Video Quality - Offer Broadband Option?

[SpiffyZippy]

love the vids, the best

can u make a broadband download available to us broadbanders? (you did for Jamie luke vid)?

[loader]

I vote for that. I'm willing to wait a couple more minutes to download higher quality videos.

[Abby]

Providing two different versions of the same videos is a pain for us in several ways. Before we offerred different image qualities, we'd probably offer two formats (for EXAMPLE, MPG and WMV). Any other format would acheive better quality at a low bitrate (so, faster downloads), probably have rights encoding benefits, and have more and better streaming options.

While few people would reject better quality videos, very few people are actually complaining about the current quality level (including you two, it seems!), but people Do regularly complain about the size (in Mb) of videos.

a

[Kinesis]

I'd be all for it, but , I kind of already thought of abby's current videos as a 'broadband' option.. Their video quality is among the highest out there.

So if it's a lot of trouble, that time is probably best spent on other stuff.

[loader]

I think the video quality only suffers in comparison to the incredible high quality of the stills.

[Philos]

It's ok as is, for me.

[SpiffyZippy]

i would have thought members would want better quality

here is a sampling of video sizes offered by well known sites:

352 x 288 Abby
400 x 400 Mr Skin
400 x 300 Hegre
640 x 480 Sapphic (offers lower size option)
352 x 240 Met Art
320 x 240 ATK
640 x 480 Fiona
720 x 576 Masha World
352 x 256 FTV

I just feel Abby has the best video content and the format should be better; the fuller screen videos now out there at more and more sites is wonderful to see

[baboo]

I wouldn't mind a little higher resolution, but prefer to stay with the mpg encoding. The download speed is a bigger issue to me. And by download speed, I mean actual kb/s, not the size of the files.

[Abby]

here is a sampling of video sizes offered by well known sites:

352 x 288 Abby
400 x 400 Mr Skin
400 x 300 Hegre
640 x 480 Sapphic (offers lower size option)
352 x 240 Met Art
320 x 240 ATK
640 x 480 Fiona
720 x 576 Masha World
352 x 256 FTV

It'd be great if you could make direct comparisons liek that, but you can't, cos the encoding affects how videos look when they are double-sized.

Any of our videos made in the last 18 months should look pretty good double sized (with some minor exceptions), that's 704 x 576 - quite competitive. We don't make them that size naturally for some kinda complex reason that VidDude will explain if anyone is interested.

Also, most of the sites you listed are quite happy to piss off moderately significant market segments (like, Unix), but ysing windows-made media formats (like WMV).

More info on why our videos are the way they are is in our FAQ, here:

http://www.abbywinters.com/main.php?page=wiki&id=WhyNoMultipleVidFormat

a

[Vid Dude]

A member of the site, I think it was BigDave, explained this to me once and he was absolutely right.

What I used to do for the GG videos was to render them in larger dimensions, and at a higher bitrate in an attempt to give a better quality product for the Gold members. But there was still a lot of artifacting, that is a lot of square chunkiness to the image quality, when I did this.

Dave explained that if I encode at small dimensions at a large bitrate, the filesize actually ends up smaller than what I had been doing, but the image quality when you expand your media player to fullscreen or double is a lot better - the artifacting is much less.

Now all the videos, in Gold and the Main site, are both done the same way.

Now it's true that when the scene is outdoors and there's a lot of fine detail, like leaves or rippling water or something, the artifacting increases. But that's just compression for you, and all codecs do this, even the superduper newer ones like Sorenson 4 or XviD or mp4 (The way around it is to increase the bitrate, but in doing so the filesizes start to be comparable to mpeg1 anyway, so that's no motivation for change).

[arsby]

Spiffy, try playing one of those big Sapphic Erotica vids full-screen, then a recent Abby vid full-screen.
There's really not much of a difference.

[SpiffyZippy]

the Sapphic vids at 640 x 480 are beautiful (twice as much detail), take alook at the sample clip

maybe Abby can add a single file to download entire clip for broadband users (and leave multiple clips for dial up),once you get used to better quality vids its tough to watch lower quality vids, eventually it will happen i feel

the better quality Jamie Luke vids are really nice

[arsby]

I watch the Abby vids at full screen on a high-resolution monitor and I'm very happy with them.

For me, "twice as much detail" wouldn't add very much to my enjoyment.

Now if only she can get the models to speak in an accent that I can understand!

[Diablo]

Vid Dude, how often have you tried encoding videos in interlaced format?

I seem to remember some of the older girl-girl videos encoded in this way ("Joanna & Kylie" , "Jamie & Gabrielle"), perhaps this was an experiment? While the side effects of interlacing were sometimes noticable, I seem to recall the detail level was a lot better than the non-interlaced videos released at the time.

The theory behind interlacing, IIRC, is that you can display the same level of detail with only needing half the bandwidth, since each successive frame only contains the odd or even scanlines. The obvious catch is that you'll get a "comb" effect on regions with fast movement, since missing scanlines that are needed in these cases can't be guessed.

I haven't had any practical experience with digital video encoding (so feel free to throw this post out the window), but do you reckon it'd be worth a try, encoding videos that generally remain static (eg. model sitting still, IM's) at 352x576 interlaced, and seeing if the detail/combing tradeoff is worthwhile?

[BigSpud]

I watch the Abby vids at full screen on a high-resolution monitor and I'm very happy with them.

For me, "twice as much detail" wouldn't add very much to my enjoyment.

Now if only she can get the models to speak in an accent that I can understand!

I also watch them (or try) at full screen and I would love twice the detail. That's one reason I prefer stills.

I love listening to the accents even if I can't understand them.

[Luxman]

The theory behind interlacing, IIRC, is that you can display the same level of detail with only needing half the bandwidth, since each successive frame only contains the odd or even scanlines. The obvious catch is that you'll get a "comb" effect on regions with fast movement, since missing scanlines that are needed in these cases can't be guessed.

I think there's a misunderstanding. Interlacing is used in TV transmission to lower the bandwidth, that's correct. It's also used to double the frame rate. You have 25 frames per second (NTSC 30 fr/s), but with the interlace system you transmit them in 2 fields (half frames), one containing the odd lines and one containing the even lines. Displayed one after the other, you display 50 (60) fields per second and get a vertical frequency of 50 (60) Hz, this to avoid flickering.

Your computer screen uses progressive scan. So it makes sense to encode video for web or computer use in progressive scan as well. There's a big difference if you de-interlace a still image or if you encode video in progressive scan. De-interlacing a still image means that only every other line is used and duplicated, that reduces the vertical resolution by 50%, so you get fewer details.

Encoding videos in progressive scan means that all the lines are used and are encoded according to the timing in the correct order as full frames. You get the full vertical resolution.

The "comb" effect of fast moving objects appears when the encoding of the lines is done in the wrong order, when the field dominance is not correct. Lines recorded later are displayed first, lines recorded earlier are displayed later. You can see this effect pretty well in the Jamie & Luke videos (see screen shot, left side original, right side de-interlaced with half resolution). The wrong encoding artificially generates the more of details (or sharpness) you see.

Lxm

[artlover]

Are you sure the comb effect isn't caused by pillow fights?

[Vid Dude]

The reason the Sapphic Erotica vids appear to have more detail is because they're in a brightly lit, controlled environment.

We're much looser, rely on natural light a lot more, and often have handheld outdoor operation. That's never going to look as good as the "studio" look of SE vids, even if we increased the bitrate.

[Diablo]

I think there's a misunderstanding. Interlacing is used in TV transmission to lower the bandwidth, that's correct. It's also used to double the frame rate. You have 25 frames per second (NTSC 30 fr/s), but with the interlace system you transmit them in 2 fields (half frames), one containing the odd lines and one containing the even lines. Displayed one after the other, you display 50 (60) fields per second and get a vertical frequency of 50 (60) Hz, this to avoid flickering.

Your computer screen uses progressive scan. So it makes sense to encode video for web or computer use in progressive scan as well. There's a big difference if you de-interlace a still image or if you encode video in progressive scan. De-interlacing a still image means that only every other line is used and duplicated, that reduces the vertical resolution by 50%, so you get fewer details.

Encoding videos in progressive scan means that all the lines are used and are encoded according to the timing in the correct order as full frames. You get the full vertical resolution.

The "comb" effect of fast moving objects appears when the encoding of the lines is done in the wrong order, when the field dominance is not correct. Lines recorded later are displayed first, lines recorded earlier are displayed later. You can see this effect pretty well in the Jamie & Luke videos (see screen shot, left side original, right side de-interlaced with half resolution). The wrong encoding artificially generates the more of details (or sharpness) you see.

Ah, thanks for the correction, Luxman.

I was thinking of the possibility of encoding the video stream as 25 fields per second (ie. 12.5 combined frames per second), but at double the vertical resolution (576 scanlines instead of 288). In theory, it'd still only require the same bandwidth as the current 352x288 25fps progressive-scan setup. I'm not sure if this would make the combing way more noticable, or if the MPEG 1/2 video specs even allow such a frame rate/resolution combination.

Anyways, it appears I misunderstood some things about de-interlacing... the Wikipedia page for de-interlacing would be a good start

[Vid Dude]

The videos are not in progressive scan. They're all interlaced, just that when they get reduced in dimensions it gets all combined and squished up anyway.

Interlacing really pisses me off, and I'm happy that it's starting to be phased out as a standard now, even though it will still be a while before it vanishes from video editing and television completely.

[Luxman]

Interlacing really pisses me off, and I'm happy that it's starting to be phased out as a standard now, even though it will still be a while before it vanishes from video editing and television completely.

We should not forget that the TV standards are over 70 years old and based on the technology of those times. Interlacing was the only possibility to get nearly flicker free images with an acceptable resolution. And to be correct, only 10 years ago it was unimaginable to have camcorder recording at 1280 x 720 with 25 frames/second in progressive scan.

What really pisses me off is that the industry is not able to find an agreement on standards. Long time ago we had 24/25/30 fr/s, NTSC/PAL/SECAM, different audio sub carriers, VHS/Video2000/Betamax,…
Today it is the war of HD-DVD/Blue-Ray DVD, different Codec standards, 720p/1080p, … And as VHS showed, it's not always the best system who wins, and finally it's the consumer who looses.

You are right, I think it will take at least 5 - 10 years before the old standards will disappear. What's fine is that on a standard TV set you can already display progressive scan video without any problem.

Lxm

[SpiffyZippy]

The reason the Sapphic Erotica vids appear to have more detail is because they're in a brightly lit, controlled environment.

We're much looser, rely on natural light a lot more, and often have handheld outdoor operation. That's never going to look as good as the "studio" look of SE vids, even if we increased the bitrate.

fully understand, which is more the reason why you should add broadband option (just like for Jamie Luke vid), you have treasured offerings and improved quality would be wonderful

you have an amazing site and i feel video quality is a weak link

I would pay more for a full screen option

there are 35 million broadband users in the USA, and its growing fast

[artlover]

I figure if I live long enough we will have 3D holovision and all those dinky antiquated images will seem like junk.


Artlover, always taking the long view.

[arsby]

If I live long enough they'll insert a wireless connection right into my brain, and it will feel like I'm right in the middle of the action. I'll also be able to google something just by thinking about it. Is that cool or what?

[arsby]

Hey, Spiffy!

I just watched McKenzie's videos in Windows Media Player on a 17" laptop monitor set to 1440x900, at 200% size. This is a special occassion because I don't often watch vids all the way through. (Too impatient.)

Aside from being a fantasy come true -- I haven't smoked in 20 years yet I felt like a cigarette after watching them -- I thought they were wonderfully sharp, the colors were vivid, and I didn't see any pixellation or streaking even when she was dancing.

At full-screen they were a tad fuzzy, but then I sat further back. (The better to grab myself, if you know what I mean. )

Bottom line, they're just right for me.

I'll bet you're the type who thinks you lose too much with mp3's and insists on lossless music, too.

[Vid Dude]

Videos are one of those things that can always be improved. Even if we had them in DVD quality resolution, someone would come along and say "Why aren't your vids in High Def?"

[SpiffyZippy]

the top of the hill is always in sight
greatness comes to those who continue to go upward

[squirllsandmice]

To much compression!

On some of the last several videos the quality is decreasing. To much compression as they were in the early days. Check your compression rate now with previous videos.

[BigSpud]

On some of the last several videos the quality is decreasing. To much compression as they were in the early days. Check your compression rate now with previous videos.

Hi Squirllsandmice,

Welcome to the boards (a little late ). I too have noticed that the vids sometimes seem to be less than stellar. It was expained to me that the outdoor vids have much more varied detail and therefore it doesn't compress as nicely. This does seem to be the case as I went back and looked at other vids. Unfortunately, that is a fact of life until we all get gigabit networks and ISP service.

Hope this helps to explain things. One of our resident video wizards has just left for a holiday and I am sure that when he gets back he could go into way more detail as to why this is so.

[arsby]

Hi, S&M -

Maybe you can give us some examples.

some of the last several videosthe quality is decreasing

-- which ones?

Check your compression rate now with previous videos

-- which previous videos?

This will help VidDude see what you're talking about.