In Firefox 3.6.13 on Linux, I can show Ogg Theora videos just fine, which is a great step forward from earlier versions a year ago. But there are still bugs, where the playback just hangs. I have no way to tell if this is a poorly encoded video or a browser bug or something relating to my screen driver. All I know is that it happens more often for videos with higher bitrate. As a programmer, I could guess that there is some buffer competition, a combination of buffer boundaries and time racing, that causes a deadlock. I have no way to know the reason or whether it is unique to me. Too few people watch videos in Wikipedia, so I have no user base to draw conclusions from. The source code is available, but I don't want to take the time to specialize in video decoding. This headache is already taking far too much of my time.
For one video, I changed the encoding and this made the problem occur less frequently for me. This 720 x 544 pixel, 15 minute video was 116 MB when first encoded with "ffmpeg2theora" without parameters, so to make it pass under the 100 MB limit I added "-v 4" (lowercase v for video quality), to slightly reduce the video quality. But it hanged just too often, and by encoding with "-V 600" (uppercase V for bitrate, 600 kbit/s), it runs a lot more smooth on my laptop. You can try either version at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M%C3%A4n_och_maskiner_1936.ogv
Looking at these 1200 Dutch videos, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_from_Open_Beelden they are just 320x240 pixels, which is another way to get smaller files and lower bitrates.
Is that something I should settle for? Will I live happier and prosper if I scale all videos to half their size? Maybe in 2-3 years time, when the 100 MB limit has been lifted and Firefox 4.x offers a more mature video playback, we can upload the same videos in better resolution?
Should we make this a recommendation? Do we have statistics on the resolution and bitrate of the videos on Commons?
Who did the job with the Dutch films? How did they reason?
Hi Lars,
A cursory look suggests the problem originates in Firefox's internal decoding, even using the most-recent nightly builds. Furthermore, the problem only is apparent when the video is played from within a Commons page ( http://is.gd/mWpoap ); viewing the video directly works just fine ( http://is.gd/gn0BEr ).
Comment #5 from Mozilla bug #531279 ( http://is.gd/m9pqZ5 ) suggests the problem might be somehow related to video re-scaling, but it might be better to file a new bug and see what happens. I'd be happy to help submit the bug report if needed.
Sincerely, George
On Thu, February 17, 2011 5:25 am, Lars Aronsson wrote:
In Firefox 3.6.13 on Linux, I can show Ogg Theora videos just fine, which is a great step forward from earlier versions a year ago. But there are still bugs, where the playback just hangs. I have no way to tell if this is a poorly encoded video or a browser bug or something relating to my screen driver. All I know is that it happens more often for videos with higher bitrate. As a programmer, I could guess that there is some buffer competition, a combination of buffer boundaries and time racing, that causes a deadlock. I have no way to know the reason or whether it is unique to me. Too few people watch videos in Wikipedia, so I have no user base to draw conclusions from. The source code is available, but I don't want to take the time to specialize in video decoding. This headache is already taking far too much of my time.
For one video, I changed the encoding and this made the problem occur less frequently for me. This 720 x 544 pixel, 15 minute video was 116 MB when first encoded with "ffmpeg2theora" without parameters, so to make it pass under the 100 MB limit I added "-v 4" (lowercase v for video quality), to slightly reduce the video quality. But it hanged just too often, and by encoding with "-V 600" (uppercase V for bitrate, 600 kbit/s), it runs a lot more smooth on my laptop. You can try either version at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M%C3%A4n_och_maskiner_1936.ogv
Looking at these 1200 Dutch videos, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_from_Open_Beelden they are just 320x240 pixels, which is another way to get smaller files and lower bitrates.
Is that something I should settle for? Will I live happier and prosper if I scale all videos to half their size? Maybe in 2-3 years time, when the 100 MB limit has been lifted and Firefox 4.x offers a more mature video playback, we can upload the same videos in better resolution?
Should we make this a recommendation? Do we have statistics on the resolution and bitrate of the videos on Commons?
Who did the job with the Dutch films? How did they reason?
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikivideo-l mailing list Wikivideo-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
Correction: The playback differences appeared in the Debian version of Firefox 3.5.16; the nightly builds of Firefox play the video without hesitations.
On Thu, February 17, 2011 12:19 pm, George Chriss wrote:
Hi Lars,
A cursory look suggests the problem originates in Firefox's internal decoding, even using the most-recent nightly builds. Furthermore, the problem only is apparent when the video is played from within a Commons page ( http://is.gd/mWpoap ); viewing the video directly works just fine ( http://is.gd/gn0BEr ).
Comment #5 from Mozilla bug #531279 ( http://is.gd/m9pqZ5 ) suggests the problem might be somehow related to video re-scaling, but it might be better to file a new bug and see what happens. I'd be happy to help submit the bug report if needed.
Sincerely, George
On Thu, February 17, 2011 5:25 am, Lars Aronsson wrote:
In Firefox 3.6.13 on Linux, I can show Ogg Theora videos just fine, which is a great step forward from earlier versions a year ago. But there are still bugs, where the playback just hangs. I have no way to tell if this is a poorly encoded video or a browser bug or something relating to my screen driver. All I know is that it happens more often for videos with higher bitrate. As a programmer, I could guess that there is some buffer competition, a combination of buffer boundaries and time racing, that causes a deadlock. I have no way to know the reason or whether it is unique to me. Too few people watch videos in Wikipedia, so I have no user base to draw conclusions from. The source code is available, but I don't want to take the time to specialize in video decoding. This headache is already taking far too much of my time.
For one video, I changed the encoding and this made the problem occur less frequently for me. This 720 x 544 pixel, 15 minute video was 116 MB when first encoded with "ffmpeg2theora" without parameters, so to make it pass under the 100 MB limit I added "-v 4" (lowercase v for video quality), to slightly reduce the video quality. But it hanged just too often, and by encoding with "-V 600" (uppercase V for bitrate, 600 kbit/s), it runs a lot more smooth on my laptop. You can try either version at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M%C3%A4n_och_maskiner_1936.ogv
Looking at these 1200 Dutch videos, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_from_Open_Beelden they are just 320x240 pixels, which is another way to get smaller files and lower bitrates.
Is that something I should settle for? Will I live happier and prosper if I scale all videos to half their size? Maybe in 2-3 years time, when the 100 MB limit has been lifted and Firefox 4.x offers a more mature video playback, we can upload the same videos in better resolution?
Should we make this a recommendation? Do we have statistics on the resolution and bitrate of the videos on Commons?
Who did the job with the Dutch films? How did they reason?
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikivideo-l mailing list Wikivideo-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
--
Wikivideo-l mailing list Wikivideo-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
On 02/17/2011 06:19 PM, George Chriss wrote:
Hi Lars,
A cursory look suggests the problem originates in Firefox's internal decoding, even using the most-recent nightly builds. Furthermore, the problem only is apparent when the video is played from within a Commons page ( http://is.gd/mWpoap ); viewing the video directly works just fine ( http://is.gd/gn0BEr ).
The previous version of the same film (with a slightly higher bitrate) hangs during playback for me, even from that kind of URL, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/d/d4/20110216144655!M%...
This happens more often if other programs are running in the background, so apparently its a competition between available CPU power and bitrate, that makes Firefox go into deadlock. It doesn't "degrade gracefully".
I tried to submit a "support question" on mozilla.org yesterday, but today I can't find my question there. I don't know how that is supposed to work.
I made a poll at the Swedish Wikipedia village pump, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bybrunnen#Videoproblem
All videos work fine: 6 users, running either Firefox 3.6.13 on MacOS or RedHat Linux, Firefox 4.0 beta on Windows, Chrome on Linux or Windows.
Very few videos have problems: 2 users running Firefox 3.6.13 on Windows Vista.
Many videos have problems: 4 users running Firefox 3.6.13 on Ubuntu Linux, IE 8 on Windows 7, Chrome on Windows 7.
No videos work: 3 users running either Safari on Mac or IE 8 on Windows Vista.
I copy Hans Westerhof, whose team worked on the uploads.
Hans, the WikiVideo list is wondering how the size and bitrate for your video uploads was chosen, and whether you considered other sizes. This would help future uploaders. Can you point the right person at this thread?
They might enjoy the other (low-volume) list traffic as well: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
Thanks, SJ
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 5:25 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
In Firefox 3.6.13 on Linux, I can show Ogg Theora videos just fine, which is a great step forward from earlier versions a year ago. But there are still bugs, where the playback just hangs. I have
<
For one video, I changed the encoding and this made the problem occur less frequently for me.
<
Looking at these 1200 Dutch videos, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_from_Open_Beelden they are just 320x240 pixels, which is another way to get smaller files and lower bitrates.
Is that something I should settle for? Will I live happier and prosper if I scale all videos to half their size?
Who did the job with the Dutch films? How did they reason?
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikivideo-l mailing list Wikivideo-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
Hi SJ and others, I copy Maarten Brinkerink, who has been responsible for openbeelden.nl (also openimages.eu). @ Maarten: can you give more background information on the issues below? Thnx, Hans
Op 2/19/11 11:46 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com schreef:
I copy Hans Westerhof, whose team worked on the uploads.
Hans, the WikiVideo list is wondering how the size and bitrate for your video uploads was chosen, and whether you considered other sizes. This would help future uploaders. Can you point the right person at this thread?
They might enjoy the other (low-volume) list traffic as well: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
Thanks, SJ
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 5:25 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
In Firefox 3.6.13 on Linux, I can show Ogg Theora videos just fine, which is a great step forward from earlier versions a year ago. But there are still bugs, where the playback just hangs. I have
<
For one video, I changed the encoding and this made the problem occur less frequently for me.
<
Looking at these 1200 Dutch videos, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_from_Open_Beelden they are just 320x240 pixels, which is another way to get smaller files and lower bitrates.
Is that something I should settle for? Will I live happier and prosper if I scale all videos to half their size?
Who did the job with the Dutch films? How did they reason?
-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikivideo-l mailing list Wikivideo-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
-- Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
Dear all,
I’m not sure I’m seeing the compete thread of this discussion here, but I can say something on the reasoning behind our choices on size and bitrate and the current offering on Open Images:
1. The derivative Ogg Theora files on Open Images are mainly transcoded from the ‘source’ file we make available as open video from our newsreel collection. These files are an 352×288 MPEG-1 file. Most of them are between 2 and 4 minutes. 2. On Open Images we transcode all video’s we distribute to a ‘player’ format (320x240) Ogg and an Ogg file at the orignal resolution and bittrate of the source file. 3. We’ve automated the ingestion process from Open Images to Wikimedia Commons, using the OAI-PMH interface that Open Images offers for metadata harvesting. This was developed in collaboration with Wikimedia Netherlands (in particular with voluteer Maarten Dammer, who is copied into this mail). Currently this process utilizes the lower quality version of the two Oggs that Open Images offers. Ideally this would be changed to the higher quality.
Please let me know if you need more information!
Best,
Maarten
Op 20-02-11 17:05, Hans Westerhof hwesterhof@beeldengeluid.nl schreef:
Hi SJ and others, I copy Maarten Brinkerink, who has been responsible for openbeelden.nl (also openimages.eu). @ Maarten: can you give more background information on the issues below? Thnx, Hans
Op 2/19/11 11:46 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com schreef:
I copy Hans Westerhof, whose team worked on the uploads.
Hans, the WikiVideo list is wondering how the size and bitrate for your video uploads was chosen, and whether you considered other sizes. This would help future uploaders. Can you point the right person at this thread?
They might enjoy the other (low-volume) list traffic as well: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
Thanks, SJ
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 5:25 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
In Firefox 3.6.13 on Linux, I can show Ogg Theora videos just fine, which is a great step forward from earlier versions a year ago. But there are still bugs, where the playback just hangs. I have
<
For one video, I changed the encoding and this made the problem occur less frequently for me.
<
Looking at these 1200 Dutch videos, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Media_from_Open_Beelden they are just 320x240 pixels, which is another way to get smaller files and lower bitrates.
Is that something I should settle for? Will I live happier and prosper if I scale all videos to half their size?
Who did the job with the Dutch films? How did they reason?
-- ? Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) ? Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
Wikivideo-l mailing list Wikivideo-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikivideo-l
-- Samuel Klein? ? ? ? ? identi.ca:sj ?? ? ? ?? w:user:sj ? ? ? ? ?+1 617 529 4266
Hello Maarten,
I’m not sure I’m seeing the compete thread of this discussion here, but I can say something on the reasoning behind our choices on size and bitrate and the current offering on Open Images:
- The derivative Ogg Theora files on Open Images are mainly transcoded from the ‘source’ file we make available as open video from our newsreel collection. These files are an 352×288 MPEG-1 file. Most of them are between 2 and 4 minutes.
This answers my question, thank you. This month, as you might know, your colleagues in Stockholm opened the website http://filmarkivet.se/
I tried to copy some of the films from there to Wikipedia, but I experienced some problems. These films are in the range of 720 x 576, about the twice that of yours. It seems many browsers still have a problem with this, and the smaller format works more smoothly. I'm in the hope that this problem will go away with time, and I will not reduce the size that I have.
One example is this clip of how to typeset a newspaper, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sattning_Stockholms-Tidningen_1937.og...
wikivideo-l@lists.wikimedia.org