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How do they do it? (Compression again?)
If you look at web porn, you can get good streaming video. I just checked — a five-minute piece with clear picture, no jerks in the loading on my computer, no need to wait for the entire piece to load. So how do they do it?
The video is in flash. Looking at the source code, it’s “type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”, “quality=”high” width=”480″ height=”400″ etc.
I have played with loading a two-minute video (not porn) using both flash and Windows Media 9. I get similar results for each, with no clear advantage of using one over the other. Neither loads as quickly as the porn sites unless I reduce the quality to low and I play them in a much smaller embedded window. My server (Tigertechnologies.net) says it has 250 GB bandwidth.
Clearly the porn guys are up to something that could help us all. What is it? Is it that the porn sites have much bigger bandwidth? Or is “x-shockwave-flash” some super form of flash, or is there yet some other explanation?
Rick Wise
director of photography
Oakland, CA
http://www.RickWiseDP.com
email: Ri**@********DP.com -
13 Replies
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Is it that the porn sites have much bigger bandwidth
this is part of it, they also start with a higher quality source in most cases, the encoding team knows how to best set up the vid first prior to encoding, they know how to re-cut or cut for the web, and most importantly, they feed the flash encoder with a very high quality stream and set Flash output for a higher bitrate.
Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer -
Spot, what software are they using to encode? I am using the free Super which may not be up to the task.
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There are a variety of higher end Flash encoders out there. Squeeze is one of the most popular encoders, and the Adobe Flash Encoder certainly is terrific too. Feeding it DV isn’t going to give you the same quality as feeding it HDV or other high rez source, however.
Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer -
Is the compression from the $249 Squeeze that much better than the compression from the free Super? Are the resultant flash files significantly smaller (so they load more quickly) and the quality significantly better?
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I’ve not tried encoding adult content, but do know how to optimize for skin tones. 🙂
Truthfully, I had several editors from various adult companies in my sessions at CES, which occurs at the same time as AVN. We chatted about this subject quite a bit in the encoding sessions.
Yes, the quality is significantly better. I believe the demo version will allow you to output Flash. Give it a whirl.Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST
Aerial Camera/Instructor
Certified Sony Vegas Trainer -
I encode to Flash 8 video all the time.
You’re best bet is to go with On2. Forget Sorensen – it’s junk – basically Flash 7 – crummy picture and larger file sizes.
Adobe uses the On2 codec for Flash Video. But On2 allows for a two-pass variable rate which is what the porn sites are using.
The nice thing is the price – On2 encoder is half the price of Adobe Flash
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Raymond,
On2 makes Flix Standard for encoding Flash, and Flix Pro. There is apparently no way to tell what are the differences between the two versions on the On2 web site. Which one are you using? There’s a huge difference in price….
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They do have a comparison chart of versions.
You want Flix Pro – does alpha channel as well -
Thanks, I did find the comparison chart. It’s buried.
two more questions:
1) what is the difference between Flash flv and Flash swf? (I cannot get my web to work with flv, but can with swf — I use Frontpage 2003 to publish my web sites.)
2) what have you found to be optimum settings in Flix Pro for size / speed of play / quality of play?
Thanks!
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a. The Flash Player plug-in to all browsers looks for a SWF file – it won’t play flv (video files) directly.
The SWF of our concern is the video player which points to the flv to play. This is true even if the video player is without controls and simply autostarts playing when the page loads. Actually, there’s a third file, written by Adobe – it’s a javascript that checks for Flash 8 and above and sends the viewer a link to get it and scripting to keep Internet Explorer from freaking out at the ‘action script.’b. I set encoding at around 400 for dsl and above with maximun quality. I let Vegas do the scaling to fit a custom player I designed and then tell On2 to use same size and frame rate as source. On2 gives you a bunch of players to choose from – you’ll want to scale to fit those or let On2 scale if you render full frame as AVI or MOV files.
In Vegas, I find it best to add sharpening, contrast, and a bit of saturation for the best looking web video.
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