Bleau.info : FAQ : MPEG-4 H.264

MPEG-4 H.264 FAQ

In 2008, bleau.info switched from the realvideo format to the MPEG-4 H.264 format. Reasons are related to the better quality of H.264, the open standard of H.264, et cetera. In this FAQ, we will answer a number of questions about viewing the videos, and offering your own videos to the editors of this site. If you have more questions or additions to this FAQ, email us!

Viewing of videos

Q: What are the plugin requirements to view the videos?

A: The videos are offered through Adobe's Flash Player. You need at least version 9.0.124 or higher of the Flash Player. Version 9 is needed because that is the first version supporting H.264. Subversion 0.115 is needed because that is the first version supporting the RTMPE protocol we are using, and subversion 0.124 is a security fix. And oh yes, Javascript should be enabled in your browser as well.

Q: What are the system requirements to view the videos?

A: The official hardware requirements according to Adobe can be found here. The videos we are offering are approximately 'half high-definition', so we can postulate that you have to meet the following requirements for smooth playback:

Windows & Linux: Intel Pentium II 1,25 GHz processor or faster processor, with 128MB of RAM.
Macintosh: PowerPC G4 1,25GHz or faster processor, Intel Core Solo 1,25GHz or faster processor, with 256MB of RAM.

Q: Are there firewall requirements to view the videos?

A: We use a streaming protocol that utilizes port 1935, so you should allow traffic on that port.

Q: What are the bandwidth requirements?

A: The videos are encoded at 1 Mbit/s and the first 6 secondes are buffered by the Flash plugin. If your internet connection is far below 1 Mbit/s, it is advised to pauze the video at the beginning, such that the whole video can play smoothly.

Q: All requirements are met, but why can I still not see the videos?

A: Hmmm, if the correct version of the Flash Player is installed correctly, your computer is fast enough, your firewall settings are OK, and your internet bandwidth is high enough, everything should work perfectly. There are however multiple reports that reinstalling the Flash plugin apparently can resolve the problem if you can still not view the videos. Otherwise, we don't have a solution...

Q: What H.264 settings do you use?

A: We are using the highest settings as defined by Apple, such that the videos are compatible with iPods and iPhones and can be viewed via a Wi-Fi connection. According to Apple's reference guide, these are the maximum settings we are actually using:

Video settings: 900 kbit/sec, H.264, 480 x 360 pixels; frame rate: current (25 or 30 per second).
Audio settings: 128 kbit, AAC-LC.

Q: But wait, why don't you offer the videos via podcasts?

A: The videos are compatible with many video plugins like Quicktime and VLC, and playable on devices like the iPod. So, we could offer the videos via vodcasts (video-podcasts). However, we don't like others to redistribute the videos via other websites like Youtube or Vimeo, that's why it is currently not possible to download the videos. We put effort in collecting and converting the videos, so we would like credits for that, and that is why we want you to visit bleau.info to watch the videos. However, we are looking into ways to offer the videos for off-line use, and promise they will come available for that purpose before our tenth anniversary in March 2009.

Submission of videos

Q: How can I submit videos to bleau.info?

A: You can request an upload account by email, such that you can upload your videos and photos. We created a separate FAQ about uploading files with WinSCP to our upload server. If you are using a Mac or Linux, email us for instructions if you don't know how to use file transfer with SCP.

Q: In what video format should the videos be uploaded?

A: We like to have the videos in their original quality. Like we hope to convert the old realvideos to H.264 some day, in the future we might want to reconvert the videos to an even better format. If your camera uses DV tapes, edit the videos in DV quality and export it in that quality (by the way, European cameras use DV-PAL at 25 frames per second, not DV-NTSC at 30 frames per second). If your camera uses another format, try to stick to that format as much as possible when editing and exporting. Of course, you must have the bandwidth to upload the videos in their original quality, as one hour of video in DV quality is about 10 GBytes.

Q: What is the mimimum quality for the uploaded videos?

A: We publish the videos at 480 x 360 pixels (landscape) or 360 x 480 pixels (portrait), so the uploaded videos must be at least of that size. But we rather have 640 x 480 pixels or 768 x 576 pixels (the latter one is PAL sized video). As stated above, the video settings of the published movies is H.264 at 900 kbit/sec, so if you want your videos to be shown with the best possible quality, the bitrate should be comparable. If you are not uploading with the original quality of the videos, but for instance WMV of MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, the bitrate of the videos should be about 1,5 Mbit/s to be of comparable quality.

Q: Why not convert the video to H.264 myself?

A: Of course, that would save us work. If you use the H.264 settings from Apple's reference guide as stated above, we can publish the video without recoding it. Please use two-pass encoding for the best possible video quality!

Q: What software is used to create the videos?

A: We use VirtualDub or Mencoder (part of Mplayer) to rotate videos if necessary, and FFmpeg for the conversion to H.264 video (FFmpeg is also available as a plugin for VirtualDub). All this software is open source software that is freely available, so you can use that software as well!

Q: What FFmpeg settings do you use?

A: Here is the command line blurb for landscape video with 25 frames per second (replace "-r 25" with "-r 30" if your source material is 30 frames per second):

ffmpeg -y -i "inputvideo.avi" -deinterlace -an -v 1 -threads auto -vcodec libx264 -b 900k -bt 175k -refs 2 -loop 1 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -parti4x4 1 -partp8x8 1 -me full -subq 1 -me_range 21 -chroma 1 -slice 2 -bf 0 -level 30 -g 300 -qmin 8 -keyint_min 30 -sc_threshold 40 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.7 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71428572 -maxrate 1028k -bufsize 2M -cmp 1 -aspect 480:360 -s 480x360 -f mp4 -pass 1 /dev/null; ffmpeg -y -i "inputvideo.avi" -deinterlace -v 1 -threads auto -vcodec libx264 -b 900k -bt 175k -refs 2 -loop 1 -deblockalpha 0 -deblockbeta 0 -parti4x4 1 -partp8x8 1 -me full -subq 6 -me_range 21 -chroma 1 -slice 2 -bf 0 -level 30 -g 300 -qmin 8 -keyint_min 30 -sc_threshold 40 -rc_eq 'blurCplx^(1-qComp)' -qcomp 0.7 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -i_qfactor 0.71428572 -maxrate 1028k -bufsize 2M -cmp 1 -aspect 480:360 -s 480x360 -async 50 -acodec libfaac -ab 128k -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f mp4 -pass 2 -r 25 "outputvideo.mp4"