Flashcomguru.com: Full Screen H.264 Flash Video at 500kbit/sec

Full Screen H.264 Flash Video at 500kbit/sec

Posted At : February 2, 2008 1:18 PM | Posted By : Stefan Richter | Related Categories: FMS , Videos & Players

Two words: jaw dropping. Check out this demo (double click to go full screen!) by Fabio 'I eat codecs for breakfast' Sonnati. Encoded at a mere 500bkit/sec this demonstrates just how well the H.264 codec can perform at low bitrates. Check Fabio's blog for more details and watch out for more upcoming demos.
I wonder if he will share his encoding settings with us. One thing I can guarantee already is that he set smoothing to true ;-)

Comments ( 39 ) |

Email This |

del.icio.us | 16700 Views

Really Nice H.264 Flash Video Demo (January 7, 2008)

Comments

[Add Comment]

i know it's a bit long, but here is my .sh script which can do this amazing quality encoding - it took 1 day to learn and optimize all that options

# inputfile bitrate framerate resolution audiofreq audiobitrate ptop pbottom pleft pright tmpfile logfile ffmpegpath

# SUBQ - time vs. quality
# 7=highest quality, 35% slower
# 6=high quality
# 5=normal quality - don't use in 2 pass
# ME - motion estimation
# hex=normal quality - don't use in 2 pass
# umh=high quality, 40% slower
# QCOMP
# 0=stills good, motion bad (constant bitrate)
# 1=motion good, stills ok (constant quality)
# 0.6=default
# 0.7-0.8=most people's taste
# KEYINT - keyframes interval (frames, 250 for 25 fps = 10 sec)
# REFS - reference frames
# TRELLIS - Trellis RD Quantization
# 0=disabled
# 1=a bit higher quality, slower
# 2=max quality, very slow

inputfile=$1
bitrate=$2
framerate=$3
resolution=$4
audiohz=$5
audiobitrate=$6
padtop=$7
padbottom=$8
padleft=$9
shift
padright=$9
shift
tmpfile=$9
shift
logfile=$9
shift
fpath=$9

threads=2
subq=6
keyint=$(bc -l <<< $framerate' * 10')
keyint=`echo "tmp=$keyint; tmp /= 1; tmp" | bc`
keyintmin=`echo "tmp=$framerate; tmp /= 1; tmp" | bc`

alloptions="-vcodec libx264 -b "$bitrate"000 -r "$framerate" -s "$resolution" -bf 3 -qcomp 0.7 -g "$keyint" -keyint_min "$keyintmin" -refs 5 -loop 1 -flags +4mv -cmp 256 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -level 30 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -padcolor 000000 -padtop "$padtop" -padbottom "$padbottom" -padleft "$padleft" -padright "$padright

firstoptions="-subq 1 -me hex -partitions 0 -trellis 0 -flags2 +mixed_refs"

secondoptions="-subq "$subq" -me umh -partitions parti4x4+parti8x8+partp4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -flags2 +wpred+mixed_refs+brdo+8x8dct -trellis 1"

thecommand=$fpath"ffmpeg -y -i "$inputfile" -threads "$threads" -pass 1 -an $alloptions $firstoptions -passlogfile "$logfile" "$tmpfile

echo $thecommand
echo
$thecommand
echo

thecommand="rm "$tmpfile

echo $thecommand
echo
$thecommand
echo

thecommand=$fpath"ffmpeg -y -i "$inputfile" -threads "$threads" -pass 2 -acodec libfaac -ar "$audiohz" -ab "$audiobitrate"000 -ac 2 $alloptions $secondoptions -passlogfile "$logfile" "$tmpfile

echo $thecommand
echo
$thecommand
echo

# Posted By G | 2/2/08 3:32 PM

Damn, cool! :)

# Posted By injun #576871 | 2/2/08 6:12 PM

This is insanely good quality.....and 500k?? Holy *bleeping* shit!!

Would love to be able to stream live with these results! Wonder what kind of hardware it would take!!

# Posted By Andy | 2/3/08 3:59 AM

Beautiful video. I tried to show some others but they said they had problems with buffering. Is there any way you could but the same video up in VP6-S so we could compare them? Thank you.

# Posted By Bob_ahblah | 2/3/08 5:57 AM

converting to this high quality on a new iMac 20" takes 400-600% of the original time, which is 5fps if the source is 25fps for example

currently i don't see any possibility reach this quality for a live stream (with 2-pass encoding), but maybe in 2-3 years we'll have the right consumer CPUs to do that

# Posted By G | 2/3/08 1:06 PM

I also tried to show some friends but they all had problems with buffering.

Would love to see a comparison of the same video in VP6-S.

Thanks !

# Posted By Bart Kennes | 2/4/08 8:27 AM

La cagaste chuchetumare

# Posted By Jose prieto | 2/4/08 6:37 PM

Man, Fabio really upset some On2 investors with that video.

# Posted By Bob | 2/4/08 8:19 PM

So, lets say i shoot a video with my camera, and then want to display it on my website like fabios'. What are the steps? How do I encode it?

# Posted By Alexander | 2/7/08 11:26 PM

Hmmm. I'm not too impressed - the framerate is 2-4 fps - not exactly acceptable for video playback. My PC is pretty outdated, but I have a normal framerate when playing HD video in H.264 in Quicktime, so I don't know whether to blame the Flash Player or something in Fabios encoding.

Anyway, the stills look pretty good :O)

# Posted By Martin Pagh Ludvigsen | 2/11/08 12:01 PM

hey can someone explain to me how to use that .sh script?

# Posted By tasovi | 2/11/08 1:52 PM

I am also curious how to implament the script

# Posted By chad | 2/12/08 12:03 AM

Me too wondering how to use the .sh script. Any idea?

# Posted By Alexander | 2/12/08 2:07 AM

This is a Bash script, so it runs under various Unix, Linux and OSX systems. You can do the same in a .bat with a slightly different syntax for Windows.

It's calling FFMPEG with _very_ fine tuned parameters. The input parameters are in the first line (inputfile, etc.).

# Posted By G | 2/13/08 7:23 AM

can you give us a more detailed description on how to run that script with osx?

# Posted By tasovi | 2/13/08 8:03 AM

Save the script into a .sh file. Run Terminal, cd into the folder where the script is. Type ./scriptname.sh parameter1 parameter2 ... and hit enter.
Of course you need to install FFMPEG first, which is not easy. You need to install XCODE first from the OS X DVD, and then Google for some how to. Not easy (quite hard imho).

# Posted By G | 2/14/08 4:49 PM

Hello,

Amazing video in fullscreen.
I tried myself at home but doesn t work.
Using Mac Osx, Flash CS3, ffmpegx, i created a "hd.sh" file with the script of this article but I have a problem in the Terminal.

I type

/hd.sh parameter1 parameter2

the answer is :
-bash: /hd.sh: Permission denied

Can some body please help me?
thx
B

# Posted By Ben | 2/15/08 2:59 AM

chmod +x yourscript.sh

the parameter list is in the first line of the file, please fill in each (13 in sum)

ffmpegx is not ffmpeg, you need to compile ffmpeg yourself

# Posted By G | 2/15/08 11:22 AM

In your blog you say that you use 3 pass encoding but in this script you only use two pass encoding. Can you say the parameters passed to the script to take this video?

# Posted By skubix | 2/15/08 5:30 PM

DailyMotion just went HD yesterday with On2 "VP6F". Anybody familiar with this? I knew of VP6E and VP6S but the "F" version is new to me. http://www.dailymotion.com/hd

# Posted By JT | 2/19/08 1:54 PM

Hmm I've not heard of it. Their HD content may be HD resolution but not HD bitrates, the quality looks average.

# Posted By Stefan | 2/19/08 4:33 PM

the "F" it appears may stand for FFMPEG a illegal free use of the On2 codec possibly?
http://readlist.com/lists/mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-user...
flv vcodec parameters that stands for vp6f - ReadList.com

# Posted By JT | 2/20/08 4:42 AM

I'm trying to replicate these settings using MediaCoder x64 -- has anyone tried it with this? I can't quite figure out how to get it working as a batch file. Am trying to use MediaCoder to help with batch conversion of a bunch of files (WMV and AVI input files with good res/quality) to H264-encoded MP4.

# Posted By Rob Cole | 2/25/08 8:10 PM

Thanks for sharing this! But can someone please explain (or re-write to C code):
keyint=$(bc -l <<< $framerate' * 10')
keyint=`echo "tmp=$keyint; tmp /= 1; tmp" | bc`
keyintmin=`echo "tmp=$framerate; tmp /= 1; tmp" | bc`

# Posted By AXi | 3/3/08 6:54 PM

Figured it out already... (should have payed more attention during linux lessons)

keyint = $framerate * 10 (<- float)
keyint = 1/$keyint (<- int)
keyintmin = 1/$framerate (<- int)

Correct me if i'm wrong...

# Posted By AXi | 3/3/08 7:41 PM

Does your ffmpeg keep crashing when trying to encode? Refer to shis forum: http://arrozcru.no-ip.org/ffmpeg_forum/viewtopic.p...

# Posted By AXi | 3/4/08 12:56 PM

Hi, I'm using this ffmpeg params to encode my clips (low bitrate). What do you think about?

#Coding filmato (passo 1)
ffmpeg -y -i clip.mov -an -pass 1 -vcodec libx264 -b 120k -maxrate 120k -s 320x208 -aspect 4:3 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -flags2 +mixed_refs -subq 6 -trellis 0 -refs 5 -bf 5 -b_strategy 1 -coder 1 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.71 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -deinterlace output.mp4

#Coding filmato (passo 2)
ffmpeg -y -i clip.mov -an -pass 2 -vcodec libx264 -b 120k -maxrate 120k -s 320x208 -aspect 4:3 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -partitions +parti4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -flags2 +mixed_refs -me umh -subq 7 -trellis 2 -refs 5 -bf 5 -b_strategy 1 -coder 1 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.71 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -deinterlace output.mp4

More on my blog:http://www.alessandroscoscia.it/it/2008/03/04/vide... (in italian)

# Posted By Alessandro Scoscia | 3/7/08 2:39 PM

How come i send this video to other people and 3 our of 4 cannot view it? What are the minimum requirements for this video to show ? Thanks.

# Posted By Alexander | 3/11/08 5:53 PM

they need the very latest Flash Player

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 3/11/08 7:21 PM

pleze send me teh codez!

# Posted By kidE | 3/13/08 4:31 AM

anyone know what -bt is ?

# Posted By Jerome | 4/4/08 6:17 PM

Very nice settings. Never saw a video with that really good quality at such low bitrates.

To the one who asked about how to replica this into MediaCoder, look here:

http://forum.mediacoderhq.com/viewtopic.php?t=3669...

# Posted By SirAuron | 4/11/08 2:15 PM

I use the following parameters, but I get no video, only audio. No error messages during encoding.

Any suggestions?

ffmpeg -y -i input.flv -pass 1 -an
-vcodec libx264 -b 500000 -r 29.97 -s 1280x720 -bf 3 -qcomp 0.7 -g 299.7 -refs 5 -loop 1 -flags +4mv -cmp 256 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -level 30 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -padcolor 000000 -padtop 0 -padbottom 0 -padleft 0 -padright 0 -subq 1 -me hex -partitions 0 -trellis 0 -flags2 +mixed_refs -passlogfile logfile.log temp_flash_file.flv

ffmpeg -y -i input.flv -pass 2 -acodec libfaac -ar 44100 -ab 96000 -ac 2 -vcodec libx264 -b 500000 -r 29.97 -s 1280x720 -bf 3 -qcomp 0.7 -g 299.7 -refs 5 -loop 1 -flags +4mv -cmp 256 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -level 30 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -padcolor 000000 -padtop 0 -padbottom 0 -padleft 0 -padright 0 -subq 6 -me umh -partitions parti4x4+parti8x8+partp4x4partp8x8+partb8x8 -flags2 +wpred+mixed_refs+brdo+8x8dct -trellis 1 -passlogfile logfile.log theoutputfinale.flv

# Posted By antilope | 7/23/08 2:12 PM

i'm downloaded this "jpg" file ;) and analysed. this comression is very dependent on film dynamic. where the scenes is still, bitrate slow down to 100-200 kb/s ...in more dynamic scene it's jump even to 2000 kb/s.

PS. sorry for my bad english :P i'm usually use polish language ;)

# Posted By WiruSSS | 8/22/08 10:35 PM

I've asked this in other forums - but just remembered the flv experts here:)

Can you embed an flv file into a swf or swc without importing to stage in Flash? ie using a nice h264 encoded file as an asset inside a swf or swc.

# Posted By unhitched | 8/26/08 9:47 AM

First, thanks for the script... got it work without a hitch, even wrote a .php script to process "x" number of mpg files at a time. I have a couple questions though...

1) I have 500 movies to convert mpg to flv, I split the 500 into 5 batches of 100 and tried running the script in 5 instances. The problem I'm having is the resulting flv doesn't play video. Is there a switch being used here that prohibits the script from being ran "x" number of times simultaneously (separate .mpg files of course)?

2) When running a single instance to convert mpg to flv most flv's play just fine but there are some that do not - no video. I know all movies work fine, they were converted previously with more simpler settings. Any ideas?

3) Is there any sites that anyone can suggest/recommend to fully explain each setting? My overall goal is convert these mpg files to flv with the best possible quality while achieving the smallest file size.

Thanks

# Posted By Anthony | 9/12/08 3:59 AM

Hi,
the problem should be a ffmpeg bug in two pass encoding log files. The log file generated from ffmpeg have always the same name (it appears -passlogfile is ignored). You should call ffmpeg changing directory before the call (one temporary directory for each movies)

# Posted By Alessandro Scoscia | 9/12/08 7:26 AM

Thanks Alessandro, I caught on to this so I had created separate folders to run each instance (ie set1, set2, etc..) This still didn't help...

# Posted By Anthony | 9/12/08 7:29 AM

Thanks for putting this lovely script together. It certainly has saved me a lot of headache trying to sift through all the ffmpeg documentation.

Great job, and keep up the good work.

# Posted By eldowan | 9/16/08 10:24 PM

[Add Comment]