Streaming Media - August/September 2008 - (Page 60)

Figure 6. Note the vague blocks in the Dicas clip and the relatively homogenous background in the MainConcept clip. Figure 7. Note that the MainConcept clip produced with Squeeze doesn’t have the same fading as the Apple clip produced in Squeeze and Compressor. problem footage, or need to be stingy with your data rate, avoid Apple and prioritize MainConcept over Dicas. HD Tests I ran the HD tests with a new test file that contained a mix of high- and low-motion footage that I created for Streaming Media East last May. I shot all source footage in 1080i HDV, most with Canon’s XH A1 camcorder. I captured and edited the clip in Premiere Pro, then output a scaled, deinterlaced 720p file from After Effects using the AlgoSuite plug-in. Again, all encoding tools simply encoded, with no preprocessing whatsoever. I produced all HD test files at 1280x720 with a frame rate of 30 fps and a data rate of 800Kbps for video and 128Kbps for audio. These rates are insanely aggressive, but as you’ll see, it definitely helped separate the contenders from a quality perspective. I produced using 2-pass variable bitrate (VBR) encoding, with target/maximum settings of 800/1600, adjusting the target as necessary to produce a file within 5% of the target. I encoded using the High profile when available and maxed out all quality-related encoding parameters. As mentioned previously, with a target of about 11MB total file size, Compressor would go no lower than 18MB, so I produced a file in Squeeze using the Apple codec that met the target. Unfortunately (and inexplicably), Semaphore couldn’t load the file, so I couldn’t analyze the data rate further. However, after analyzing the Episode file, I boosted the target in Episode to 800/4800 to produce a file that matched Carbon Coder’s 1.34Mbps maximum data rate. Figure 8. MainConcept again comes out on top, with better color and detail than Dicas and especially Apple. 60 STREAMING MEDIA August/September 2008

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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