New mp4 size is too big | Site Feedback

Sampy
This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it and we have become exceedingly efficient at it

I recently changed encoding tools on the back end and we're now making mp4s for the higher-res devices.

I'll make some tweaks. I'm loathe to add Yet Another Video Format but a mp4 High and mp4 Low might be good. Or I could just switch to mp4 low only.

Thoughts?

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

Thoughts?

Horses are pretty.

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

I don't think people would mind another format (choice is good), as long as it doesn't delay the publishing of new videos too much. I actually like the choice between WMV Low and WMV High. I usually watch WMV High at a higher speed, but sometimes the connection is a bit too slow and I switch to WMV Low.

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

You're currently encoding at

640x480
~1500kbps (~128Audio/~1300 Video)

For the iPod, it's got a 320x240 screen. That could save half or up to a forth of the file size already. Additionally, it's not high quality music we're going to hear, 96kbps in MPEG-2 Layer 3 for the Audio is way more than enough. For the video, you should not use more than 512kbps, 384kbps has been doing very fine for the movies I converted for my purposes. If you have widescreen video, you should make sure to add the black borders into the video to have 4:3 format, before you encode the stream, otherwise the iPod will scale the height and crop left and right. I don't know the screen resolution of a PSP, but I'm sure it wouldn't matter so much. Smiley

ZippyV
Fired Up

In reply to Dodo

#Dec 11th, 2008 @ 2:18 PM

Since MP4 is mainly used for low resolution devices I would go for a MP4 low only.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to Dodo

#Dec 11th, 2008 @ 2:18 PM

Dodo said:
If you have widescreen video, you should make sure to add the black borders into the video to have 4:3 format, before you encode the stream, otherwise the iPod will scale the height and crop left and right. I don't know the screen resolution of a PSP, but I'm sure it wouldn't matter so much.

No, you don't necessarily want to add black borders into videos to make them 4:3 format: although the iPod Classic and earlier generations have a 4:3 display, the iPod Touch and iPhone have a widescreen display (480x320) and widescreen videos look much nicer on those devices than 4:3.

Likewise, the PSP plays video back at 480x272. If I were going to choose which sizes to encode for MP4, I'd probably do a 320x240 version for iPod users and a 480x270 for iPhone/PSP users. As has been said before, there's not much sense in making a larger version since MP4 is most likely to be used by users on mobile devices; on "real" computers, people are more likely to go for the WMV (high) stream or just use the Silverlight player.

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

In reply to Dodo

#Dec 11th, 2008 @ 2:18 PM

Good suggestions, Dodo. I'd just like to correct you: 320x240 is not half of 640x480: it's a fourth (half the width * half the height). So even better.

rapuke

In New Zealand we have expensive low speed broadband and the mp 4 current sizes are prohibitive it we want to feed the kids. Nothing wrong with another option!
Cheers,
A channel 9 addict

ZippyV
Fired Up

I tested the current MP4 mix video (with Mike Swan):

The video does NOT work on the psp, the menu says "broken data".
This is also true for all Channel 8, 9 and 10 mp4's.
The video on my HTC Touch Diamond works but the image freezes regularly, probably because of the high bitrate that the phone can't handle.

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

In reply to TommyCarlier

#Dec 12th, 2008 @ 11:15 AM

The image complexity would be almost the same, though. Smiley

ZippyV
Fired Up

In reply to ZippyV

#Dec 13th, 2008 @ 4:49 AM

Now I tried the WMV (low) from This week on C9 and it doesn't play on my Windows Mobile phone. The video codec (vc-1) is not supported. So I would vote against using that codec.

Duncanma
Just Coding for Fun...

In reply to ZippyV

#Dec 14th, 2008 @ 12:02 PM

Ach! What version of Windows Mobile? I have to be honest here, we never tested on a windows mobile phone, VC-1 is the codec recommended for Silverlight so we standardized on it...

Minh
WOOH! WOOH!

In reply to Duncanma

#Dec 15th, 2008 @ 1:55 PM

I have to be honest here, we never tested...

Get out of here... Hmmm...

ZippyV
Fired Up

In reply to Duncanma

#Dec 15th, 2008 @ 1:55 PM

WM 6.1

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

Do you guys still have any plans on changing it? I mean it's not only me suffering from the 10 minutes to download an almost 1GB video file and only being able to put one at a time on my iPod nano, but you should have some traffic problems, with it, too. I heard traffic was an expensive matter somewhere... but I'm just saying... changing some numbers in a command line switch isn't time consuming or is it? Smiley

Rodney McKay

A lot of people have 16:10 screens today (16:9 is coming too) but Channel 9 videos are still 4:3.
Some videos are 16:9 but encoded in a 4:3 format - that's really bad Sad

Please think about 16:9 videos and i would love to see high quality mp4 too.

Dodo
I'm your creativity creator™ :)

In reply to Rodney McKay

#Feb 22nd @ 12:08 AM

Dude, hell no, MP4 is mostly used on phones and iPods (Video, Classic 5G, nano 3G and nano 5G). Whilst iPod Touch and the iPhone do have widescreen displays, the others are used more often and have 4:3 screens.

Duncanma
Just Coding for Fun...

by the way, we went with the 'just use MP4 low' decision several weeks ago. We didn't re-encode any videos, but the current MP4 size is 320x240 and less than half the bitrate of the one discussed in this thread.