Streaming Media - August/September 2008 - (Page 32)

tutorial High-Touch Encoding With Expression Encoder 2 Figure 10 (far left). Ringing artifacts were visible in the original frame. Figure 11 (near left). The same frame as in Figure 10 after the blend deinterlace GOP. This helps smooth over changes between GOPs, since you have the leading B-frames to spread the change over. MOTION ESTIMATION • Chroma Search: Full True Chroma—The encode is so fast that there’s no reason to not go for the full-meal deal and do Full True Chroma. • Match Method: SAD—For content with very simple, flat areas, the Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD) Motion Match is actually both higher quality and faster than either Hadamard or my normal video/film default of Adaptive. • Search Range: Adaptive—The smallest range works for most of the frames, but there’s some very fast motion when the cards zoom in that needs the bigger range. This is where Adaptive can really improve efficiency, so Adaptive it is. OUTPUT as 100% scale PNG, so there’s no scaling or further compression to complicate the comparison. Note that the FLV came out darker for some reason. I’m not sure what the cause of that was; the VC-1 brightness matches the source. Perhaps something to do with the Mac versus Windows gamma difference on the platform the FLV was encoded on? This actually makes VC-1’s job relatively harder, since the motion graphics are easier to see. And you can see the actual clips in action online at http:// on10.net/blogs/benwagg. DETAIL IMPROVEMENTS The Output pane (Figure 7) has some of my favorite usability features in Expression Encoder, allowing for the application of rich templates and automatic publishing. First, the template. I picked the Clean template, which has a nice, subtle overlay control, and a pop-up navigation menu (via the thumbnails we made previously) when mousing over the top of the window. It also supports switching to full screen with a double-click. One thing I like about Clean is that the video fills the frame exactly without having to account for the control bar or other elements. So I can embed at exactly 640x480 for a 640x480 clip. The publish mode (I’ve got the optional Silverlight Streaming publishing plug-in installed; check my blog at http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg for the URL of the latest version) lets me upload the final project to our Silverlight Streaming Service. This is a great way to test or deliver Silverlight projects. You can sign up for a free account with 10GB of storage and 5TB per month of bandwidth. I grabbed a frame right after the transition that really shows the detail difference between VP6 (Figure 8) and VC-1 (Figure 9); it’s especially striking in the texture of the shirt. The VP6 gets sharper after a keyframe pop, but this is how it starts. VC-1 quality in the card is maintained perfectly throughout. DEINTERLACING IMPROVEMENTS In the frames shown in Figures 10 and 11 (man, do I look like a stiff!), you can see the effect of my blend deinterlace to hide the fields. Notice the ringing artifacts in the original frame. Encoding fields as progressive is extremely challenging for codecs, since you have high-motion 1-pixel horizontal lines combing high frequency and high detail. I normally don’t like doing a blend, since those double images are also hard to encode, but it was only for a very short duration in this clip, and the deinterlacing filters had a lot of trouble preserving the text perfectly. So there you have it. Like I said, you won’t want or need to employ this sort of high-touch encoding on all of your projects, but some projects demand it, and the results will pay off. Ben Waggoner (ben.waggoner@microsoft.com) is principal video strategist in Microsoft’s Silverlight unit. Comments? Email us at letters@streamingmedia.com, or check the masthead for other ways to contact us. Before and After So, how much did all this help? Here are a couple of the more pronounced before and after shots. All are inserted 32 STREAMING MEDIA August/September 2008 http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Streaming Media - August/September 2008

Streaming Media - August/September 2008 Table of Contents No Doubt - Editor's Note Mo’ Videos, Mo’ Money: Solving the Problem of Network Cost Why Good Design Matters More Than Ever: Just. Press. Play. Technology and Business Trends by the Numbers High-Touch Encoding With Microsoft Expression Encoder 2 The State of the Content Delivery Market, 2008 Get a Life: New Tools Put Lifecasting Within Anyone’s Reach So Many Codecs, So Little Time: Comparing H.264 Files Using Codecs From Apple, Dicas, and MainConcept Writing an RFP for Maximum ROI: Things to Consider and Questions to Ask When Writing a Request for Proposal for a Corporate Webcasting System The Patent Wars Producing Screencams in Camtasia Studio Analyze That Using Video to Communicate Change for Business Success Intellectuals’ Property Rights

Streaming Media - August/September 2008

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