mpeg 2

azazel

I was wondering if smugmug can change to mpeg 2 because these mpeg 1's are very slow... the picture is slow but the audio is on beat.. its wierd!! So please fix the outdated format, and hopefully the size of the video wouldnt hurt either? i would pay more for larger files.

{JT}

This has been answered numerous times on this board, and we even talk about it in our help section I think; but here it goes again: the reason we stay with mpeg1 is that 99% of computers out there can watch it. I don't have the exact number for users who can watch mpeg2, but I can tell you it has nowhere near a 99% install base.

We want to make it easy for grandma to watch your videos, so it would be tough to get her to understand how to download a whole new media player in order to do so.

Believe me, I wish that we could switch to mpeg4 (which I am betting has a better install base than mpeg2), but it is not going to happen for a while.

azazel wrote:

I was wondering if smugmug can change to mpeg 2 because these mpeg 1's are very slow... the picture is slow but the audio is on beat.. its wierd!! So please fix the outdated format, and hopefully the size of the video wouldnt hurt either? i would pay more for larger files.

DavidTO

{JT} wrote:

This has been answered numerous times on this board, and we even talk about it in our help section I think; but here it goes again: the reason we stay with mpeg1 is that 99% of computers out there can watch it. I don't have the exact number for users who can watch mpeg2, but I can tell you it has nowhere near a 99% install base.

We want to make it easy for grandma to watch your videos, so it would be tough to get her to understand how to download a whole new media player in order to do so.

Believe me, I wish that we could switch to mpeg4 (which I am betting has a better install base than mpeg2), but it is not going to happen for a while.

I would LOVE to have MPEG4. I might actually upload a video and USE THE DARN service if you got out of MPEG1.

Sorry it wasn't yelling, just emphasis.

flyingpylon

{JT} wrote:

We want to make it easy for grandma to watch your videos, so it would be tough to get her to understand how to download a whole new media player in order to do so.

What's the installed base of compatible media players compared to the installed base of IE 6? Because you guys up and decided to abandon support for IE 5 saying that people with IE 5 just needed to get with the program.

I'm not trying to be a smart---, but I don't know that much about video so I'm just asking.

flyingdutchie

flyingpylon wrote:

What's the installed base of compatible media players compared to the installed base of IE 6? Because you guys up and decided to abandon support for IE 5 saying that people with IE 5 just needed to get with the program.

I'm not trying to be a smart---, but I don't know that much about video so I'm just asking.

I agree with you David and FlyingPylon,

Especially since the upload-size of videos is limited, a better compression codec (MPEG4/DivX) will serve a better purpose than the bloated MPEG1.

Why not let the smugmugger decide what codec/extension to use? If i know that my target audience is able to view DivX *.avi files, why shouldn't i be able to upload it?
-- Anton.

DodgeV83

flyingdutchie wrote:

I agree with you David and FlyingPylon,

Especially since the upload-size of videos is limited, a better compression codec (MPEG4/DivX) will serve a better purpose than the bloated MPEG1.

Why not let the smugmugger decide what codec/extension to use? If i know that my target audience is able to view DivX *.avi files, why shouldn't i be able to upload it?
-- Anton.

Let me make my own decision I say! I've read the argument already, something about Smugmug not wanting to answer a bunch of "the video doesn't work on my computer!" support E-mails...but COMON!

Are old computers with outdated media player software REALLY ABLE to play 500-1000k bitrate files at 320x240 or 640x480 resolutions? Even if they could, such an old computer would most likely NOT be on a broadband connection, meaning they most likely won't watch the videos anyway (unless they wanna wait a few hours for them to download!). This MPEG-1 decision REALLY only helps the very small % of people who are both

1. Using an old computer (Likely not able to watch Mpeg-1 due to processor limitations anyway).

and

2. On a broadband connection.

How many people do you know who are using an old computer without a media player capable of Mpeg-4 AND on a broadband connection? Its 2005 people!

azazel

viewers have been emailing me about the videos picture being slow, but they can hear audio.. the demand for better quality is louad and clear, i think Divx would be a great idea, avi or whatever.. most of my viewers have that format if im not mistaken.. btw grandma doesnt surf my site , atleast i hope not.

DodgeV83

azazel wrote:

viewers have been emailing me about the videos picture being slow, but they can hear audio.. the demand for better quality is louad and clear, i think Divx would be a great idea, avi or whatever.. most of my viewers have that format if im not mistaken.. btw grandma doesnt surf my site , atleast i hope not.

\

Slow videos? My videos are anything but slow, the 320x240 ones anyway. The 640x480 ones are choppy for the first 3 seconds, then it gets clear.

http://frelow.smugmug.com/gallery/766952

The "Big video" vs "smaller video" shows this.

jfriend

New flash, mpeg1 doesn't work all that well either

DodgeV83 wrote:

\

Slow videos? My videos are anything but slow, the 320x240 ones anyway. The 640x480 ones are choppy for the first 3 seconds, then it gets clear.

http://frelow.smugmug.com/gallery/766952

The "Big video" vs "smaller video" shows this.

Want to hear something amusing in light of this thread. I followed your link above and clicked on one of your videos. I got a "missing plug-in" screen in Firefox and it advised me to go download a plug-in. I clicked on the Firefox button to get the missing plug-in. It said that what I needed was QuickTime. I said OK, get me quicktime. It took me to a screen that said I'd have to do a manual install - it wouldn't offer the automated plug-in install. I started towards that screen, but it took me to a generic apple web-site and I no longer had the patience to try to find what I need to download and install.

All this happened on a PC that already has QuickTime 6.5.2 and Windows Media Player 10 installed. I use both regularly (in fact, I just watched a CNN video that used QuickTime).

So, I agree that grandma is never going to figure this out. But, it's not all that well-oiled the way it is now either so why not just let people use more modern formats if they so choose?

--John

DodgeV83

jfriend wrote:

Want to hear something amusing in light of this thread. I followed your link above and clicked on one of your videos. I got a "missing plug-in" screen in Firefox and it advised me to go download a plug-in. I clicked on the Firefox button to get the missing plug-in. It said that what I needed was QuickTime. I said OK, get me quicktime. It took me to a screen that said I'd have to do a manual install - it wouldn't offer the automated plug-in install. I started towards that screen, but it took me to a generic apple web-site and I no longer had the patience to try to find what I need to download and install.

All this happened on a PC that already has QuickTime 6.5.2 and Windows Media Player 10 installed. I use both regularly (in fact, I just watched a CNN video that used QuickTime).

So, I agree that grandma is never going to figure this out. But, it's not all that well-oiled the way it is now either so why not just let people use more modern formats if they so choose?

--John

HAHAHA. This happens to me at work. Grandma shouldn't be using Firefox eh?

GIVE ME MPEG-4!

Baldy

We'd love to use MPEG4 but... It doesn't play yet in many video players and the implementations are different for Apple and Microsoft. Very disappointing. That's why Google forces you to use their player and why the new services like youtube that are trying to make a business of this are using .flv (Flash movie).

flyingdutchie

Baldy wrote:

We'd love to use MPEG4 but... It doesn't play yet in many video players and the implementations are different for Apple and Microsoft. Very disappointing. That's why Google forces you to use their player and why the new services like youtube that are trying to make a business of this are using .flv (Flash movie).

I know, it is a format war. But why is smugmug so concerned about it? If i want to upload an DivX AVI movie and i know that my viewers have that player, why shouldn't i be able to? Does smugmug needs to do something special for each format? Is the HTML different for different formats? Showing either an (embedded) windows media player or real-time player (like http://www.atomfilms.com handles it); couldn't that work?

If not possible; what about a compromise:
If the movie is MPEG1, it can play 'inline', inside the browser.
If the movie is any other format (with known extensions, like *.avi, *.asf, etc), it will just show up as a link. People can then download it and open it.

jfriend

Is lowest common denominator really where Smugmug wants to be?

Baldy wrote:

We'd love to use MPEG4 but... It doesn't play yet in many video players and the implementations are different for Apple and Microsoft. Very disappointing. That's why Google forces you to use their player and why the new services like youtube that are trying to make a business of this are using .flv (Flash movie).

I understand that the standards and players are a messed up world. I guess what I'm wondering is why you make all smugmuggers live with the lowest common denominator which is pretty crappy experience. Given that the world is messed up, shouldn't individual smugmug subscribers be able to decide which format/player makes sense for their use and smugmug could offer as much guidance as possible, even helping to put download links on the page for the appropriate players for the given format?

Or, another way of looking at it is to ask, what conditions are you waiting for before smugmuggers could use a more modern video format and when do you expect that will happen?

--John

Andy

flyingdutchie wrote:

{snip}But why is smugmug so concerned about it? {snip}

it has to do with customer support - grandma, who manages to download a file, emails smugmug and wonders why her ancient ibm pc xt won't play the movie - and to her, "it's smugmug's fault."

jfriend

Support costs is a cop-out on this one

andy wrote:

it has to do with customer support - grandma, who manages to download a file, emails smugmug and wonders why her ancient ibm pc xt won't play the movie - and to her, "it's smugmug's fault."

I am usually a defender of Smugmug's policies, but on this one I feel differently. I understand managing the support costs and wanting grandma to succeed, but in this case, I think that's just a cop-out. Smugmug is choosing the lowest common denominator and choosing to not offer a competitive feature set in this regard. Your paying customers want the option to use more modern formats and you are ignoring them.

I also think that, in this case, the support burden is not that difficult. It is not Smugmug's job to help someone download a new player and I don't really think that most viewers will think it's Smugmug's fault if they don't have the right player. When a download doesn't work from CNN.com, I don't think it's CNN's job to make it work on my PC (and I've had plenty of problems with videos from CNN). My kid's grandma doesn't think it's CNN's job either - in fact she calls me.

If Smugmug gets an email on the topic a canned response should be able to direct the viewer to a help page that contains the different download possibilities based on format. Beyond that, the user is on their own and it's not Smugmug's responsibility.

--John

flyingdutchie

MPEG1 and 8Mbyte limit....

jfriend wrote:

I am usually a defender of Smugmug's policies, but on this one I feel differently. I understand managing the support costs and wanting grandma to succeed, but in this case, I think that's just a cop-out. Smugmug is choosing the lowest common denominator and choosing to not offer a competitive feature set in this regard. Your paying customers want the option to use more modern formats and you are ignoring them.

I also think that, in this case, the support burden is not that difficult. It is not Smugmug's job to help someone download a new player and I don't really think that most viewers will think it's Smugmug's fault if they don't have the right player. When a download doesn't work from CNN.com, I don't think it's CNN's job to make it work on my PC (and I've had plenty of problems with videos from CNN). My kid's grandma doens't think it's CNN's job either - in fact she calls me.

If Smugmug gets an email on the topic a canned response should be able to direct the viewer to a help page that contains the different download possibilities based on format. Beyond that, the user is on their own and it's not Smugmug's responsibility.

--John

Amen! :

Seriously, smugmug.

I've been wanting to put up videos. But 8 Mbytes MPEG1 videos just don't work. Even if i shoot a itty little bitty video using my cellphone, tranfering it into MPEG1 winds up with a much larger file than that. Other compressions are much better at not reaching the 8MByte limit.
If i could have posted in another format that MPEG1, i actually would have used smugmug's feature to upload videos. Now i haven't and i put them on my ISP's site instead.

If customer support is an issue, give a warning to whoever uploads the video that it may not be compatible with other people's media players.

-- Anton.

rainforest1155

jfriend wrote:

I am usually a defender of Smugmug's policies, but on this one I feel differently. I understand managing the support costs and wanting grandma to succeed, but in this case, I think that's just a cop-out. Smugmug is choosing the lowest common denominator and choosing to not offer a competitive feature set in this regard. Your paying customers want the option to use more modern formats and you are ignoring them.

I also think that, in this case, the support burden is not that difficult. It is not Smugmug's job to help someone download a new player and I don't really think that most viewers will think it's Smugmug's fault if they don't have the right player. When a download doesn't work from CNN.com, I don't think it's CNN's job to make it work on my PC (and I've had plenty of problems with videos from CNN). My kid's grandma doens't think it's CNN's job either - in fact she calls me.

If Smugmug gets an email on the topic a canned response should be able to direct the viewer to a help page that contains the different download possibilities based on format. Beyond that, the user is on their own and it's not Smugmug's responsibility.

Bingo, just what I thought about the topic for some time.
I don't know anyone trying to get help from SM support in case of such a problem. Either they would ask me or another friend. Just presenting them a download link for the usual players would let most not-so-techies-people fix the problem themselves.

Also have to agree with Anton - when someone accidently mails SM support on this just point them to a standard help page and the uploader of the video for further help.
If someone decides to upload anything else than MPG1 give him a message that all problems with these videos will be forwarded to him. Period!


Thanks,
Sebastian

DodgeV83

andy wrote:

it has to do with customer support - grandma, who manages to download a file, emails smugmug and wonders why her ancient ibm pc xt won't play the movie - and to her, "it's smugmug's fault."

And who is paying for the service? Grandma, or the $100 a year Smugmug Pro user (me!)? I know for a fact its not hard to code it, my home server already does it with a simple PHP script, and guess what? It works on Linux, Windows and a Mac.

As you've seen on this thread alone, even MPEG-1 videos don't play on everyone's system, one user here had problems using it with Firefox. At my job it doesn't work with Firefox either, only with IE. I'm sure others have the same problem...did any of them send you an E-mail? Are you guys getting an influx of E-mails saying "Smugmug doesn't work with Firefox its your fault!". Is a few extra E-mails a day really worth making the people that pay $100 a year unhappy? Just set an automated response and forget about it.

I honestly don't know of any other websites using MPEG-1. Even the mainstream news websites like CNN aren't using MPEG-1!

"and wonders why her ancient ibm pc xt won't play the movie"

Guess what? I bet her ancient IBM PC XT isn't playing my MPEG-1 videos either! Not at the bitrate-resolution I like them at! Even if you were 100% correct, I am well within my rights to ignore these people if I choose to. If every Windows Media Player since 6.4 (possibly earlier?) can play MPEG-4, I really doubt that only 10% of all home computers can play them (a Smugmug rep once quoted around 10% as the number of people with MPEG-4 players). Whats next? "You can't upload any pictures higher then 8MB, because your grandma's computer would crash trying to open the original?" Comooooooooooooooooon!

Whats the real deal here? I haven't been here long, but it seems like Smugmug LOVES giving the people what they want. If you guys enabled MPEG-4 would too many people start using videos, taking up too much space/bandwidth?

azazel

it seems that smugmug does everything right when it comes to photo-sharing.. but as of now video-sharing is amazingly popular now and if smugmug had these 2 types of media-sharing, smugmug would be the greatest tool on the internet! Hope smugmug gives us more for the money, , all im asking is for avi file format (atleast) and bigger movie sizes.. *crosses fingers* a boy can only dream.

Baldy

Actually.... In all honesty video gives us fits and we're very open about not being proud of our implementation.

Fit #1 really does come from people who can't get MPEG1s to play on their sytem and email us. I don't want to think about how many of these I've answered. And why don't they ask their families, the person who uploaded them? Because, they tell us, they don't want to look like computer illiterates to their friends and family.

Fit #2 comes from verifying & converting. AVI really isn't a format, it's a container. The common .avi files that come from digital cameras are MJPEGs, which don't play on many players that otherwise play .avi files. And they really do blame us: we get very angry emails when people can't get videos to play. CNN just ignores those emails.

I'm not advocating that you verify this, but I'm told that still today the vast majority of online p0rn videos are MPEG1 because of the compatibility issue.

No one reacted to my comment about converting what we receive to Flash? At least with Flash, 92% of computers have Flash 6, which can handle pretty good video. You could argue that Flash 8 has better video than MPEG4. Flash has it's major downsides and I don't want to propose it without hearing what Onethumb has to say, but it'd be interesting to get your feedback.

Anyone have trouble playing these? http://www.discovery.com/ Are they smooth, etc.?

Biggest problem of all: we simply can't focus on video for awhile because we have so many other high-priority irons in the fire, a lot of them that people are screaming for. I wish I had a better answer for you.

gus

Baldy wrote:

Anyone have trouble playing these? http://www.discovery.com/ Are they smooth, etc.?

Smooth for me.

rainforest1155

Sorry Baldy for overlooking your comment about flash as a possible platform for videos. I think the idea is actually very good. Look at Flickr (EDIT: apparently Flickr isn't using flash - not anymore? - I thought they had, at least in the beginning) - they use flash even for showing the pictures, which is not necessarily a good thing, but it shows the general acceptance of flash on the internet. The downside of this is the spread of flash ads, which are really annoying most of the time.

I already tested google's video service. Here's a direct comparison between google's flash player and SM's mpg1 implementation: (turn down your volume if you hate the sound of my voice as much as I do. )
video on smugmug
same video on google

Please don't look so much at the actual quality, because both use the same mpg1-source already shrinked to the 8mb limit of SM. So google pumped the picture size quite a bit and it's even 300kb smaller than the original.

As for the google player - I really like that they jotted down the playtime so you know how much time of your life the clip actually takes away.

For all those who don't see the google video - it's because of the place where are you living. For example google video isn't availiable in Germany, yet. So I've to use a U.S. proxy to play the videos. If you know what a proxy is and how to use it have a look here to fix your playback problems with google video.

Baldy, thanks again for the hint to google - I think this would be a very smooth solution.

Sebastian

DodgeV83

rainforest1155 wrote:

Sorry Baldy for overlooking your comment about flash as a possible platform for videos. I think the idea is actually very good. Look at Flickr - they use flash even for showing the pictures, which is not necessarily a good thing, but it shows the general acceptance of flash on the internet. The downside of this is the spread of flash ads, which are really annoying most of the time.

I already tested google's video service. Here's a direct comparison between google's flash player and SM's mpg1 implementation: (turn down your volume if you hate the sound of my voice as much as I do. )
video on smugmug
same video on google

Please don't look so much at the actual quality, because both use the same mpg1-source already shrinked to the 8mb limit of SM. So google pumped the picture size quite a bit and it's even 300kb smaller than the original.

As for the google player - I really like that they jotted down the playtime so you know how much time of your life the clip actually takes away.

For all those who don't see the google video - it's because of the place where are you living. For example google video isn't availiable in Germany, yet. So I've to use a U.S. proxy to play the videos. If you know what a proxy is and how to use it have a look here to fix your playback problems with google video.

Baldy, thanks again for the hint to google - I think this would be a very smooth solution.

Sebastian

If we put the videos on Google, how long will they stay up? I'd prefer it if they ware on Smugmug

rainforest1155

DodgeV83 wrote:

If we put the videos on Google, how long will they stay up? I'd prefer it if they ware on Smugmug

No, don't get me wrong. The plan wasn't getting SM's videos on google, but using a similar technique for saving and displaying the videos - by using Flash, which is a format for creating animations and interactive stuff on the web.

To answear your question: the stuff on google video is supposed to stay online forever - there's no deadline or whatever. I think the idea behind all this is to create a platform where everybody can upload their videos to share them with the world. You can even charge money when people want to view your videos and that's the point where google charges you some amount of the sales (+ when you video is too popular and causes too much bandwith)

Sebastian

DodgeV83

rainforest1155 wrote:

No, don't get me wrong. The plan wasn't getting SM's videos on google, but using a similar technique for saving and displaying the videos - by using Flash, which is a format for creating animations and interactive stuff on the web.

To answear your question: the stuff on google video is supposed to stay online forever - there's no deadline or whatever. I think the idea behind all this is to create a platform where everybody can upload their videos to share them with the world. You can even charge money when people want to view your videos and that's the point where google charges you some amount of the sales (+ when you video is too popular and causes too much bandwith)

Sebastian

Yea I understand thats not your solution, but it sounded like the user was suggesting we just put all of our videos on Google and link to them here, thats what I was responding to...But if Google says they will keep them up FOREVER...Why not?

jfriend

OK, this is a more reasonable position

Baldy wrote:

Biggest problem of all: we simply can't focus on video for awhile because we have so many other high-priority irons in the fire, a lot of them that people are screaming for. I wish I had a better answer for you.

If the real answer here is that it would be a bunch of work to do something better than we have now and even then it wouldn't be great because the stds are so screwed up. And, furthermore both customers and the success of the business are not placing this nearly as high on the priority list as many other more valuable things that the core photo enthusiast values, then that's a rational answer that I can understand. It's a little hard for us to argue directly with you because we don't what things you are working on that you think are higher priority, but I would suspect that most of us do have things that are a higher priority for core photo sharing.

But, the previous answer was that "there's nothing better we can do" and the defense was something about support and grandma and that seemed like a cop-out if you cared and it was an important priority.

If, on the other hand, most of your current initiatives are things like GPS/Google Maps gee-wiz things, I think many of us here would argue that we have hundreds of things we think are more important to our photo sharing experience than those type of things, including video support.

On my list are virtual galleries based on keywords (even when using pwds), fixing security so there's no way to see a photo in a password protected gallery without first supplying the password, making keywords work with passworded galleries, disabling Google indexing without requiring gallery passwords, fixing the "processing image" delay during busy times, real customizable templates like Google blogs have (the ultimate customizability beyond the current CSS customization) and so on.

--John

Baldy

Well, my thinking is Flash 8 might change everything. The MPEG 4 standards are indeed screwed up, much as we hate that answer. But I think it's interesting that just this morning, Google dropped their own attempt at a video player and went with Flash.

Flash doesn't work for photo sharing because it's not on 100% of computers and that's why Flickr had to drop it. Grandma complained when people shared with her and she didn't know how to install Flash.

The same will happen with Flash videos but compared to penetration of MPEG 4 capable players, it wins hands down. So if 10% of people complain that they can't watch Flash videos, that's 4 times better than the current state of MPEG 4.

I think we'd just put up a declaration that Flash 8 is required and send people to a help page on Flash.

The biggest problem we'd face is almost every video we receive would have to be converted to the On2 vp6 codec. Yeouch, that's a lot of processing, major hardware.

DavidTO

Being on a Mac, I understand how to make an MPEG-4. Being an editor, I even know how to compress it.

What I don't understand is how to make a flash. it may be more universal for people to have the player, but how many of us can do it? Or is it that you can upload a variety of formats and they all show up as flash?

I really don't understand the concept I guess, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Can you explain what it is that you're proposing you may possibly do? (Didn't want to word that as if you had made a commitment to do something, after all.)

Baldy wrote:

Well, my thinking is Flash 8 might change everything. The MPEG 4 standards are indeed screwed up, much as we hate that answer. But I think it's interesting that just this morning, Google dropped their own attempt at a video player and went with Flash.

Flash doesn't work for photo sharing because it's not on 100% of computers and that's why Flickr had to drop it. Grandma complained when people shared with her and she didn't know how to install Flash.

The same will happen with Flash videos but compared to penetration of MPEG 4 capable players, it wins hands down. So if 10% of people complain that they can't watch Flash videos, that's 4 times better than the current state of MPEG 4.

I think we'd just put up a declaration that Flash 8 is required and send people to a help page on Flash.

Baldy

yeah, so one of the big downsides of Flash is since they don't use MPEG, we'd have to convert your videos to their format. You'd upload whatever you have and some really big iron in our data center would grind away to process them.

The format Macromedia chose for Flash is hard to format but easy to play, so it can play on older computers like Mac G3s and it doesn't require a big powerful nasty video player to play it.

So the winners would be our subscribers who wouldn't have to convert anything and viewers who could view videos on the maximum number of computers. The big barrier would be the processing power to convert in our data center.

DavidTO

Would the processing be destructive? In other words, if I uploaded MPEG would my file be converted to Flash, and would the original MPEG be deleted/replaced? Seems like it would have to, or you'd be doubling the storage for each video clip.

Baldy wrote:

yeah, so one of the big downsides of Flash is since they don't use MPEG, we'd have to convert your videos to their format. You'd upload whatever you have and some really big iron in our data center would grind away to process them.

The format Macromedia chose for Flash is hard to format but easy to play, so it can play on older computers like Mac G3s and it doesn't require a big powerful nasty video player to play it.

So the winners would be our subscribers who wouldn't have to convert anything and viewers who could view videos on the maximum number of computers. The big barrier would be the processing power to convert in our data center.

Baldy

DavidTO wrote:

Would the processing be destructive? In other words, if I uploaded MPEG would my file be converted to Flash, and would the original MPEG be deleted/replaced? Seems like it would have to, or you'd be doubling the storage for each video clip.

Yes, I'd guess so since it would actually more than double it. Unless you're uploading MPEG4, the converted version would be much smaller than the original.

I know Onethumb was hopeful that with MPEG4 you could download the clips and play them on consumer devices. We'll see how Flash makes its way into consumer devices and whether that story will be as good.