the quality a little better when H264 was enabled.

I can remove it I suppose but I am shooting from the hip in the dark. Would love you to take a look at the H264 line in the changed header_inc.php file and give me your two cents worth.... Here is the default setup

"playX264" => $GLOBALS['sFfmpegPath'] . " -y -i #input# -r #fps# -vcodec libx264 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -flags +loop -partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -me_method log -me_range 16 -subq 6 -bf 16 -b_strategy 1 -bframebias 0 -trellis 2 -flags2 +bpyramid+wpred-fastpskip -coder 1 -refs 6 -g #fps# -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.60 -complexityblur 20.0 -qblur 0.5 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71 -b_qfactor 0.77 -s #size# #audio_options# #output#",
 

I downloaded the update for H264 .. I'll install it and take a look.

Ok, A little research tells me that H264 doesn't use qmin or qmax.

I did as you requested however and uploaded a 414 MB mp4 HD video that I made.

It took over an hour to process.

It created an mv4 file that was in excess of 581 MB

It plays beautifully as long as you have about an hour to wait while it downloads far enough to stream

Now I know a 414 MB file is HUGE but what better way to test the setup to failure..... The video was HD at 1280X720.....

Your right, I should leave your uncle out of this, in the face of it, I will keep an eye on Australia.

Ok. I can create a really good looking video with the H264.

But I don't think I'm going to use it. I don't like how it starts. Since I don't have a streaming server, the user has to wait for the entire video to upload to their computer before it starts. This gives the user the impression it's not working.

That is confusing SkyForum... Isn't RMS for streaming?

RMS is used for a number of things in dolphin requiring live time recording or webcam use. But the video player does not use it. I don't know if there is a way to do it. So no, by default the videos do not use or even require RMS. No RMS server is required for video or audio play back.

Who in their right mind is going to upload/download a 400MB Video :) I refuse to even allow people to upload more than 150MB. Anything else in a 1.5Mbps/768Kbps broadband world just does not make sense. A complete XVid Movie is 600-700MB, is that what you are after?

If -qmin -qmax is not used in x264 conversion then my statement that Boonex just pulled that commandline out of the air would seem correct :)

Found this link, you may have as well... but it looks like all the information is going to be found there. Especially useful is the use of presets as opposed to commandlines.

http://rob.opendot.cl/index.php/useful-stuff/ffmpeg-x264-encoding-guide/