webfraggle

AS3 FLVPlayback smoothing the scaling.

webfraggle — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:33:35 +0000

I searched a little while, found only AS2 workarounds, but here is the AS3 version of interpolated, smooth video scaling of a FLVPlayback.

//playback is your FLVplayback instance playback.getVideoPlayer(playback.activeVideoPlayerIndex).smoothing = true;

I use it after the ready event was send.

Encode and deliver MP4 Video for Flash, iPhone, iPad, Android, Quicktime with timeshift possibility

webfraggle — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:30:42 +0000

A big challenge was to find a solution to encode and deliver videos for as much platforms as possible. The only thing that was clear I had to use mpeg4 for max. compatibility.

Initial Position: We have many PAL videos with up to 20 different languages. All are around an hour. They are organized in chapters.

Client needs:

Multilanguage
Timeshift / Pseudo-streaming / Random access to jump directly to a chapter
Two different bandwidths
Maximum quality
Download security
Platforms: Desktop (Flash), iPhone, iPad, Android and maybe more in the future

My main thought was, ok, many of the features needed will work with Adobes Flash Media Server. But how can I deliver skippable video to iDevices with the same comfort. And another challenge was the client’s network. It’s a big company so they have a firewall and a proxy with a strong content filter.

Server possibilities:

Flash Media Server (rtmp and rtmpt via http tunneling, easy install, works out of the box)
red5 (rtmp, not so easy to configure, java knowledge needed)
Webserver only (http progressive download no skipping)
xmoovstream (http, php script, random access for iDevices but not for mp4 in combination with flash)
H264 streaming extension by trac for a variety of webservers (http, pseudo-streaming mp4 video for Flash and iDevices)

After some tests I made my decision to use Flash Media Server with the bundled Apache webserver extended by the h264 streaming extension. This works fine for all purposes and is in my opinion the best and easiest combination of rtmp and http with skipping directly into the video without loading it completely, I think it’s also called random access. And the best, you only need to store your files once on the server.

And now to the encoding part. It must be a fast encoding because we have many different audio languages, the video track is almost the same. The only way to do this, is the possibility to encode the video separately from the audio and muxing it together.

Encoding possibilities:

Adobe Media Encoder (Good encoding quality, No muxing (maybe it can be done with external tools), sometimes the videos will not play on iDevices, Flash needs to be installed on the encoding computer)
Sorenson Squeeze (No muxing(maybe it can be done with external tools), didn’t find any good quality encoding settings)
ffmpeg in combination with mp4box (Good encoding quality, muxing possible, nothing needs to be installed on the encoding computer, just put the binaries, a batch file and the source files on the network or a external hard-drive and go)

It’s clear, that I used the last one. If you want to use it too, just google for some binaries for your operating system. Important is that you find a ffmpeg version with libx264 included.

Encoding settings:

Both are two pass encoding settings for best quality

High Quality (Video & Audio) – Flash, iPad, Quicktime (not on iPhone because this uses a better h264 profile the iPhone can’t play) maybe iPhone 4:

Pass 1;
ffmpeg -y -i in.avi -pass 1 -vcodec libx264 -b 750k -g 300 -bf 3 -refs 6 -b_strategy 1 -coder 1 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -sc_threshold 40 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -me_range 16 -me_method umh -subq 7 -i_qfactor 0.71 -qcomp 0.6 -qdiff 4 -directpred 3 -flags2 +dct8x8+wpred+bpyramid+mixed_refs -trellis 1 -partitions +parti8x8+parti4x4+partp8x8+partp4x4+partb8x8 -acodec libfaac -ab 64k out-high.mp4

Pass 2:
ffmpeg -y -i in.avi -pass 2 -vcodec libx264 -b 750k -g 300 -bf 3 -refs 6 -b_strategy 1 -coder 1 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -sc_threshold 40 -flags +loop -cmp +chroma -me_range 16 -me_method umh -subq 7 -i_qfactor 0.71 -qcomp 0.6 -qdiff 4 -directpred 3 -flags2 +dct8x8+wpred+bpyramid+mixed_refs -trellis 1 -partitions +parti8x8+parti4x4+partp8x8+partp4x4+partb8x8 -acodec libfaac -ab 64k out-high.mp4

Low Quality (Video & Audio) (works on all platforms):

Pass 1:
ffmpeg -y -i in.avi -pass 1 -s 384x288 -vcodec libx264 -b 230k -flags +loop+mv4 -cmp 256 -partitions +parti4x4+parti8x8+partp4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -me_method hex -subq 7 -trellis 1 -refs 5 -bf 0 -flags2 +mixed_refs -coder 0 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -acodec libfaac -ab 32k -ac 1 out-low.mp4

Pass 2:
ffmpeg -y -i in.avi -pass 2 -s 384x288 -vcodec libx264 -b 230k -flags +loop+mv4 -cmp 256 -partitions +parti4x4+parti8x8+partp4x4+partp8x8+partb8x8 -me_method hex -subq 7 -trellis 1 -refs 5 -bf 0 -flags2 +mixed_refs -coder 0 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -acodec libfaac -ab 32k -ac 1 out-low.mp4

Adding the needed hinting stream and interleaving the stream in chunks (same for both):

mp4box -inter 500 -hint out-high.mp4 mp4box -inter 500 -hint out-low.mp4

Audio only encoding

ffmpeg -y -i "audio-lc.wav" -acodec libfaac -ab 64k -ac 1 audio-lc-64.m4a ffmpeg -y -i "audio-lc.wav" -acodec libfaac -ab 32k -ac 1 audio-lc-32.m4a

Muxing Audio and Video together

mp4box -add audio-lc-32.m4a#audio out-low-lc.mp4 mp4box -add out-low.mp4#video out-low-lc.mp4 mp4box -inter 500 -hint out-low-lc.mp4 mp4box -add audio-lc-64.m4a#audio out-high-lc.mp4 mp4box -add out-high.mp4#video out-high-lc.mp4 mp4box -inter 500 -hint out-high-lc.mp4

A good player to test all this is the jw player. It is also available as html5 beta version so you can also try it on an iPad.

We are developing our own player because we need some special features like chaptermenus and subtitles.

Hope this can help someone. If you have some questions just ask in comments.

Quicktime export settings: iMovie to PS3 full hd

webfraggle — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:57:18 +0000

Here are my export settings for mp4 movies using “Export with Quicktime” in iMovie which are working on a Playstation 3. Maybe it helps someone, at least I now know where to find them.

I’m very happy…

webfraggle — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:46:36 +0000

…because Serge Jespers an Adobe platform evangelist likes my work and wrote a short article about my Dräger Carina® on Multi-screen video.

Simulations of medical devices on touch devices, multi-screen publishing (Desktop, iPhone, iPad, Android …)

webfraggle — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:29:00 +0000

At innovation mecom, where I’m employed, we developed a simulation for training and marketing of a Dräger NIV ventilator called Carina®. It’s a small handy device to ventilate patients in hospitals. This Flash AS3 simulation reproduces all functions of the real device. So it is possible to get a real good impression of it even without using a real device.

The online version of this trainer can be found here.

I did the coding of this simulation and I thought it would be an amazing experience to use this on an iPhone or another touch device.

But there is no flash on Apples iDevices. So, the first time I heard about that Adobe will integrate an iPhone packager in his Flash CS5 version I was very happy and curious about it. I couldn’t wait for that version to try it. But then, short time before the CS5 release, Steve Jobs changed his terms and conditions. He integrated only one sentence which made me sad again. Because of that sentence it is not allowed to submit apps to the app store not developed with Xcode.

But Adobe released the iPhone packager anyway and I was able to do some tests with it even if I never will submit a Flash App to the Apple Store. But Adobe was not sleeping. They did an alliance with all other mobile device manufactures. They call it the Open Screen Project. And the first result is the Flash Player 10.1 for Android 2.2 devices. So in the near future many Android and Flash enabled touch devices will come to the market.

And here is the result of my first studies with the iPhone and Android packager.
I just had to reposition some buttons because of the smaller resolution and packaged it with the iPhone packager in Flash CS5. This worked great and the result was amazingly good.

Next thing was to try it on Android. I registered for the developer beta program at adobe and tried the android packager for CS5. This works also very fine. Unfortunately I didn’t own an Android device so I had to use the virtual simulator which is really slow on my notebook. But the main thing is, that it works also without any bigger adaptions. And last week I got an iPad. And needless to say, I tried the carina app there too. It’s just a scaled iPhone version but the feeling of using it is really really good. I think it is not possible to get it nearer to a real ventilation device.

Here is a short video of the results trying publishing Flash on multiple devices (Browser, iPhone, iPad and the Android Simulator).

So I’m really curious about what Adobe does next. They announced an Android tablet with Flash Player and AIR. And then we get so much new and amazing possibilities using multitouch devices for simulating medical devices for training.

$1 Recognizer – Nachtrag

webfraggle — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:18:50 +0000

Gerade durch Zufall gefunden. Gesten-Erkennung mit Flash. Freut mich, dass jemand meinen Code nutzt. Das bestärkt mich darin weiter kleine Schnipsel, Ideen und Lösungen zu posten.

Cool 3D Demo with AIR on Android

webfraggle — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 07:46:12 +0000

innovation mecom gewinnt drei Awards

webfraggle — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:31:41 +0000

innovation mecom GmbH, bei der ich arbeite, hat beim diesjährigen World Media Festival drei intermedia-globe Awards für unsere Audi WBTs gewonnen. Unter anderem den begehrten GRAND AWARD Da ich daran auch einen großen Anteil hatte, denke ich, sollte ich das hier einfach mal kundtun.

Hier noch ein paar Links dazu:

Die Gewinnerliste:
http://www.worldmediafestival.org/de/festival_informationen/gewinner

In den News:
http://www.osthessen-news.de/beitrag_C.php?id=1182480
http://www.nachrichten.de/panorama/Riesenerfolg-Audi-Produktion-Wettbewerbsbeitrag-Web-Based-Training-cid_2940668/
http://www.fuldaer-nachrichten.de/?p=60716
uvm.

Content-Aware-Fill in Photoshop CS5

webfraggle — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:43:33 +0000

Juchu, seit gestern Abend gibt es die CS5 Programme als Trial zum Download.

Deshalb habe ich über Nacht erst mal Flash und Photoshop geladen.

Hier ein erster Test des neuen Killer Features: “Content-Aware-Fill”

Das Bild vorher:

Das Bild nach 5sec Arbeit, nur die Auswahl der Dächer. Dann schnell den Content-Aware Fill rechnen lassen und schwups:

Bei einem ähnlichen Bild, wie auf der Vorschau auf der FFK ging das nicht so gut. Aber optisch, wenn man nur schnell drüber schaut, passt das eigtl. immer ziemlich gut.

Traurig…

webfraggle — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:52:19 +0000

Das hier geht an alle Hinterbliebenen,
an alle über den Tod hinaus Liebenden.
Das hier geht an alle Hinterbliebenen,
an alle über den Tod hinaus Liebenden.

An jene, die am Leben geblieben sind,
um Trauer zu tragen.
So wahr wir verschieden sind,
ich möchte euch sagen,
dass ich weiß, wie ihr euch fühlt.
Da wird der Boden unter Einem einfach weggespült,
wenn etwas Großes wie der Tod
sich durch das Leben wühlt
und dennoch dauert es Tage,
bis man irgendwas fühlt,
bis man verletzt am Boden liegt.

Was soll dich jetzt noch berühren?
Du hast verloren, was du liebst
und diese Leere lässt dich spüren,
dass du lebst.
Wie grotesk.
Wie verzehrt sich Liebe in Schmerz,
zerfetzt dich und bricht dir das Herz.

Und du zitterst und frierst und
dir ist kühl von innen
und du kriegst das Gefühl,
nie wieder lieben zu können.
Auf diese Ohnmacht folgt Wut,
die kaum Grenzen kennt.
Das ist die Liebe,
die in deinem Herzen brennt.
Und obwohl du sie kennst, die Zeit
und ihre Regeln,
steht das dem Leid dem Moment
nicht entgegen.
Also lässt du es zu,
und es dringt in dich ein.
Du wehrst dich nicht mehr,
du lässt es herein.

Und dann begreifst du,
wenn du daran nicht zerbrichst,
dann reifst du.
Und dann entdeckst du,
wenn du das überstehst,
dann wächst du.

An alle Hinterbliebenen.
Das hier geht an alle Hinterbliebenen,
an alle über den Tod hinaus Liebenden.

Damit ihr mit den Schmerzen nicht
allein seid,
mein Beileid,
aus tiefstem Herzen,
mein Beleid.
Und bis ihr von den Schmerzen befreit seid,
aus tiefstem Herzen, mein Beileid.

Das hier geht an alle Hinterbliebenen,
an alle über den Tod hinaus Liebenden.
Das hier geht an alle Hinterbliebenen,
an alle über den Tod hinaus Liebenden.

An jene, die am Leben geblieben sind,
um Trauer zu tragen.
So wahr wir verschieden sind,
ich möchte euch sagen,
keine Schmerzen dieser Welt können von Dauer sein
und keiner ist mit seiner Trauer hier allein.