{"id":8123,"date":"2009-06-15T04:33:26","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T04:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/?p=8123"},"modified":"2009-06-15T15:17:58","modified_gmt":"2009-06-15T15:17:58","slug":"how-to-achieve-higher-quality-hd-than-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alienbabeltech.com\/main\/how-to-achieve-higher-quality-hd-than-youtube\/","title":{"rendered":"How to achieve higher quality HD than Youtube ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since Youtube<\/a> came on to the scene, online video sharing has taken off. Youtube is so popular that the name is synonymous with online sharing the world over. It\u2019s one of those things that has invaded our lives. People constantly talk about it in real life like other things that the internet has put into our day to day lingo like e-mail and chat.<\/p>\n

For a while Youtube was good enough. But as the nature dictates that everything must evolve, people started to feel limited by the quality of Youtube videos. With the arrival of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD onto the scene, everyone wondered what if our beloved Youtube could offer that kind of quality. What if ? The question hung in the air, with the world waiting for Youtube to answer it. But that question was first answered by Vimeo<\/a>. Vimeo became the first site to offer HD (High-Definition) video streaming.<\/p>\n

HD 101<\/strong><\/h1>\n

HD stands for High-Definition. It is a way of classifying videos with a resolution higher than Standard Definition. Standard Definition videos normally have a resolution of 704\u00d7480, 720\u00d7486, 640×480, 720\u00d748 or 704\u00d7576 depending on different systems. The highest resolution is 720\u00d7576 or 576p or 576i (i and p denote whether the video is interlaced<\/a> or progressive<\/a>). Vimeo used 720p for their videos which means that the resolution of videos was 1280 x 720 pixels (width x height). 1080p is known as Full-HD which means that the videos have a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (width x height). Here is a chart that displays the sizes of these videos in relation to each other<\/p>\n

\"resolution-chart-hd\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Click the picture to see it in full size and see the actual size of a 1080p video.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Youtube was under pressure to deliver HD so as not to lose users to Vimeo. Now Youtube has also implemented HD and so have many other sites. But HD videos have a caveat attached to them. Playing HD content requires a powerful CPU and a fast internet connection. The videos on Youtube are generally encoded with a bitrate of 2100 KiloBits\/Second (Kbps, audio + video) which equates to nearly 263 KiloBytes\/Second. This means that your internet connection should be faster than 2 Mbps if you want to be able to play HD content on Youtube without waiting for the video to load and then being played (known as buffering).<\/p>\n

Even if you let the video load and then play it, you would still need a powerful CPU to be able to play the video smoothly. This is because the HD videos are encoded in H.264 format. H.264 or MPEG-4 AVC (for Advanced Video Coding<\/strong>) as it is also known as is a standard for video compression similar to other popular video compression formats such as DivX and Xvid. H.264 generally offers better quality at the same bitrate when compared to DivX and Xvid especially at lower bitrates. Decoding H.264 is a much more CPU intensive task than DivX or Xvid. Generally, dual cores CPUs are capable of playing back Youtube HD videos smoothly.<\/p>\n

Have you ever wondered that sometimes Youtube HD is not enough. You want more quality, you want something better. Now the question is \u201cHow to get better quality than Youtube HD\u201d. That is the point of this article.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Enter Blip.tv<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
blip.tv’s mission and principles<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Blip.tv is dedicated to pioneering the next generation of video programming \u2014 both narrowcast and broadcast \u2014 as producers and audiences educate and entertain each other according to the rigorous compliance standards that we have developed in conjunction with our users.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That is just marketing talk, but let me tell you one cool thing about Blip.<\/p>\n

You can use the quality you decide for video to be displayed on their site. What this means is that YOU decide the QUALITY of video to be streamed, NOT Blip.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This means that you can have a 1080p 10Mbps video being streamed on the web to your viewers. But I did not find it practical as not many people in the world will have such fast connections, plus it requires a very good CPU to decode 1080p H.264. Also I would like to mention that Blip does encode your uploaded video to a lower quality Flash format fit for streaming. The trick is to encode to H.264 for the highest quality and put the H.264 video stream in a FLV container (container for flash video used for streaming on the internet) so that the video plays in the blip flash video player.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you encode to Xvid or Divx in AVI container, Blip will use Windows Media Web Player to play the video. You will need a plugin for Firefox and will need to install ActiveX component in Internet Explorer to play the video. If you encode to H.264 in MP4 container, Blip will use Quicktime for playback of the source file. These are just some extra hassles your viewer will have to go through. But if you follow my method, if your viewers can play Youtube HD, anyone can play the video on Blip as it only requires flash player installed. <\/span><\/p>\n

Test Configuration<\/span><\/h3>\n

Hardware<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n