Comment Feed for New mp4 size is too big (Feedback on Channel 9)

Re: New mp4 size is too big

Duncan Mackenzie — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:29:58 GMT

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.

Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

Dorian Muthig — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:43:58 GMT

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.

Re: New mp4 size is too big

Rodney McKay — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:08:07 GMT

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 :(

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

Re: New mp4 size is too big

Dorian Muthig — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:50:33 GMT

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? :)

Re: Re: Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

ZippyV — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:40:36 GMT

WM 6.1

Re: Re: Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

Minh — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:28:29 GMT

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

Get out of here... Hmmm...

Re: Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

Duncan Mackenzie — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:55:37 GMT

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...

Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

ZippyV — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:02:47 GMT

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.

Re: Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

Dorian Muthig — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:38:15 GMT

The image complexity would be almost the same, though. :)

Re: New mp4 size is too big

ZippyV — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 12:49:36 GMT

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.

Re: New mp4 size is too big

rapuke — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:16:07 GMT

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

Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

Tommy Carlier — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:15:21 GMT

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.

Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

JonathonW — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:20:29 GMT

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.

Re: Re: New mp4 size is too big

ZippyV — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:15:35 GMT

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

Re: New mp4 size is too big

Dorian Muthig — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:18:26 GMT

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. :)

Re: New mp4 size is too big

Tommy Carlier — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:47:49 GMT

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.

Re: New mp4 size is too big

Tommy Carlier — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:45:35 GMT

Thoughts?

Horses are pretty.