Is Flowplayer capable of streaming HD video? Created Apr 22, 2009

Can anyone play the HD video on the link below without it distorting? When I play this in Firefox it plays fine. However, in IE it has severe distortion and macroblocking.

http://twills.fatcow.com/Testing.html

Does anyone have any examples where they are streaming HD video with FlowPlayer? I would love to see if anyone else is getting the distortion I am seeing. Could you post links to sample videos?
I really want to get this working because I just got a new digital camera that shoots really good HD video and I would like to stream the video to family and friends. I am surprised that not many other people are interested in doing that?

The Flow Player itself works independently from the actual video being played. I can play HD video. However, it was a hassle getting to the conclusion. I am going to jump around a little bit. The best way to play video streaming is by getting an Adobe Media Server; either via hosting plan or your own server. I first tried playing my HD 1280 x 720 via my hosting provider. I was trying to play MP4s and then tried converting them into a lower quality FLVs. They still weren?t streaming. After screwing around for a long while I found out why. The reason why is because I only had a 1.5 mbps bandwidth connection, per connection. If you really want to run your HD 1280x720, you can bump up your bandwidth requirements for your vids. The aspect ratio of your videos matters upon rendering them. They require more bandwidth the bigger you make them. I bumped my bandwidth requirements to 3.5 mbps which is quite a ridiculous amount. They finally started playing but still no good. To truly stream an HD 1280x720 video, you really need anywhere between 5.0 - 7.9 mbps to stream with perfection which is outrageous and costly through a hosting provider.

My end solution? I changed the aspect ratio of my HD vids to be 768 x 432. The MP4s still run a little fuzzy over my 3.5, but just a little lower quality FLV converted out of the MP4 works nice. The quality of a full screen click still isn't too bad. Our solution to HD 1280x720 is providing a download for viewers to get the full HD vid. But again, if you have the bandwidth, you can play HD 1280x720.

At the same time though, it?s much more than that. Vid quality matters; frame rate, bit rate, aspect ratio, etc all play a big role in the madness.

Here are some helpful links to find out how to better optimize vids and streaming them. If you want to stream vids right, you NEED an adobe media server.

Streaming plugin RTMP for Flow Player:
http://flowplayer.org/plugins/streaming/rtmp.html

Bad Ass Flash video (FLV) bitrate calculator:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/apps/flv_bitrate_calculator/index.html

Optimizing Frame Dimensions for Flash Videos:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/apps/flv_bitrate_calculator/video_sizes.html

Consumer's guide to using a Flash Media Server hosting provider:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/fms_hosting.html

I have an example of a much smaller video player, playing our high quality 768 x 432 vids via our website.

http://www.thejayandjuggyshow.tv

I actually found out the simply embedding a .wmv player in the html works perfectly. I just convert my 720p videos to .wmv at 2200 Kbps which leaves me a couple hundred Kbps head room and stream them in wmp embedded in HTML. It works perfectly.

Your video was not properly deinterlaced. That made it extremely hard to watch. Was that from an interlaced camcorder? That is why I bought a progressive scan digital camera. It is so much easier to deal with.

And HD streaming is actually pretty easy to do on a budget. I am streaming so pretty awesome 720p videos now. Thanks for your help.

Thanks for your comments on flowplayer HD straming, helped me a long way.
Now my problem seems to be getting best quality througn the editing chain...
Im using cannon (AVC)HD camera ( high end but not professional), wich i saving in compressed MP4/H.264 format 25p 24 mb/sec.(so says the manual)
editing in Sony vegas pro, that says format is mp2, and only supports 50i.
converting to flash in sorensen spark.

Questions;
1) is at professional camera, maybe one that saves uncompressed or lossless like jpg200, better / needed for high quality in say 720P ?

2) does an editing program like sony vegas pro uncompres before editing, and re compress after editing...meaning will there be quality losse in such program, and is there other programs that edit with less quality loss?

3) when Flowplayer is capable op streaming mp4, wouldent that be a better quality, than an ekstra conversion into flash (and an ekstra quality loss)

....So any comments to how you are assuring an quality chain from camera to web, prefered with links to your quality straming is much apreeciated.

Sorry if my spelling is incorrect...Im from Denmark so im excused..;-))

Well, it doesn't play well for me under Firefox either.

Macroblocking is not specifically a decompression artifact but it can appear there if you choose too low of a keyframe rate when encoding (by too low I mean not enough keyframes).

You may want to review your compression profile for the FLV or H264 files and tweak some of the settings. If you're converting with ffmpeg there are numerous arcane switches you can use to increase the keyframes.

Many WMV encoders default to keyframes at about one per second, and for FLV and H264 streaming it seems to be more like 3-5 seconds. It does mean your files will be larger, but they'll be more watchable.

Gordon

Encoding video in high definition, is costly.In addition, make sure you always provide at least an alternative non-HD users. HD video file size is relatively large (compared to a low quality FLV files) and is not compatible with Flash versions of older than 9.115.verdura a domicilio

Well, i always use this video converter to help me convert AVCHD files(mts/m2ts/mov) to flv for playback with flowplayer. It can offer good output quality.

Good luck

Is there a way to configure flowplayer to accept bitrate-switching for pseudostreaming and doing it dynamically (dynamic: true)

player does not load when i set it up this way. i would have to omit the dynamic: true when i want the video to play. but then it does not do bitrate-switching on the fly.

Do you have a page online showing your problems? We would like to see what goes wrong so that we can fix the issues.

Yes, flowplayer can play streaming HD video.

Disaster Recovery

To stream a HD video how much bandwidth do you need?
Would HD streaming work well on a shared server?

I am always a little confused aotu the different types of HD streaming you can get, On Youtube for example you have 480p, 720p what is the main difference between but also what kind of bandwidth are we looking at for this type of HD streaming?

Thanks,

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