Justin.tv goes High Def | Hacker News Reader

Justin.tv goes High Def

blog.justin.tv

27 pointskvogt14 comments

"Im pleased to announce that today Justin.tv officially supports DVD quality broadcasting using the h264 video codec - and it even works on a Mac!"

DVD quality, not HI-DEF (720p) But I guess DVD quality on the internet is Hi-Def when you compare to youtube quality.

You can broadcast in 720p resolution, but most users choose not to since the player is only 320x240 (unless you go to full screen mode).

Maybe I'm missing something, but the suggested HD examples still look like shit.

Looks like /officecam has a bad usb cable. We'll fix it soon.

Out of curiosity, what's the average percentage increase in bandwidth required to stream a H.264 stream over the Sorenson/On2? Anyone know?

You can usually get a smaller stream for a given quality with H.264.

Increase? Why would a better format use more bitrate for the same quality?

Generally, H.264 is 2-3x (or more) better than FLV1/Sorenson H.263, and 1.5-2x better than VP6, but it depends on the encoder and the bitrate. In general, the lower the bitrate, the greater the advantage of H.264. Note the encoders vary dramatically: Apple's, for example, is so bad I would be completely unsurprised if VP6 won out in a comparison.

Fortunately, basically everyone doing H.264-in-Flash is using x264. Unfortunately, not all of them have a clue what they're doing...

Increase? Why would a better format use more bitrate for the same quality?

HD is not of the same quality.

Sure, but HD doesn't imply H.264, nor does H.264 imply HD; the choice of resolution and the choice of video format are completely orthogonal.

Pretty much every video site out there (from YouTube down) are encoding HD videos at higher resolution. For example, YouTube's SD video is 320x240 and their HD is at 448x336. What you're suggesting is technically true but not really based in reality.

What you said isn't true either--and I can confirm it, because two weekends ago I met with the guy who wrote the Youtube video encoder ;)

Youtube has no "HD video"; the "High Quality" mode just sends you to the H.264 video, which isn't there for the primary purpose of being "Higher Quality"--its in iPhone-compatible Baseline Profile, for the purpose of being compatible for mobile devices, in particular phones and such that they intend to provide support for. If Google was really aiming at "higher quality" they would have chosen full-on High Profile H.264, but they intentionally chose Baseline for mobile compatibility. Apparently storage was at enough of a premium that they explicitly chose not to have two formats available, and just chose the most compatible option.

The resolution chosen for the H.264 encoder is different because its meant to be targeted at the iPhone. Again, the "higher quality" mode is a secondary feature; the real purpose is to target mobile devices.

Edit: Also, reading your post, what you said makes no sense--"they're encoding HD videos at higher resolution", well, obviously, that's what HD means. Are you sure you didn't mean to say "they're encoding H.264 videos at higher resolution"?

what you said makes no sense

Everything I said is absolutely correct. It's just that you are misconstruing what I said. Go check YouTube resolutions and then tell me they're not correct. You're the one making spurious connections between television HD and what YouTube calls HD, not me.

Again, re-read what I said and not what you think I said.

1) YouTube's SD video is 320x240

2) YouTube's HD video is 448x336

3) Their HD uses MORE bandwidth

The fact that they use it for iPhone and who knows hat (G1 maybe) is completely inconsequential since you can play almost any YT video in HD by appending a variable to the end.

2) YouTube's HD video is 448x336

"HD" is not an arbitrary term that means "higher resolution than what we had before". Unless perhaps you're in marketing.

If you told anyone on the Youtube team that their "&fmt=18" was "HD", they would probably laugh you out of the room.

Hold on a second: HD means a resolution of at least 1280x720. Anything lower than that is at best SD (720x480) but most probably less. I understand we're talking about online videos where the quality and resolution is clearly lower than what's done in the broadcast industry but the terms used should still mean the same thing.

So, overall, very few video sites out there are encoding in HD and especially not YouTube.

What DarkShikari is saying is that h.264 is the codec used to encode the video. h.264 can be used for videos for mobile to HD. HD is referring to the pixel resolution of the video. Both are completely independent.

I suppose that by "not really based in reality", you mean that most people doing HD are using h.264. That's true but that was not your question.

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