Flash video gets a bad rap.

Proponents of Quicktime, Windows Media and Java based video often point out the superior quality of those systems, and many in the industry still genuinely believe that Flash video has intrinsically poor picture quality.

This simply isn't true.

The reason this myth is perpetuated is due mainly to YouTube, the site that is the poster child for Flash video and unfortunately contains some very poor picture quality videos.

This isn't actually YouTube's fault, you can upload extremely high quality video to YouTube if you know what you are doing, but the vast majority of users don't do this.

It's simply the case that most videos uploaded to YouTube have been poorly converted from other formats, and YouTube's processing and file size limitations can get in the way too.

So what is the highest quality you can get with flash video?

In theory, there is no limit, Adobe can introduce new higher quality compression codecs whenever they like, and with infinite bitrate available in theory, you can have infinite quality. In practice however you are limited by two constraining factors - Internet bandwidth and computer processor power.

Anyone who has ever encoded a video file for web delivery will be familiar with the issue of bandwidth. You can create a great looking video (with a high bitrate), but your viewers won't have enough bandwidth to watch it in real-time - it will stop and start. But what if I told you that frequently stuttering video is not always due to insufficient bandwidth?

I've written about the relevance of computer processor power to web video before, but it is worth revisiting. Decompressing web video requires a significant amount of computer processing horsepower to do its work. If the web video is high bitrate (say above 750kbps), it doesn't matter if it's Quicktime or Flash or Urdu, your computer will have its work cut out to decode and display it back to you in real-time.

Note that it is the speed of the computer your viewers are using to watch the video, and not the computer you encoded it on that is relevant here. You can take as much time as you like over the encoding, use a 50mhz 486 if you wish, but your viewer must be able to decode it in real-time, and this requires horsepower.

So the next time you see stuttering video, flash or otherwise, don't always assume it is a lack of bandwidth. It's equally likely to be processor power that is causing the problem.

(In my next article on this subject I will explore the issue of high quality Flash video further and show you how to upload very high quality clips to YouTube. The techniques can also be used for other video sharing sites.)

Examples

If you want to try out this issue of processor power, we have a super high bitrate Flash video which will push your processor to the limit. It comes with a pre-loader to ensure that no matter what speed of connection you have, the playback should still be consistent. This means that if you do get stuttering, the problem is almost certainly processor power (or lack thereof)!

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

"There was a young programmer named Eugene,
his companion in crime was called Igor,
aided and abetted by Roman,
they did a great job don't you see man"

Thank you to these people & others, those who've invested and those we love, this exciting project of ours is about to launch.

Pre-registration for the first beta is now officially open

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I get these press releases from time to time. This one is more interesting than most...

Palo Alto, Calif. - April 5, 2007 - Azureus,a global leader in aggregating and distributing long-form, high quality video via the Internet's most popular media peer-to-peer (P2P) application, today announced that it will premiere the BBC's hit six-part series, Sorted, on its next-generation peer-to-peer (P2P) platform dubbed Vuze (www.vuze.com), which launched today. Sorted represents the first in a series of programs that Azureus and BBC Worldwide will make available in High Definition on the Vuze platform, as part of a distribution partnership announced December 2006, the first ever peer-to-peer (P2P) deal for BBC.

Sorted follows the lives of six working-class postmen living in northwest England. Played by Neil Dudgen (The Street, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason), Hugo Spear (Love Lies Bleeding, Bleak House, The Full Monty), Dean Lennox Kelly (Shameless, A Midsummer Night's Dream), Will Mellor(Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps), Mark Womack (Mersey Beat, Liverpool 1) and Cal Macaninch, the men and their significant others, played by Eva Pope (Shadow Man, Bad Girls), Tracy-Ann Oberman (East Enders, Big Train) and Nina Sosanya, experience the complexities of modern-day love, work, family, secrets, passions and fears. Storylines are stitched throughout the series, but each episode is dedicated to one of the six postmen.

"Sorted is an entertaining, lively and enlightening series, and we are thrilled that BBC Worldwide has given us the opportunity to premiere it to a U.S. audience," said Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Azureus. "Through the Vuze platform, viewers can experience shows like Sorted that they wouldn't normally have access to, and enjoy viewing them in High Definition."

Critically acclaimed during its initial broadcast run on BBC1, Sorted held approximately 20 percent of the audience share, beating out top rated series such as CSI:Miami. All six episodes of Sorted are available now at www.vuze.com.

Vuze breaks new ground by offering a powerful tool set of enhanced features and functions that enable content providers to easily publish, showcase and distribute high resolution, long form content in High Definition or DVD quality over the Internet. Premiering today with a revamped navigation system and search engine, Vuze was redesigned to accommodate the massive influx of content from publishers, large and small, and help viewers quickly find what they want. Formerly code-named Zudeo, the site already attracts more than two million unique monthly visitors after only two months in existence.

About Azureus Inc.

Azureus Inc. is the provider of the most popular P2P application for the transfer of large media files. With more than three years of technology innovation, proven robustness, and more than 140 million downloads of its application, Azureus users connect with one another from more than 100 countries and 40 languages.

Today, Azureus operates a leading global video aggregation and distribution platform driven by the exchange of long-form, High Definition or DVD quality videos, as well as licensed digital content from leading media companies. The company has recently announced content partnerships with Showtime, A&E Networks (including A&E, History, and Biography channels), BBC Worldwide, Bennett Media Worldwide, G4 TV, National Geographic, and Starz Media.

The new commercial-grade platform is supported by powerful peer-sharing technology, enabling its vast global community the ability to browse, share, search and discover unique multimedia entertainment in a high-resolution format. Visit www.vuze.com for more information.

Posted by Alx Klive at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An interview worth reading, it gives some good insights into the mind of Google's Eric Schmidt. Some interesting nuggets about video and YouTube.

Interview with Eric Schmidt

(via Wired)

Posted by Alx Klive at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the problems as a webmaster turned web publisher comes when you start needing other people to access and work on your site.

If you have traditionally kept all your files on your own machine, happily FTP'ing them up to your own web server, you have a problem to overcome. It's partly technical but can be psychological too.

How do you move to a group web development process?

It's ok if you are all in the same location, you can setup a network and take it in turns to work on the files. The reality of many web publishers these days however is being constantly 'on the move', and working with developers in different countries.

It turns out that the programmer's source control system of choice Subversion is a great tool for managing the source files of websites (PHP, HTML files etc), keeping them in a central location and allowing access easily over HTTP from a wide range of client applications.

If you have a web server Subversion can be installed under a sub directory or sub domain, and used as an HTTP file server that you check-out areas of your site, work on those files locally, and then upload them back into the server when you are done. Someone else or you then FTP's them into to the public part of the web server.

The process goes like this...

• You keep all your 'local' files on the remote web server in a 'repository'

• Using any computer, you 'check out' a complete copy of the site (or a portion of it) so the files are on your machine locally

• You work on those files, edit them as needed

• Once a day (recommended), you 'commit' your changes to the repository and make a little comment about the changes you made

• If multiple people are working on the same site, someone is designated as the person who merges any conflicting changes from separate people working on the same file. You can also learn to do this yourself too without much difficulty and often this process isn't even needed.

• The next time you want to work on the files, you simply 'update' your local copy rather than checking out an entire copy of the site. This means that only those files which have changed on the server are downloaded to your machine and replaced.
  

I strongly recommend Subversion to any serious web publisher as a means to centralize their source files in a highly scaleable fashion. With your site files in Subversion an enterprise-scale team could work on your site if it grew to that size. Any team could take over control of it and have a comprehensive record of past development.

There's a bit of a learning curve, but not too much if you understand the process above. Furthermore, if you use a tool like Eclipse (free and recommended), with the Subclipse plug-in, you will have a Dreamweaver like tool for both checking in and out source files, as well as editing them.

It has been really difficult for me to give up on my old Dreamweaver / FTP ways, but now that it's done I feel a huge weight of relief. Other people (developers, designers) can now easily access the source files and work on them. A simple and effective recording system keeps a useful file of site development.

I also don't have to worry that I am carrying around all our websites in a pocket LaCie drive anymore.

Recommended.

Posted by Alx Klive at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Air Canada is really annoying me, but somehow I'm not annoyed. It's all very confusing just like their bilingual magazine.

Air Canada is one of those airlines that never ceases to annoy you, but somehow they always manage to make you feel ok about it. It's like they have a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card that will pull you round again to their way of thinking. I call it 'Le Force'.

I'm writing this sitting on a flight from San Francisco to Toronto, and to my surprise and no insignificant delight, they have a 110v power outlet on the back of the seat in front of me. In fact all seats in economy have their very own AC outlet.

This can't be safe

Now this is of course a GOOD THING. I could talk about just how dangerous this might be, the fact that a North American AC outlet has exactly the same dimensions as the double-pronged headphones they give out, passengers carrying travel irons, straightening irons, hair dryers and coffee warmers - but that would be a whole other post. For my needs right now I am simply grateful.

So that's the good stuff...

Annoyance #1

Air Canada's website is the most annoying in the world.

It's not that it's intrinsically a bad website - in fact the booking procedure is surprisingly intuitive, but they fail in one huge and mind numbingly stupid way... the website times you out if you so much as sneeze.

This has happened to me twice now, the last two times I have used the site. It can take a long time to go through a flight booking. You have to carefully choose all the right options, liaise with colleagues via Skype (as I was doing), enter frequent flyer numbers, read up on all the new terms and conditions (buying meal vouchers in advance?) forsaking checked baggage, aeroplan miles and other items to reduce the overall bill, digging out your credit card, double check, triple check etc.

Just as I finally went to click on purchase I got the dreaded 'You have been timed out for inactivity'. What it is actually saying is "Thank you for being patient and getting to the front of the line. Now f*%k off to the back".

The irony is that I was all too aware of this timing out possibility and had deliberately tried to keep things moving along, clicking on things randomly to 'stay active'. And it STILL timed me out!

But here's where Air Canada's dual personality rears its double head. You are forced back to the very beginning - the home page, and it has remembered all your basic flight details - your chosen flight dates and arrival/departure cities. Since these are always the most stressful and annoying bits of information (you're terrified to make a mistake), this is a very GOOD THING. So even though you've just pulled out all your hair because the system has screwed you, you now realize the task of re-entering everything is only about 70% of what it was to begin with. They hit you over the head with a baseball bat, then offer you a massage to soothe the pain.

Annoyance #2

Air Canada is going the way of budget airlines and charging for meals in economy, even on medium haul flights like San Fran to Toronto. This is a BAD THING obviously, but then there's a surprise - they now have branded meals and sandwiches from the likes of Subway, Harvey's, President's Choice and Swiss Chalet. Where were those options when they were giving them away for free?!

I knew in advance about the new 'Onboard Cafe' because of the strange option to buy meal vouchers in advance at the time of booking. I went for the 'get a $7 voucher for $5' selection, thinking I would probably get hungry on a 5 hour flight and want to actually EAT something!

I was half expecting some 'gotcha' like I needed to collect the vouchers at check-in or print them out from an obscure link that no one has a chance of seeing. Fortunately they didn't want to hit me with a bat this time, instead they simply didn't have anything left over that I actually wanted. How many cafe's do you go to where HALF the menu is sold out?

So they invite you to their castle for dinner, ask you to overpay for the cost of the meal in advance, starve you for a few hours to get your taste buds salivating, give you a glimpse of the feast that awaits you, then tell you there's nothing left because you were at the wrong table, and still take your money anyway. Thank you very much. Remind me to come to your house again!

Annoyance #3

As I was sitting down in my seat the captain came on the intercom and made an announcement about the 'great new multimedia and video on demand system that he was sure everyone would enjoy'. This coincided with me spotting the surprisingly w i d e screen LCD in front of me and an intriguing USB port to the left.

Sure enough the early tests looked promising - contemporary icons for News, Movies, TV, Audio, Games and Kidstuff. Delving deeper into the layers there were a range of branded VOD offerings from known Canadian TV stations and I figured I could genuinely enjoy myself for this flight with a variety of different experiences - a movie, some TV, some news, some games, some music, the geographic map.

But what did exactly half of these 6 options have to say....?

Annoyance #4

Being unable to sleep in economy is hardly a new thing - airlines have been screwing their passengers for years on this one, but come on fellas... power in economy, interactive gaming system, strange and unknown USB port, and NO FOLD OUT HEAD RESTRAINTS?

British Airways lead the world on this one with the most simple system of all - a couple of padded arms that fold DOWN which you can wedge your head between. It's simple physics that works and adds nothing to the weight and little to the cost - COME ON PEOPLE!

Annoyance #5

If like me you have delighted at the new e-gizmos that let you check in without having to speak to anyone, avoiding long queues in the process, then you would have been bowled over by the queues for BAGGAGE DROP that I had to deal with flying out of Toronto airport.

I waited 28 minutes in a queue to hand over my baggage - a task that took 20 seconds. I was told the reason was they were rebooking passengers whose flights had been cancelled, and they didn't want to send those people to deal with another queue somewhere else. This is a noble excuse but it screws everyone whose flight is NOT cancelled. The dual personality strikes again!

I'm so confused by all this 'She loves me, she loves me not' that I am now finally exhausted. Maybe I can finally put my head down and get some sleep. Oh no, I can't...!

Posted by Alx Klive at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)