EX1 for embedded Web Video?
 

Hi there,

Has anyone had any experience with using EX1 footage for web videos? I'm thinking company websites. There doesn't seem to be a lot of web video around my area and would like to take advantage of this.

I have joined Vimeo but then realised it is not for "corporate" use. Lovely, but seeing as they charge for the ability to embed it's a bit cheeky saying you can't upload commercials! Moan over.

Anyway, going by the Vimeo upload settings I would imagine 720p is better for web video? Plus does anybody know any good hosting sites that aren't against people making a bit of money??

Many thanks

Darren

YouTube allows 720p video and even has a partnership program. I'm not sure if they support HD embedding offsite yet. Certainly many businesses use YouTube as part of their viral marketing campaigns.

Generally 720p web video takes a fair amount of download data rate, usually around 2000kbps and up. That's NO PROBLEM for some areas but others can't come close. It depends what the speed is the typical internet connection of your targeted viewer.

Exposure Room I believe has less strict rules: ExposureRoom

However, you'd be wise to invest in Squeeze or Episode (the best Mac-friendly choices to my knowledge) to compress your own Flash video. Many companies want a bit more control over their sites.

You can then use the JW Player with a commercial license: Order Commercial Licenses | LongTail Video | Home of the JW Player

Hi there,

Exposure room only shows HD at full screen size.

I dunno how it is working in the States but does not seem to be a lot of HD video on company websites in the UK at the moment.

Can the average business website host HD video itself? The maximum length I would look at for a project would probably only be 1-3 minutes as a taster on the site. I have found encoding with H264 this can be crunched down to around to 160mb.

For example, I have a possible job for a dog grooming parlor, max length 3 minutes to go on their site. So is flash a better bet for encoding than H264? Would a basic site (given that it had enough space) be able to handle the HD video?

Many thanks. This seems a bit of a black art at the moment. I'm trying to find out if its possible!

Darren Ruddock

HD is either 1280x720 or 1980x1020 so by its nature it WILL take up a lot of screen real estate. If your computer screen is larger than 1280x720 it doesn't take up the full screen unless it is scaled up.

The bigger the frame size the higher the bit rate needed to encode to file with good quality. It also means the viewer needs an internet connection that can sustain that bit rate in order to playback (progressive download) that file in real time.

You need to know what speed the internet connection is of your targeted viewer. Generally people who have more money to spend and value high quality video playback on the web will spend more money on faster internet connections. Some geographic areas are limited in the speeds they offer.

In my area, I have 30,000kbps download and even mid level DSL connections get 3000kbps. Budget internet users tend not to be over 1500kbps with 768kbps DSL at the bottom. Your area may be different.

I find that 720p HD at 2000kbps looks OK. Vimeo is using around 1500kbps with ON2VP6. YouTube is using 2000kbps with peaks up to 4000kbps with H.264.

There's no "black art" about it. Know your target audience and pick the appropriate frame size and data rate.

The current favourite for company web video seems to be Brightcove. Although they do not offer HD as yet their video does look pretty good, certainly better than old pre HD Youtube. The NYT recently changed to Brightcove The NYTimes.com Prepares For HD Video; Drops the FeedRoom For Brightcove

Dan

If so, then how come the native Vimeo window shows HD at a smaller size and the same size Exposure Room window does not allow this but only if you go to the full HD window....hmmm???? Exposure room gives you 3 frame sizes but HD is only viewable in the largest window.

Nobody wants full size video on there website, just a scaled down high quality video such as the size displayed by the native Vimeo window or even smaller!

I have no problems watching Vimeo videos. Most people now have broadband!

We may need to clarify this. Are you intending to embed the video in HD in the client's site? If so, I would try to dissuade you--overkill for most viewers. Maybe put a link below the embedded video to an HD version for those interested. In addition to what Craig says about connection speed, the viewer's machine needs to be relatively new to be able to play back HD video smoothly.

The size of the video should be based on the layout of the page. If it's a dedicated video page, then I like 640x360. But often a short video should be on the home page (even autoplay)--then maybe 400x226 or smaller. If you know going in that they want this, it should affect how you shoot--stay away from wide shots with small details in them.

I'm doing Flash 8 video now (On2VP6) just because it's a bit more common and less chance a viewer will get to the page and have to upgrade their player. It's not quite as good as H264, but close.

As to the hosting, if they use one of the bigger companies they should be fine--check to see what bandwidth they have.

When you play Vimeo HD video at "full screen" you can turn scaling on or off. ON is full screen. Off is at 1280x720 (as to whether that's full screen depends on your screen).

ExposureRoom video also plays at 1280x720 when the HD playback is selected so I'm not sure at all what you're talking about.

Both Vimeo and ExposureRoom play at 1280x720. In Vimeo you turn ON/OFF scalling in Full Screen mode. In ExposureRoom HD is 720 (no need to enter Full Screen mode).

Then chose the frame size you want. That's not HD though. Some will chose 960x540, others 640x360. Pick frame size and data rate you want. Encode (with codec of choice) and embed on your web page. No need to pay for external services for that. Some like Vimeo HD embed ($60/year) for the convenience but it's not difficult to do it yourself.

This is what I mean. you guys are way ahead of us on this in the states!

I spose I need to research more. It just seems a shame that having an EX1, it seems so hard to get a few minutes of quality footage onto a website!

Well I meant a scaled HD footage!! Sorry!! Still better than DV :)

Darren, there is little available in the US that you can't use and buy in the UK (since Vimeo allowed plus membership worldwide)

Most US and UK companies I know use Brightcove anyway, I'm not a great fan or anything, its just that Brightcove is aimed at biz users. http://www.brightcove.com/resources/...video-webcast/

Dan

I'm absolutely not sure what issue you're having.

You can certainly put 1280x720 video on your site as long as the viewers have the bandwidth, computing power, screen real estate to playback the video.

Many people don't want videos to take up that much screen real estate but it's certainly VERY EASY to do. Do your viewers have the internet speed?

"Broadband" is meaningless since that can be as low as 384kbps on slow DSL connections. You need to know their speed.

Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

Frame size, data rate, screen real estate, internet connection speed. That's it. Nothing else to "research." You're not explaining what you're having the problem with.

HI Dan,

Vimeo plus (the paid account) allows you to embed but they wont allow commercial work! They say you can use it to "show your work off" but not to embed corporate films on business sites. Understandable, but makes Vimeo Plus useless if you cannot embed into business sites.

They want to keep Vimeo "pure" from commercialism! Nice idea, shame its the age of capitalism!

I know, that's why I'm suggesting you look at Brightcove. It's not HD but most companies seem happy with it.

I only mention Vimeo Plus because it was the only thing I know that was initially available to US customers. The UK is no further behind than anywhere else as far as I know.

Dan

The other approach, that most aren't talking about is using Flash, then embedding and hosting the stuff on the website it will be used on.

My workflow is this (I am on a Mac)...

Edit in HD in Final Cut, compress to FLV using compressor at your desired size, "import to stage" in Flash making sure the dimensions of the flash file as setup to accommodate both the outputted compressor file and the scrub bar), go through the wizard that automatically comes up in flash to pick up out preferred "scrub bar skin", then hit "publish in Flash (it then creates all the necessary javascript, scrub bar, code and generic html file, do a final tweak to the html file in Dreamweaver, upload to server, test, repeat if necessary.

One thing I believe people get hung up on is "HD on the web", its the video quality/resolution that is important. Really you want it to look "high resolution" whether or not it is "proper" HD by dimension on the web I think is loosing the point of the end user which is "does it look HD" in terms of resolution. A crunched HD file at 640 pixels wide looks unbelievable if done up right. Ask yourself when you are doing it, does it have to go full screen to be effective.

Andy, I'd thought I'd point out that H.264 is flash compatible these days.
Compressor does not export to .flv unless one has the flash export codec. Flash export does not come with Final Cut Studio (Compressor) though. H.264 will work fine. According to Adobe, Flash is extension agnostic when it comes to H.264. .MOV, .MP4, .F4V, .FLV should all work.

Flash has 3 basic codecs: Sorenson Spark (old and crappy often called Flash 7), On2 VP6 (much better often called Flash 8), H.264 (Flash 9)

Also not everyone has Adobe Flash software you're using to wrap the file. Sorenson Squeeze has build in SWF player too. There are free players available on the web but you need to do a little work to create the link.

SoftPress Freeway (Mac only) includes an "action" that will create a player for an FLV file.

Thanks for the note Craig. I've been using Flash since version 1 or 2 and had forgotten that the FLV codec that I see in Compressor is part of the Flash install.

I should point out though that the compression results from the Flash codec supplied with Flash yield FAR superior results than H.264 does. I would imagine that Sorenson Squeeze has the same engine as the Flash app does for encoding.

EDIT:

When I say Flash encoding I am referring to On2 VP6.

I assume you're using Compressor as a point of comparison. These days Squeeze (MainConcept H.264) and Episode (Dicas H.264) are BOTH better than Apple's H.264 and the good news for the Windows users on this thread both Squeeze and Episode are cross platform. Episode also include On2 VP6, it might be an extra $100 for Squeeze but I'm not sure.

In any case if you use Episode or Squeeze on either Mac and Windows, you'll get much better H.264 encoding than Apple and you'll have On2 VP6 as well. Note that there are now two varieties of On2 VP6 (E and S). The S variant is more commonly used for HD as it's easier to decode for the end user but E is better quality but may be too difficult for some systems to decode fast enough when playing back HD video.

Just personal preference but I prefer H.264 since it's now the "one size fits all" codec as it can be used in Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Quicktime.

Craig,

Spot on. After many tests I concluded the same - but On2 VP6 in (which comes in the Squeeze Pro 5 Flash Version, not the normal version of Squeeze) is currently my personal favourite right now with these specific tools (albeit the advantages of H.264 indicated make it a very close call). Most end users won't notice the difference.....

I developed my own flash video player that delivers H.264 quicktime movies (within the flash player) if the user has the appropriate flash plugin or On2 vp6 flv's if not. H.264 just looks nicer than vp6 at the same data rate IMO, and the advantage to using flash as a front end is that it can display the video full screen with the press of a button in the UI. It scales nicely too, especially if the h.264 video is being delivered.

There are some examples on my website at Videotrader

I think Rob is on the right track for this.
A corporate website probably won't give a rat's a-- about providing huge HD images, they will want something that looks nice on the page and mainly that loads fast. You can shoot HD but still make a smaller compressed file for your corporate clients that will look great.

Pretty much 100% of my business is web based video, shot on an EX1 for UK/European B2B consumption.

Couple of things:

1) It's pretty much exclusively Business to Business, not Business to Consumer. That means most of my video must get through firewalls, and it needs to work on locked-down corporate PCs.

2) It's mostly supplied to the end client as something they put on their own servers, rather than me supplying video that they link to, though there have been some interesting developments recently.

So right now, the current 'standard' is either 480x270 FLV using On2 VP6 (Flash 8) from Episode, at around 400 kbps, or 512x288 at 600 kbps. I license Jeroen Wijering's LongTailVideo.com players rather than roll my own.

I've tried to encourage use of the Flash 9 and H.264, but for corporate work we often hit upon the inability to upgrade Flash from 8 to 9, and that whilst they have bandwidth, the lower processing power of most corporate PCs makes H.264 at 640x360 a bit 'lumpy'.

The issue with putting things out to BrightCove, YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler et al is about control of who is seeing what. My clients' preference has been 'we host, or you host and we link to you' rather than ship out to a third party company. There's also some unease about costs and bandwidth - the perception is of paying for server storage month by month with nobody watching, OR paying each time somebody watches a movie and it spiralling out of control. This is a perception, not an observation.

A few far-sighted clients HAVE been using YouTube, but then I supply a special HQ movie for them to upload to THEIR account (or they give me access to their account - rare).

I'd see such services as being for B2C communication, and curiously Consumers are better sourced for things like H.264 and web based HD. Okay, so there's a demographics thing - consumers who tend to watch web video tend to have fast connections, so if you're doing dog-wash videos with a (dare I say) rural catchment area, then you're not going to get more than 512 kbps peak as most people are more than 5 miles from an exchange.

Quite frankly, I feel the biggest thing has been final acceptance of 16:9 throughout. No more letterboxing!

But Darren, the EX1 is a marvellous camera for web based video. Looks good at any size and certainly the resolution is not 'wasted' on web video. And look at it this way: HD has been a perfectly viable platform for corporate work for some time now: make a 1280x720 WMV at 3000 kbps and chuck it into PowerPoint - et voila: fully standards compliant HD platform 'for free'.

Very important point. Lots of businesses are blocking Youtube and Vimeo, so even if the video is business to consumer, you still want the client to be able to watch it at work.

I would host on Amazon AWS. It's going to be way cheaper that most dedicated video hosting companies, and if you go Cloudfront you probably can't beat the speed.

You only pay for what you use, and it's 17 cents per GB for 10 TB and under, and drops down to 5 cents per GB in bulk.