Jerky FLVs

[Charles Simonson]

Hard to tell your problem without seeing a sample of the file. Only thing that comes to mind is that you are encoding to too large of a frame size and bit rate for the computer it is being played back on. FLV is not really intended to be used at above 480×360 and high bit rates for across-the-board smooth playback on all systems.

[Rich Rubasch]

Also 15 frames per second might help. But in general i too find that many FLV’s I play back off the web just seem to jerk along. I don’t like it. user penetration be damned, i am reluctant to use it on our site for demos because of the iffy playback.

Is “iffy” really a word? If so, it describes FLV’s for me…

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks

I’m using FLVs in a Flash CD-ROM so it’s not a bandwith issue. I’m aiming for 1000KB so that the video will good with no pixellation. It’s 16:9 and it’s jerky even at 512×288 which is as small as I can go.

If I can get smooth MPEG-1, WMV, QT at this size and data rate why not FLV. Maybe it’s just an inferior technology?

Andy

[Andy Taplin]

It’s a shame about the jery playback because flvs integrate nicely into Flash interfaces.

Maybe Adobe can sort this out now they own Macromedia?

Andy

[Charles Simonson]

I wasn’t referring to it being an internet bandwidth issue, but rather an issue with the decoder needing to decode so many bits. And unfortunately, in order to get really good looking FLV with v7 or 8, you need to use a fair amount of bits to encode (no moreso than many other codecs, but still enough), I would say even more for CD-ROM distribution. This is one of the primary reasons why I still use Director and MPEG-1 for my CD-ROM authoring.

FLVv8 looks great for web distribution at smaller sizes where it has been heavily optimized. However, the large-format space is not something that seems to have retained much attention from the developers yet, and thus you are noting its shortcomings. As it stands, decoding FLVv8 requires too much processing power for larger sizes to be really worth it IMO.

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks Charles

It’s a real shame about Flash video not working tht well for large size CD-ROM as the interface design is better in Flash and easy to re-purpose for the web.

Andy

[Charles Simonson]

I can’t think of anything that can be done in Flash that can’t be done in Director (without some modding at least), but I can understand why some designers are more comfortable in Flash than Director. If you really like Flash, then design the UI in Flash and import the SWF into Director and use actions to initiate a movie start (encoded with MPEG-1).

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks Charles

My designer much prefers Flash but we’ll look at your suggestion for importing into director.

Andy

[Neil Ryan]

Do they playback ‘jerky’ on more than one computer?
I got caught in an endless loop, trying to successfully encode some FLVs which kept playing back with stepping, no matter what, only to find they were encoded fine – it was my computer that played them back badly.

see if that helps …

[Andy Taplin]

Thanks

In my case I don’t think it’s the PC, I think it’s just that FLVs are inherentlyr ‘Jerky’. Sometimes it’s quite subtle but compared to WMV, QuickTime and MPEG, FLVs just not as smooth.

Andy