VIDEO QUALITY SUCKS ON DOLPHIN 7

I have tried the modifications and edited the header.inc.php file and still my video quality sucks!  What can I do?  Do you know?

Ok I have tried the modification.........Hmmm 1 of 10,000 I wonder which one.......You edited the header.inc.php file Hmmmm ok hmmmm I wonder what she did when she edited the file Let me Guess........What can I do well first get a bit more descriptive on what you have done can't read your mind BC there is a MOD that makes the video quality very nice..........See the point you have no idea what I am talking about.........Do you know? yes as a matter of fact I do........

Very droll Sampson, now go and cut your hair.

Okay apologize for my lack of being more descriptive (it's not like Dolphin has a glossary of terms).  Anywho, the modification I applied is below:

Location: /flash/modules/video/inc

File: header_inc.php

CHANGE: LINE 17 "play" => $GLOBALS['sFfmpegPath'] . " -y -i #input# -r #fps# -s #size# #video_filters# #audio_options# #output#",

TO: LINE 17 "play" => $GLOBALS['sFfmpegPath'] . " -y -i #input# -r #fps# -s #size# -qmin 3 -qmax 6 #video_filters# #audio_options# #output#",

It was fairly easy to change this line, the impact of this change is NOT apparent in the video however.  My original video is HD and looks beautiful when played locally but when I upload to my site its seriously degraded and very pixelated. YUCK.  The whole video situation is becoming a deal breaker for me and Dolphin 7.  I have had nothing but issues after issues with the videos since day one.  If you can help I appreciate help and NOT SARCASM.

 http://www.boonex.com/unity/forums/?action=goto&search=1#topic/7-0-1-Video-Quality-Mod.htm

That is the same line of code I changed and it made a dramatic difference in my video quality so I would think you have another setting wrong somewhere like maybe:

Leave h264 UNCHECKED in Flash Module Settings to continue using FLV/Flash files like 7.0.0  All I can say is that is the line and that one works for me.........It has to be another issue........

And that wasn't sarcasm I was only trying to make a point.........If you want to get help you have to be specific......

ffmpeg has just been updated couple of weeks ago. Here's what you need to do.

Grab the latest version of ffmpeg.exe from the download section.

Edit ./flash/modules/video/inc/header.inc.php

Change Line 16 not 17 to

"playX264" => $GLOBALS['sFfmpegPath'] . " -y -i #input# -r #fps# -vcodec libx264 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -flags +loop -partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -me_method hex -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 30 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71 -b_qfactor 0.77 -s #size# #audio_options# #output#",

I changed qmax from 51 to 30. The script will have to run a bit longer, but the quality is a lot better. If you are still not satisfied with the quality, just lower qmax gradually.

Remember to enable H.264 codec (enabled by default, but just make sure).

Does it take like 2 - 3 minutes until your video plays in the h.264 I have seen several posts and it is happening to me which gives the appearance that the vido player is not functioning........??

yeah they seem to have it set to buffer 100% now with h.264... just what i think  no batteries included

Well my video quality is fine but the wait to play is just not going to happen.........I will loose people over this is there a way to change the buffer settings?

I second that. Everyone thinks the video's stuck.

I played with H264 a lot. In the end, I turned it off because of the way it loads. I think the best solution right now is to just disable it and use the changes that Sideburnz recommended.

True HD is going to require a real streaming media server anyway....

The reason h264 videos have to load 100% before playing is the metadata atom is at the end of the video.

This meta data is need to start playing the video.

There are tools that will process video files to move the atom to the front.

I am having same issue with videos all blurry and pixeled. I run a paranormal site and need videos for my ghost videos. How can i see the ghosts on video if all i get is blurry and pixels. Can someone PLEASE help. I never had a issue with D6's videos. And it is starting to get on my nerves..lmao And I just had site upgraded to D7.02.

Can you tell us what tools we need then so we can implement these? Thanks.

http://www.saiweb.co.uk/linux/ffmpeg-mp4-does-not-stream-qt-faststart

Thanks alot!

In the end, nothing helped. I read this forum, I have the 7.02 version. Video bad. Someone has solved this problem. Give a link or advice

I tried what was posted here as well to help with my video quality and it did NOT change a bit!

I'm getting tired of posting the same thing over and over but nobody seems to pay attention or care.

First, if you want higher quality videos H264 is the way to go. The Flash codec that has been and will be used with Dolphin is the seven year old VP6 codec (because it is free to use), that was replaced by VP7, then VP8.   VP7/8 cost about $3000 a year per server to use.  Side note, Google bought On2 (who owns the VP7/8 codec) and released a free derivative of VP8 as webM (but webM is not supported by ffmpeg to encode videos yet (and Dolphin uses ffmpeg). So you can pay $3000 a year for video decent vide quality / file size OR use H264 for free.

Second, as many people have found and pointed out when using H264 you have to download the whole video file before you can play it. And downloading the video usually takes longer then a user is willing to wait, so they think it is broken.  There is a Simple and FREE way to fix this. The reason why you have to download the whole file first is because ffmpeg (and most other video encoders) place meta data that is required to play the file at the end of the file (because the encoder dosen't know what the meta data will be until after it process the video). All you have to do is use a program like MP4Box or qt-faststart to move the meta data to the front of the file.  It really is that easy.  The only hard part is updating Dolphin to do this additional step.

You could, right now, install MP4Box on to you server, then one by one manually update your h264 files to make them start playing as soon as the file starts downloading.  the command would look like this:  MP4Box -inter 500 53.m4v

Thats it!  The only reason we don't have this is because the 'community' hasen't figured out how to work together on more advanced projects where someone finds an issue, others fine the solution, and those with the know how actually code the fix.  I think the main failing with this is the people who understand enough of Dolphins code are too busy making stuff to sell in the market.

I just disable h264 all together set the bitrate to 2048 and set frames per second to 30...   i did change some files to allow for these settings.

see here: http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/changeset/14156

See here for a video with out H264

See here with H264 on

Never the less thanks for the tips.

I think for some reason on my servers videos look better with out H264.....

Sure, just throw more bandwidth at the issue and make sure your server has a huge hard drive.

actually the file size was not that much different between the two.  I think it was about 3mb in size difference.   Not saying my solution is perfect but i would much rather use a little more bandwidth and storage space and have a few less videos then have all crappy looking videos. 

Thats why up untill now i couldt stand youtube.  there videos are slow and most look like crap because the compress the hell out of them.

I think 3mb in size is a HUGE difference for one video file which is 30 sec...

Not when the video is encoded in 1080p HD  sure if it was like 320 by 240 then 3mb would be alot i guess...

And really my point was that the h264 that every one loves seems to suck for me and it makes it look crapy...

the origanal file size was 37mb 10,000 bitrate and ffmpeg without h264 cut it down to 15mb or so  and 2048 bitrate thats not to bad really.

I feel this is a worthy topic to bring back to the top, as my video quality is still horrible when you run with out of box configurations.

So - I am using x264, and made changes as Flurmingo had recommended in their post (qmax @ 30). Now, my video quality is acceptable, but the buffer time sucks.

Following LeatherSportB's advice, I installed MP4Box on my server & ran"MP4Box -inter 500 ##.m4v" against my test upload. Returned a successful message, but I'm afraid it still waits to buffer 75% of the video before playing... what's the deal? I was going to set a daily crob job that would convert any freshly uploaded videos to remediate the buffer issue...

Has anyone conquered the video module yet? It sucks that we spend all this time and money on superior 1080p/720p recording equipment, export the video appropriately with suitable compression to retain at least 480p, then upload to dolphin to have the proportions modified and quality sacrificed.

mmmm... I have nice tutorials that run beautifully in full screen with virtualy no buffering. But I had to load them into a home made flash player first...

Shame i cant do this for members videos too.

 I have resorted to that same method for certain intro videos, but am now faced with the challenge of providing members with high quality playback of their uploaded content.

Many have refused to use our site for uploads because it makes their production look horrible.

The video is suck maybe becuase the video quality you uploading is bad

I upload HD Videos on my demo site and they look clean and beautiful we also disable on admin panel the Video auto approval so we can only have video with good quality or HD

This is hardly the case, I have taken raw 1080p AVI & MOV to test with, the end result in dolphin is hideous.

I have also tried to precompose & compress with, again, undesirable results. These same videos look beautiful on youtube, vimeo & facebook.

As I noted in my previous post, changing qmax to 30 helped a considerable amount, but now we battle a buffering issue.