Flash VS WMV

Fleshpainter wrote on 5/6/2006, 10:44 PM
Bit per bit, which brings in the most video per unit of time/bandwidth? Let’s place two computers with our hypothetical experimental web pages side by side with separate internet connections. Both have identical video screens going at the same time. Both screens are the same size and have the same content on them. They also have the same resolution, audio quality etc. Which will get the most information onto the viewers screen with the most efficiency? I notice that ads like this use flash:
SAMPLE
Very clever... but Pay Per View sites use WMV-9 or QuickTime. Is this only so the customer can download it? I understand Flash can be used for tricky little things such as can be seen in the example shown above, but I'm only concerned with straight video.

Comments

RBartlett wrote on 5/7/2006, 12:43 AM
The flash video you see today is derived from a set of open standards known as /H.263 which date back to when folks wanted to make video calls over old V series modems and ISDN. Sorensen's family of codecs are similar in quality per bit.

WMV 9 series codecs are more closely related to H.263 or MPEG-4 part 10. There is more video details (or information) per unit of time and bandwidth.

Where flash has a current position and an extensible future too is in its browser/player compatibility. You can play flash on all manner of different platforms, it is like the Java of multimedia. Whereas WMV is more than slightly tuned for Microsoft endorsed platforms not unlike activex based mini-applications.

When scaled, both systems become expensive if you hook into one or more "true streaming" servers. This really depends on the concurrency you desire and how much preload time you want your viewer to have to tolerate. Flash clips, even when supplied through a standard web (http) server can usually beat the embedded or standalone WMP launching. Either systems can play immediately on progressive, or wait for completion then play. This is mostly commanded by your HTML.

WMV in its latest guise and with enhancements for DRM makes for a very less friendly environment that will cause you to deal with some percentage of folks who cannot play your wares. Flash might too but the chances are the viewer without the plug-ins will fix this for themselves as so many non-media related sites need to have some macromedia support to work. What I mean by that is that adoption of flash is also rapidly deployed through its existing popularity.


If efficiency doesn't include initialisation time, then WMV is king of the compression formats available for almost gratis and publicly today. If DRM is a requirement, it is king for that too. In almost all other departments flash is better.

Realising that anything we can see or hear can be lifted or copied. Also that you won't be wanting to stretch the envelope so that only folks with 2Mbps upwards of available bandwidth will be able to watch your work smoothly. My conclusion is that for the web experience flash is best. For the downloadable "pod-cast" style experience, WMV9Pro is desirable.

It doesn't really cost an awful lot to do both forms. Just be sure to direct folks to what they need, not necessarily to force feed them with both formats.
deusx wrote on 5/7/2006, 9:44 AM
Unless you need some of those DRM things in wmv there is no contest, Flash wins easily over any format ( quicktime, wmv, whatever ).

File size vs quality is about the same, if you know flash you can integrate and customize your video players in ways quicktime and wmv can only dream of ( and if you are really good with flash yoou can do things quicktime and wmv cannot even dream of ). And you cover almost 95% of the population ( depending for which version of flash player you export ).

You don't have problems with mac users not wanting to install windows player and pc users not wanting to install quicktime player ( I don't blame them, quicktime is like spyware, bugging me and reinserting registry keys every time it's started, it's often slow and clunky ).
riredale wrote on 5/7/2006, 2:47 PM
Funny you should bring this up now.

I am in the process of converting the videos on the choir website I maintain over to Flash. Several reasons:

(1) Guaranteed to play on any platform. The Flash people (naturally) show graphs indicating that something like 98% of all PCs/Macs already have Flash installed, while the number is considerably lower for WM, and far lower still for Quicktime and Real.

(2) The Flash player is a small and easily-installed program, with no bad manners I can find. There are different versions, and in order to play my videos the viewer will have to install the latest version (v.8), but it's very easy to do.

(3) My impression to date is that Flash is not quite as efficient as WMV9, but it's not far off. This latest version (Flash8) is far better than the previous Flash codecs. While I ran my WMV9 videos at 250Kb/sec, I'll be using 300Kb/sec for Flash8.

(4) The whole Flash product can be used to jazz up a website. I'll only be using the video player subset, but it's there for me in the future if I want to use it.

(5) It's not Microsoft. No, I don't hate MS, but nonetheless I feel that the industry will be healthier if there is a bit more variety.

Incidentally, the Flash player that I will be using is a freeware one. You can go here to see it in action. Very simple, but it works.

EDIT: Okay, there is one thing about Flash that bugs me. When installing Flash you are directed to a page that also encourages you to install a Yahoo "toolbar" on your browser, and the "Install the toolbar" box is conveniently checkmarked for you. If you don't want the toolbar, uncheck that box.

This tie-in has gotten a lot of Flash zealots hot under the collar. Abobe/Macromedia states that Yahoo has agreed to standardize on Flash for all their video stuff, and that they exacted this payment in return. Still, it's not as bad as the crap pulled by Real and others in the past. Also, you can bypass that page by going to other pages such as this one.
murk wrote on 5/7/2006, 4:45 PM
The one thing about flash video and quicktime video is that the user can't make the video go to fullscreen from a web page (without some additional programming and trickery), unlike WMV which always has that option available.
riredale wrote on 5/8/2006, 7:49 AM
Fullscreen is something I don't know about. I do think, however, that the viewer is bound to be very disappointed if they try to watch any of my 320x240 video fullscreen!

This indirectly brings up another difference. If you click on a desktop wmv file, your installed player (presumably Windows Media Player, though there are many other and better choices) will open up and start playing the video. Not so with Flash; if you click on a flv file, most players won't know what to do with it. There are some freeware flash players coming out, but I don't think they are very common.

But again, for my purposes of putting a little video window on a web page, Flash seems to offer significant advantages to me over WMV.
MediaRob wrote on 5/8/2006, 8:24 AM
My job is primarily as a web developer. So I look toward formats that make my websites easier to view without cumbersome codecs or "tricks" that my audience has to know about. I can't tell you how many times I gone to a website to watch a video where MVP tells me I don't have the proper codec. How do you avoid this? Flash. That was the selling point for me. Instead of offering 6 different versions of the same video to my viewer I use 1or 2 flash videos with 2 different bit rates. It's all about the simplicity to the user and getting the message across.
riredale wrote on 5/8/2006, 6:25 PM
Just finished converting the wmv9 files over to Flash format. You can see an example here.

The player is a tiny little freeware player. You need Flash8 to play it, but hopefully you either have it already or the directions on the web page(s) show you how to get it.

Incidentally, the photo montage in that video was one of my early projects with Vegas a few years back.
fwtep wrote on 5/9/2006, 12:32 AM
Does anyone know of a free flash player for web pages that has volume control (instead of just on/off)?
Fleshpainter wrote on 5/9/2006, 10:04 PM
I would be interested in the transparent overlay shown in the example shown below. The video has no boarders... the viewer can't see the player.
SAMPLE
Obviously Flash is necessary for this. The further conclusion derived from everyone’s responses is that movie previews etc are best suited for flash.
So the next question is: Which format is best if I want to authorize the viewer to download and keep the video(s) for themselves?
MediaRob wrote on 5/10/2006, 7:49 AM
All that video is, is a FLV movie with an alpha channel layered over the web page in a DIV tag.

<div id="Layer1" style="position:absolute; left:176px; top:63px; width:548px; height:296px; z-index:1"> insert movie here</div>

Two ways to do the download part. You could simply add a link in the page pointing to the movie file. The viewer could simply download the .FLV file or you could have them download a .wmv or mov. Here we are with the formats question again though. This brings up a totally different problem. Playing the video straight off the desktop and not in a web page is better suited for a "player" like Window Media Player or Quicktime. You wouldn't want them playing the FLV file because it wouldn't have the "control" portion with volume or play/pause.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/10/2006, 8:25 AM

My opinion is .wmv provides better images, and for me (the creator of the image), that's the first and most important consideration. How my images look is the viewers' first impression of my work. First impressions are very, very hard to overcome, especially if that first impression is a bad one!

So far, I've never had a client or viewer come back and say the web video I've provided looks crappy.

Yes, we'll provide whatever the client wants (even Real), but we make it very clear in the beginning that certain file types provide better looking video than others. We also explain that poor video quality on a web site can (and does) have a negative effect upon potential customers. The final choice is their's.


deusx wrote on 5/10/2006, 11:02 AM
My opinion is that it doesn't .

wmv file vs FLV file exported at 1000kbps , 400 x 300 pixels ( nothing less because I want it to look good )

about 3.5 mb for 30 seconds ( both formats ). Over normal cable connection flv starts playing almost immediately and progressively downloads without hickups ( wmv version slightly slower to initialize )

Using Sorenson to export and apply web filter flv looks better and sharper. wmv ( exported from Vegas ) looks blurry or even foggy compared to that ( not bad, just next to flv it is obviously not as sharp, which can be fixed with filters if desired ).
Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/10/2006, 11:12 AM

Are you using Vegas to do the compressions or Sorenson Squeeze?


riredale wrote on 5/10/2006, 12:14 PM
My early impressions of working with flv versus wmv9 are that flv is not quite as efficient as wmv9, but it's a much closer contest than last year. The old Sorenson flv encoder was horrible. The new On2 codec (used in Flash8, the latest version) is MUCH better.

While I was running my old 320x240x30fps wmv9 window at about 250Kb/sec, I find I need about 350kb/sec to do something comparable in Flash8. The difference I attribute to the codec but also the fact that I need to use mp3 for the stereo audio in Flash, which is not as good as wma (I could run wma at 32Kb/sec for many things, but now need mp3 at 80Kb/sec).

Still, for the user, the adoption of Flash is painless. Most people I've called over the past week already have Flash8 installed, and those that don't can get it in a minute or two. None of the obtuse issues with Windows Media Player.

Oh, one other thing I may not have mentioned: the real killer for me with wmv was that, while IE handled the video properly, the Firefox browser would try to download the whole video file on a web page when first loaded. In other words, the whole benefit of streaming was lost. Since Firefox is a rapidly-spreading browser (and arguably much better than IE) I wanted to provide a good user experience on it, too. Flash8 behaves perfectly well in both IE and Firefox.
Fleshpainter wrote on 5/14/2006, 2:12 AM
So the next issue is this:
Is Flash (the application) necessary for this process? The task would be to edit in Vegas, Squeeze with Sorenson, using the On2 VP6 plugin to make the background transparent, and insert the flv into the web page with FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Where does Flash 8 Pro come into play?
deusx wrote on 5/14/2006, 6:49 AM
>>>Are you using Vegas to do the compressions or Sorenson Squeeze?

if that was diirected towards me, yes Vegas to render the wmv and sorenson to export .flv ( from .avi that was rendered in vegas ).

You don't need flash8 if you have a flash player .swf
I have one that I made myself and may make it available when it's polished enough ( it does have volume control, not just on/off, pause/play , stop, forward, back , but I haven't had time to make it resizable and you'd be stuck with one skin )

You would embed this into your web page ( or load into you main .swf if your siite is all flash ) and then upload your .flv files and a text file with list of your videos.
player will load the text file into buttons which you then click and play videos. So no need for flash 8 ( or any version of the app ) at all, you can use sorenson or whatever else exports flash videos. You don't have to know anything about flash really.
VOGuy wrote on 5/14/2006, 9:33 AM
I've found that all the major streaming formats (.wmv, .mp4, Flash) are very close - each with it's own advantages and problems. I've also noticed that the characteistics of paticular playback machines will make one format appear better than the other - on my desktop at the office .wmv wins, on my laptop at home, Flash looks better.

I've posted examples (size and bit rate were chosen deliberately to show weaknesses of each format) at: www.hd-vo.com/stream

-Travis
Fleshpainter wrote on 5/14/2006, 4:31 PM
For me the flash version opened quicker, the wmv was able to go full-screen but wouldn't stop until finished, and the quicktime hung up while trying to start. Wmv and mpeg4 would allow me to download and save, flash would not.
VideJoe wrote on 6/16/2006, 11:12 AM
All very interresting this Flash versus WMV debate, but while I can create both (and more), and can hardly distinguish any quality differences, I am still stuck with the following question I cannot fine an easy answer to.

Since my hosting company keeps me in the dark as to what I should provide he argues that I can best create a WMV file that will act as streaming video, so play while downloading. He also argues that no streaming video server is required, which I doubt very much.
I tested with a WSF file made with Sorenson Squeeze with build in player, but the video played only after complete download, which is unacceptable for a 60Mb file (6 minutes video).
I did not test the VFL version of the same video.

Can anybody outline briefly explain what it takes to get true streaming video from the web using either a WSF, VFL or WMV file?

Currently I use a circumvention to play the video by embedding it from YouTube, but the DivX file I supplied for that is downgraded to Flash too drastically and quality is questionable to say the least (www.lapenne.com).

Since the Sorenson player templates are ugly/bulky to put it mildly I would like to use a small flash player, like the one used by YouTube, but so far could not get my hands on.
Is there a site I can get download such simple players?

Thanks, Dries.