Delivering HD Video

JHendrix wrote on 1/24/2012, 10:49 AM

so we all have this great HD video in our timelines but it turns out bluray is dead and downrez to SD defeats the point!!

the only option AFAICT then is Streaming Video or Digital Download with are both worlds better than the -- tiny -- SD DVD

i am kind of stuck, i read tutorials like this: http://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/ which are quite cumbersome + still only yields SD DVD. i rendered out a Lagarith master from Vegas and using the Flash option in Encore I am able to render 1280X720. it is not 1920X1080 but its better than SD DVD for sure.

so at this point, for Digital Download , I am considering rendering out 1920X1080 mp4 and just selling data DVDs and /or .zip files with an html interface that plays the videos

and for Streaming Video, I am considering rendering out the 1280X720 and just selling page access to video streams.

so what are you guys doing to deliver? are you just still making SD DVD from your HD projects or ???????

(by the way, i don't make movies, just training videos...thats why i just dont see bluray as something that will be useful because i dont think anyone will buy it even if I go to the extra trouble/cost of making it)

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Comments

JHendrix wrote on 2/3/2012, 9:58 AM

yes i currently stream from a normal web host using JW and it is not that bad. the other supposed advantage to S3 is CDN so (supposedly) users around the world have better playback.

regarding rtmp, i have been talking with JW and they said:

--

if you are using rtmpE it will be more secure and get around download/leech programs but at the end of the day people will try to use screen recorders like FRAPS to just download your content.

--

so still good to know moderate protection can be had via rtmpe. more research required though

JHendrix wrote on 2/7/2012, 5:36 AM

"this should play on most any browser/device & adjust the quality of playback based upon the user's bandwidth"

i would like to have a player like youtube where the user can switch :

1. small player, large player, full screen

2. quality - 240p-720p

amendegw wrote on 2/7/2012, 6:01 AM

Here's the JW Player javascript I use to play the video above. Note, there are 4 different videos that are automatically selected based upon the user's bandwidth. I use MediaInfo to determine what the bitrate of each video stream (which gets hardcoded into the javascript). Furthermore, if the browser does not support flash, it tries HTML5, if that's not supported, it just downloads the video.

Also, notice that I took a somewhat different tack than you suggest. My javascript resizes the player based upon the size of the user's browser window. I should be a fairly simple change to base this upon the user's bandwidth. (btw: it also uses jQuery and a utility called "simplemodal" to create the lightbox effect).

        function playIt(divID, vid, width, height) {

            var pct = .70;

            var aspect = width / height;

            var w;

            var h;

            //Four Videos at four different framesizes and bitrates

            //  These will be used for bitrate switching

            var vid720 = vid + "720.mp4"; 

            var vid480 = vid + "480.mp4"; 

            var vid360 = vid + "360.mp4";

            var vid240 = vid + "240.mp4";

            //Logic to size the player based upon the browser size 

            if ($(window).width() / $(window).height() > aspect) {

                h = Math.round($(window).height() * pct);

                w = Math.round($(window).height() * pct * aspect);

                //                alert("h=" + h + "\r\n" + "w=" + w + "\r\n" + "Ratio =" + w / h);

            }

            else {

                w = Math.round($(window).width() * pct);

                h = Math.round($(window).width() * pct / aspect);

                //                alert("h=" + h + "\r\n" + "w=" + w + "\r\n" + "ratio =" + w / h);

            }

            //Don't make the Player larger than the source footage

            if (h > height) {

                h = height;

                w = width;

            }



            jwplayer('container').setup({

                //'file': vid,

                // Use MediaInfo to get the bitrates for each video file

                'levels': [

                    { bitrate: 1416, file: vid720 }, 

                    { bitrate: 735, file: vid480 },

                    { bitrate: 483, file: vid360 },

                    { bitrate: 267, file: vid240 }

                    ],

                'height': h,

                'width': w,

                // The following will configure JW Player to 

                //    Play Flash, if not supported then

                //    Play HTML5, if not supported then

                //    Download the file

                'modes': [

                    { 'type': 'flash',

                        'src': 'JWPlayer/player.swf'

                    },

                    { 'type': 'html5',

                        'config': {

                            'provider': 'video'

                        }

                    },

                    { 'type': 'download', config: {

                        'provider': 'video'

                    }

                    }],

                'events': {

                    'onComplete': function () {

                        $.modal.close();

                    }

                }

            });

            $(divID).modal({

                opacity: 80,

                overlayCss: { backgroundColor: "#342826" },

                containerCss: { height: h, width: w },

                onClose: function () {

                    $.modal.close();

                }

            });



            jwplayer('container').play();

        }

...Jerry

Edit: Is this code ready for primetime? I dunno. I pretty much quit testing and debugging because I didn't have the cadre of devices/browsers that are needed to test every scenario.