Before we start on the topic of video performance I have to highlight how complex the subject is and how difficult it is to present performance figures. Digital video is a complex matrix of multiple wrappers for multiple encoding types (video, multi-track audio and multiple subtitles) with different encoding profiles, options, resolutions and bitrates. Format conversion, phsycovisual optimization, buffering and on-the-fly resizing is another set of complex topics. Speak to anyone in the video streaming business and they will take pleasure in telling you how extremely complex it is. For example, at IDF I spoke  Envivio, a company that specialises in video streaming.  Because of the complexities and ever-changing capabilities of client devices they’ve chosen to do all their encoding in software on general purpose X86 CPU’s rather than in dedicated silicon.

As consumers, we tend to use a number of benchmarks. YouTube streaming, DVD and camcorder files.  YouTube quality is determined by how smooth LQ, HQ and HD versions are in windowed and full-screen mode. DVD is a tighter standard based on MPEG-2. Camcorder files have already reached high bitrates and there are even 1080p (1920×1080 resolution) consumer cameras out there. I tend to talk in terms of codecs and bitrates rather than 720p/1080p because those expressions are often used incorrectly but for online video, the simplest way to do it is just to demonstrate it using what most web-based customers are moving to. HD-quality YouTube.

YouTube HD quality is based on MPEG-4 Part 10/AVC  (H.264) and offers 720p resolutions (1280×720) at an average bitrate of 2Mbps. (See good Wikipedia entry here for more info) Netbooks and UMPCs running XP can not play this file format but by installing the Adobe Flash player, you get access to this format via YouTube and their embedded Flash content. Unfortunately, the Adobe Flash player is heavy on CPU usage so on these low powered devices the quality is terrible.  There are ways to improve this. YouTube download tools allow you to play content in a separate video player which works in an efficient way. I’m able to play downloaded YouTube HD files on my netbook right here. In the near future, the Flash 10.1 player will be able to access hardware video decoders (not currently on most netbooks although the next generation of netbooks will be able to support this) making it even easier for consumers but there are already a few devices out there that can give you the YouTube HD experience out of the box.

I’ve been testing one of those devices. The Archos5 Internet Media Tablet running Android and many people have been asking me about the video performance so I thought I would answer most of the questions by way of a video demo. Some of the details get a bit technical and of course, the video is not representative of the actually quality of video playback on the Archos 5 but the demo gives you a good idea of what you can expect.

Just one note, this was shot in VGA using M-JPEG encoding at about 15Mbps, converted to 1.5mbps WMV  and you’re watching it via the flash decoder after conversion by YouTube to the H.264 (or Sorenson) codec. See what I mean!

Break out into a full-screen window and hit the ‘HQ’ button for the best quality possible. The original WMV version is available at Blip.tv.

For completeness and attribution, here’s the original video on YouTube.  Hit the ‘HD’ button and see how it streams on your device.

It has been clear for some time that Adobe were working with the ARM and Intel community and would eventually acknowledge that there are components on many devices that can decode H.264 better than a CPU. The Menlow platform has always supported H.264 decoding in hardware but the YouTube experience has been extremely poor because Flash doesn’t known about DXVA (Direct X Video Acceleration.) The same applies to many smarphone platforms too. OMAP 3 for example (as seen on N900, Archos 5, Palm Pre) has the silicon dedicated to this process but it’s not used. The CPU is left struggling, draining battery and giving the user a very poor experience.

Adobe finally made the official announcement today that Flash 10.1 is coming…

Adobe Systems Incorporated today unveiled Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 software for smartphones, smartbooks, netbooks, PCs and other Internet-connected devices, allowing content created using the Adobe Flash Platform to reach users wherever they are. A public developer beta of the browser-based runtime is expected to be available for Windows® Mobile, Palm® webOS and desktop operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Linux later this year. Public betas for Google® Android™ and Symbian® OS are expected to be available in early 2010. In addition, Adobe and RIM announced a joint collaboration to bring Flash Player to Blackberry® smartphones, and Google joined close to 50 other industry players in the Open Screen Project initiative.

Windows Mobile, Palm, Windows, Linux and Mac get the public beta first with Android and Symbian getting betas in 2010. As for full releases, expect the desktop to get it first with handset manufacturers and carriers feeding it in later in 2010. The iPhone platform isn’t mentioned in the release so maybe Apple will double their efforts on HTML 5 and native video support.

You can bet that GPU-accelerated flash will be included in Moblin 2.1 in 2010 for the Pineview and Moorestown platform but Intel do lose a big advantage when the smartphone platforms get the same software. After that point it’s all about design and software.

Via Engadget.

An article on Wired yesterday alerted me to something I’ve been waiting for for a long time. High Quality H.264 videos on YouTube. [Update: YouTube have now announced a widescreen player.] Medium quality stereo H.264 vidoes have been available for some time using the fmt=18 trick [example] and you can even download them with an easy-to-use Firefox toolbar add-on but the availability of the 1280×720, possibly original-format versions, is a great step forward and with a tweak of that download toolbar, you can download them too which allows netbooks and other ultra mobile PC’s to play the files that would otherwise struggle trying to play  through the built-in H.264-enabled flash player. (Video below)

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