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YouTube video trading. (Analysing my crappy 108 second, million-view video.)


How did my crappy 108-second 4:3 video earn so much and, more importantly, why did it peak 2-years after it was uploaded?

Below is the earnings graph for my best ever YouTube video. It’s 108 seconds long and shot in 640×480 (4:3) on a cheap bridge camera in one-take. I won’t reveal the actual earnings but I will say that it has generated net eCPM at the mid-higher end of what you would expect since I uploaded it at the beginning of 2010. It took me less than 30 minutes to take, make and upload. It’s a one-off and this level of quality wouldn’t make the grade in 2015 but it’s interesting to look at the timescale and the reasons why it was so popular. The curve has deeper meaning and brings up the question of speculative trading in YouTube videos. Dive deeper into the stats and there’s an even more interesting possibility. Video re-marketing.

Global views

Global views

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Very Smart Camera! Acer W510 and PowerDirector 11 Mobile Video Demo


SnapShot (2)Here’s a very interesting scenario and demo.

I installed PowerDirector 11 Mobile on the Acer W510, a CloverTrail Tablet and used the built-in cam for a complete end-to-end on-device video creation and sharing process.

After I had taken the 1 minute video it took just 5 minutes, 300 seconds, to create and render a video with transitions, to upload to YouTube and even included the time it took YouTube to make the video available. Smart camera, or what?

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Ultra Mobile Video Editing with an Ultrabook


ultrabook video editLast year I ran a series of articles about mobile video editing. I covered smartphone, netbook and ultrathin solutions before settling on a  low-cost , low weight set-up.. The Samsung NP350 worked well with its 2.2Ghz Core i3 but by moving up a notch in performance and efficiency, lowering the weight and, yes, increasing the cost by well over 100%, I’ve found a solution that’s quite stunning. I’m not just talking about looks!

The Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook weighs less than most netbooks but packs a 1.7Ghz Core i5 that can Turbo boost to 2.7Ghz. It’s got 6Gb of RAM and a great 128GB SSD that, although it isn’t the fastest at sequential speeds, knocks the socks of a hard drive solution and works perfectly with Cyberlink PowerDirector 10. The difference between the NP350 and Z830 solutions is huge!

I demonstrated the solution at VideoCamp Germany in Düsseldorf a few weeks ago and learnt a few things too so after a few days thought, I put together a tutorial article and behind the scenes video that shows exactly how I get those product launch videos up in record time.  10 minutes from camera-on to YouTube-ready!

The article is over at Ultrabooknews.com and it shows the hardware, software, method and results.

Are you doing mobile, quick-shot video work? A video journalist perhaps? Let us know your process and hardware in the comments below.

Ultra Mobile Video Editing with an Ultrabook (Including Video Demo)


08072011063In a series of articles over at UMPCPortal last year I looked at ultra mobile video editing solutions ranging from iPhone through netbook to Core i5-based ultra-thin setups.  All solutions were put together with YouTube production in mind with cost, weight and speed being the three key ingredients.

Since completing the series I’ve stuck with a combination of lightweight laptop, camera and software that has worked well for speed, mobility and flexibility and recently, I upgraded from a hard-disk based Core i3-based system to an Ultrabook. At the same time I upgraded the software and in combination with a very flexible camera solution, the set-up is worth worth writing about. If you’re looking for a relatively low-cost YouTube production system should read this and the series of articles over at UMPCPortal

This article is also linked to a presentation I did with Nicole Scott at the VideoCamp in Duesseldorf, Germany

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Ultra Mobile Video Editing Part 1


I wrote a few days ago on my personal blog about my mobile video editingI project aims. Soon after I posted that, I had a long talk with @jkkmobile who, like me, is always looking for ways to improve speed and quality while keeping the weight down. We both deeply understand the tech involved, the requirements and challenges and have come up with a set of initial thoughts that we hopebare worth sharing.

To recap, the three areas of interest are cloud-based processing, arm-based smartphone and tablet processing and traditional x86 laptops. The target for this project is a sub €600 solution that is able to post 16:9 HQ quality (480p) edited content with watermarks, titles, crossfade and other cpu-bound processes. The computer solution should weigh less than 1.5 kg. Trust me, this is quite a challenge as you’ll see below.

We quickly discussed the idea of cloud-based editing but while that might be possible over good cable networks, over 3g networks it is too unreliable and too slow. We’re both interested in this as a future possibility and Clesh is a service we’re watching closely.

As for ARM based editing on smartphones and tablets, again, there are issues. While the technology is maturing quickly and there are some interesting software solutions out there (Reel Director on IOS, Movie Studio on Honeycomb Android) these solutions need tight integration of hardware and software. We’re thinking of future cameras that include camera hardware you just don’t get in ‘general purpose’ smartphones and Tablets. For a smooth and fast editing experience we also need to wait for at least the next generation of ARM platforms. There’s definitely an opportunity for someone to make a niche ARM/ANDROID camera for mobile reporters although we’re not sure that the carriers would be too pleased about the upload usage! Software needs to mature too. Of course, it doesn’t mean you can’t post the occasional 30 second clip from a phone without editing. I plan to do some of that using the Galaxy Tab which, although not a 16:9 solution, records in 720×480 and has some very simple and easy sharing tools.

Todays video editing solutions are very much about traditional computing. X86 processors, desktop operating system, rich software, common file formats and separate devices for the camera and editing parts of the process. Many will actually tell you that you shouldn’t even think about a low cost laptop. As for netbook, people that do video editing for a living often laugh.

Having used a netbook for editing and posting videos at expos’s I know its possible. Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do it because JKK and I have over 20 million combined YouTube views and most of these were done on-the-go with a netbook but as I mentioned in the last post, the requirements have changed over the last 2 years and 4:3 VGA videos aren’t acceptable to many. Its a trend, it works against the mobile user but I (JKK already produces videos in 16:9) have to play along now if I’m to be taken seriously.

JKK and I agree that there are a number of approaches that can be made in the x86 world.

Firstly we’ve discounted the idea of using Apple Mac products with iMovie for mobile video editing due to the import process which converts video into the AIC format usable by the video editing software. The process simply takes too long. There are other software solutions though which could be interesting on the MacBook Air product, as long as there is no import processing. This needs further research but even if the import problem could be solved, the price of the Apple MBA products is outside our range. I’m focusing this project on low-cost and lightweight solutions.

In our discussion we repeatedly came back to Nvidias CUDA technology which allows a certain amount of general purpose computing to be done on the graphics module. It is truly a game-changing technology but it does require software to be re-written to take advantage of it.

You see, graphics modules (gpu) are very specific processing engines for 2d, 3D and video decoding. In some cases the GPU can also handle encoding but these basic processes are often not what you need for video editing. Consider a fade, an overlay, a watermark or a transition. These processes require general purpose processing on a frame by frame basis. This is why CUDA is so interesting for mobile and low power video editing; it breaks the requirement for pure CPU processing.

CUDA doesn’t just appear in high end graphics solutions because it also appears in the Nvidia ion2 platform that is offered with the netbook-class Pinetrail CPU. Beware though, this ion2 variant doesn’t include the CUDA you need for video processing. The lowest power processing platform that we have found that includes full CUDA capability is the Ion2 12″ Netbook platform. it couples the D525 dual-core, 1.8Ghz Atom with the full 16-core CUDA engine. They are not the best mobile cpus (speedstep is missing) but they are in a processing class that easily outpaced traditional netbook platforms. The ion2 solution also allows the platform to fall back to the embedded graphics thus saving power when the GPU is not needed. The platform also idles down to a very low power drain state. For our purposes, its a very interesting platform.

Examples of devices that use this platform are the Acer EeePC 1215n and the Acer Lamborghini VX6 which even offers a useful 3GB of memory. Both are around 1.5kg in weight.

But what about dropping CUDA and going for a general purpose CPU with a bit more power than Atom? It’s possible. The Lenovo U160 offers CPU options up to core i5. Could a boost in cpu equal the CUDA solution? It would certainly be more useful for general purpose activities and opens up the choice of software to that which isn’t optimized for CUDA. Using a higher-end architecture with faster bus speeds and one well matched to a GPU for more efficiency might bring benefits.

Two choices in the low-cost area that I’m looking at are the Lenovo U160 and the Acer Aspire 1830T. Both are available with a low power Core i5 and weigh about 1.4kg. The Acer has the better performance and battery life of the two according to reports I’ve read. Cost is relatively high though and it is going to be tough to find a solution under 600 Euro.

The other interesting thoughts we discussed was that of the keyboard requirement. Could we used Tablet PCs and save weight and space?

Editing movies is largely a mouse operation which means it could be suited to tablet operation. In general though, battery sizes are smaller (and spares more expensive.) I haven’t seen any Tablets with the CUDA 12″ netbook platform and there are only a few low cost options with laptop cpus. The Hanvon B10 is one of them. We see the advantage of the ‘modular’ tablet solution but we’re both wanting to keep or lapping scenario, the keyboard and the protection it brings when folded together.

JKK and I discussed a bunch of other important items too. Fast SSD helps a lot. Using fast SD cards means you can edit from the SD card without having to copy it to the hard drive first.

We also discussed file formats, bitrate and sizes. We’re currently in agreement that h.264 is the format that provides most flexibility but there’s a huge CPU load associated with h.264 that is used to compress files down much further than standard mpeg4 part 2 codecs. The important thing to note is that our initial and most important file transfer is from an SD card in a PC. The bitrate and file size can be large without affecting the transfer time significantly. Final compression into h.264 at 2 or even 3 mbps doesn’t save that much in final file size and its not important to us how YouTube sends the file out so why even bother with h.264?.

It seems to me that a recording format of Mpeg-2 at a bitrate of 10mbps would be acceptable for our sub 10 minute clips. They would be relatively easy to work with. One thing to note on this is that CUDA  might not work with mpeg2 which brings us back to using a general purpose CPU. Testing is needed here. If we can find video editing software that uses CUDA for mpeg-2 editing (note that we also need to choose our output file format carefully too) then mpeg2 could be exactly the right choice of source codec.

There is other slight problem here in that there are very very few cameras that record in mpeg2 now.

Resolution, bitrate and aspect ratio.
16:9 is the ratio we need to aim for with YouTube. The lowest acceptable resolution is 854×480 with a bitrate of around 2mbps. This triggers HQ encoding in YouTube although I’ve had no problems with my 640×480 resolutions showing as HQ. Another option would be 720×480 which isn’t quite 16:9 but doesn’t look as bad 640×480.

Note: Recording in the resolution you want to output in will save processing.

Recording in 720p (1280×720) is another option but could require re-encoding to 480p before using in an editor because it’s a huge jump in pixels per frame. Ideally the camera will allow 480p and 780p at various bitrates. If you consider the requirement for viewfinder and Mic input you will only really find solutions in the video camera world. Combining a digital camera with these video requirements results in very little choice.

As for bitrates for the final upload file, it will depend on final codec and resolution. To ensure a reasonable chance of using 3g services to upload the file, a bitrate of around 2mbps needs to be used. For a 480p resolution it means you really need an advanced codec like h.264 to preserve the quality.

So in summary, mpeg2 at 854×480  at a relatively high bitrate seems like a good source and editing choice. Output files should be the same resolution but at around 2mbps bitrate in the h.264 codec.

What does jkkmobile use? He currently records in mpeg2 at a 16:9 ratio. Resolution is 960×540, bitrate either 6 or 9mbps. He converts that down to 854×480 which is 480p resolution. I’m not sure what format and bitrate he outputs to send to YouTube. If he has enough cpu power he will be using h.264 but he may be using wmv or something else that it is a little easier on the CPU. He certainly has the optimal settings for source files.  His camera is a Canon FS100 which you can’t buy any more. There are other SD cameras from Canon that also offer 16:9 capture though.

A quick step back to the world of camera products shows that 1080p rules and it’s difficult to know exactly what alternative resolutions a device will offer. In addition, h.264 is the popular codec which at anything bigger than 480p resolution, will be a problem.

Can CUDA do all that we require or are we going to have to rely 100% on a general purpose CPU? From what I have read and been told, most video editing software that is CUDA-enabled is doing so on output to h.264 only. I’ve seen test result with mpeg2 source formats too so mpeg2 again looks like the best source format.

There is only one way to find out. I’m arranging an Asus 1215n loan device for CeBIT next week and I plan to do as much testing as I can. I will use JKKs cam to create some 16:9 mpeg2 source and test it with some CUDA-enabled software. Power Director from Cyberlink looks like a good starting point.

Many thanks to Think4IT Solutions for offering to help us with this project.

Stay tuned for part 2 which should come after CEBIT.

Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab

Streaming YouTube HD on the Archos Internet Media Tablet. (Video)


IMG_0912 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.

Flash 10.1 and smooth online video coming to…everything?


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® Androidâ„¢ 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.

HD720P videos from YouTube Tested on UMPCs.


youtubehd _1__0001 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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