Downsizing video in players

[Alexey]

Hello

I've noticed video quality deteriorates when a video is playing in a smaller size player - it looks aliased and smaller text becomes almost unreadable. E.g. video is 640x360 and we use two size players - 570x320 on the video page and 480x270 for embedding elsewhere on the site, as it fits the layout.

We decided on 640x360 size video because it looks better in full screen and also we use the same file for downloads and podcasts.

I've tried both h.264 and on2, same thing on Brightcove's standard players and our bespoke ones. The connection speed is high enough here and I can see that usually the highest quality rendition (or the source file) is served.

Examples (same video):

570x320:

https://console.brightcove.com/services/preview/bcpid41802092001?@videoPlayer=91034014001

640x360:

https://console.brightcove.com/services/preview/bcpid101553725001?@videoPlayer=91034014001

Any help or advice?

Thanks very much

Alexey

[jstreet]

I've had the same problem. Trying to find a solution as well. 

[VeloNews]

We've noticed a change since Saturday that renditions in extremely low kbps rates are being created compared to others uploaded just days before.  These poor renditions are being sent to our smaller player and it looks/sounds extremely poor.

[BC-Ed]

We've recently changed our default rendition set and I am wondering if the difference you are seeing may be attributed to that.  Please take a look at this article regarding the new set.  

We introduced a new lowest end rendition to be mobile friendly.  I am wondering if this is the rendition that you are picking up.  If you are, then we should determine what is causing the player to believe that it is the appropriate rendition, bandwidth drop, cpu utilization, screen size change?

If you use our debug player to load the player in question, you should be able to see the events leading to rendition switching.

Hope this helps,

Ed

[BC-Ed]

Hi Alexey,

Is the problem that you are reporting,

1. An unexpected switch to a lower rendition, or 

2. Poor quality of one of our lower renditions?

You can use our debug player to better understand what is causing our player to switch between renditions.'

Thanks,

Ed

[Alexey]

Solved.

Thanks Ed, the debug player can be very useful.

videoSmoothing parameter in players was the solution.

Basically, if the player size is smaller than the video and a higher quality rendition is picked up (in our case 640x360 video played in 570x320 player), the video looks aliased and the quality is rather poor for higher quality renditions. As by default videoSmoothing is set to "false" for higher quality renditions, as I understand, not to affect performance.

http://support.brightcove.com/en/docs/video-smoothing

Switching videoSmoothing to "true" improves the playing video quality significantly (in our case) - the aliasing is gone and all the details are back, basically, the video looks just as I would expect it to look. It is also noticeable in the full screen mode - pixelated vs smooth.

I haven't noticed much difference in performance - tested it on a few different machines. 

Would be happy to hear your opinion.

Best

Alexey

[BC-Ed]

Hey Alexey,

Glad that helped.  

I think that your observations are accurate in that I would not expect a noticeable performance impact unless you were on an older, less powerful machine.  The performance impact may also be a bit more noticeable with H.264 encoded video and on Mac's.  However, "H.264 video hardware decoding" is listed as one of the new features in the Flash Player 10.1 feature set, so the performance impact should be reduced for viewers with that version.

Best,

Ed 

[BC-Mikey]

Just a quick follow-up to this thread. Video Cloud Players are now enabling the Video Smoothing filter by default. You can find more information at the following doc:

http://support.brightcove.com/en/docs/video-smoothing

[Alexey]

Hi Mikey

Yes, I've just read about it in the update notes the other day. Great job guys!

Thanks a lot.

Alexey