Vimeo using H.264 instead of Flash? in the Vimeo Feature Requests Forum

Videos by Kerry 4 months ago

Now that Flash 9 officially supports playback of H.264 videos, will you guys continue to encode all the videos here in .flv or will you move to H.264 & let the Flash player handle it?

Hulu does this now & I think it looks pretty good compared to encoding into straight up flash. Thoughts?
Soxiam 4 months ago

we're definitely looking into this.
AD Production 4 months ago

Youtube is now doing this. If you add &fmt=18 at the end of the page URL you get a higher quality 480*360 mp4 w/ stereo rather than the old 320*240 Sorenson Spark mono audio version. (Higher quality that is if your original upload exceeded the Youtube specs - if you uploaded a 320*240 version thus it will remain!)

Be warned, H.264 at 720p takes a LOT more processing power than the older On6VP codec that Vimeo uses.
Pete L 4 months ago

Tried adding the &fmt=18 at the end of the URL and the improvement in quality was indeed very noticeable!
4Moorhens2 4 months ago

Thanks for the info AD Productions, just played back a couple of vids that I uploaded to Youtube a while back. They were uploaded as DivX 25 fps 704x396 2000 kbps, mp3 and the new MP4 Youtube playback versions are H.264 25 fps 480x270 400 kbps (average), MP4a 44.1 kHz 126 kbps stereo.

Youtube H.264 is definitely equal to, or possibly better than vimeo SD FLASH to the eye and it plays back smoothly off the net even with a 1 mbps connection.

But there is no download link to the orginal file that I could see.
AD Production 4 months ago

Yes, but be careful what you wish for. With Youtube they are catching up with what is capable with 5 year old computers - H.264 at 480*360 res (or less for widescreen)

However should Vimeo switch to h.264 then the HD footage would be unplayable to almost all but those with the very latest and most powerful computers. The requested move from 24fps to 30 fps was been less drastic and hasn't been popular.

Also you can't currently embed the Youtube HQ clips, just as you can't embed Vimeo HD clips.

There is no download link in Youtube, but there are ways of ripping the file with Safari or certain online tools.
4Moorhens2 4 months ago

Sorry I missed some of your last post, perhaps you edited it?

Regarding the download link: its not a big problem getting the Youtube H.264 copied but can one download the user's orginal upload file in its native format as is possible here on vimeo?
This comment has been deleted.
4Moorhens2 4 months ago

Would that be the case with vimeo 512x288 or 512x384 SD vids? At the moment from a 1024x576 PAL MP4 orginal upload the vimeo SD FLASH playback version looks terrible. The same video upscaled to 1280x720 MP4 looks a lot better at 1280x720 1485 kbps (average) vimeo HD FLASH.

I did notice that Youtube gave the option of two playback versions (or something) when using that "&fmt=18" on the URL, also I didn't try to play any 720p uploaded files.

Perhaps it would be good if vimeo offered H.264 on files smaller than 1280x720, i.e. on their current SD standard, or would it be necessary to universally convert all uploads, both SD and HD, to H.264?
Alex Gollner 4 months ago

My SD Videos look a little better in YouTube

youtube.com/watch?v=ImyTzI7OSHM&fmt=18

than Vimeo

vimeo.com/850066

...although I admit that bit budget is being spent on slightly smaller pixel dimensions

I'd be happy for people with slower computers to get the current encoded version on Vimeo. I hope those with faster processors will be served better versions soon.
4Moorhens2 4 months ago

Your Youtube MP4, 6.37 MB vid streams/plays back beautifully even on a nearly 4 year old laptop with a 1.5 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM. Definitely a case for vimeo to consider H.264....
Lucasberg 4 months ago

If Vimeo switched to MP4 would my PS3 play it? Right now I can watch youtube on my PS3 but not Vimeo which sucks.
Andrew Pile 4 months ago

I've never played with videos on PS3s but my guess is yes.
Marty Wichtmann 3 months ago

1 for the switch to H.264, but i was thinking if it did go that way would vimeo only accept H.264 in an MP4 container or would it also accpet MKV (H.264) without a re-encode ??

Better quality at lower bitrates :) GO H.264 !!!
BlackShark 2 months ago

I've been a big fan of H264 for many years.
Unfortunately, i don't believe vimeo will be ready to make the switch any time soon.
The main problem is the current outrageous cpu useage of browser-embedded players vs. dedicated players.
Flash decoding HD h264 streams will just be too heavy, you'll need quad cores to play them

You can easily decode 720p content on a 3 years old single core machine, given you have the right codecs and the right optimized player (you don't even need any hardware accel).
But in order to achieve this in a web browser, you need to use a dedicated high performance plugin to display the video. (and i mean : NOT flash).
Stage 6 did that, and that's why so many people used it for very high quality HD video : HD just worked.

The vimeo team already told me were not ready to do this, so don't expect to see HD h264 any time soon.
Maybe next year...
Andrew Pile 2 months ago

Please don't speak for the staff. We are actively working on this and are testing it as I speak. It won't be a year.
BlackShark 2 months ago

Really ???
so the vimeo team changed it's mind, that's great news !
i can't wait to see it.
Marty Wichtmann 2 months ago

cool native h264 on vimeo !!! keep us updated.
P Tv 2 months ago

Could this service allow the uploading of flash video files without reencoding?

This would serve 2 main purposes:

The first, and most important, is quality. x264 is pretty much the best quality video encoder available, and adobe's flash player supports it. But having to re-encode after uploading reduces quality, introduces macroblocks, and limits the framerate of these videos. This is completely unnecessary, because they are compliant flash video files.

The second purpose would be to relieve bandwidth and processing power on your guys' (Veoh's) end, not having to redundantly reencode video that is already compliant.

I know that blip.tv, after uploading a video, will scan the file, and if it is in a compliant flash video format, it will upload directly, without any re encoding, saying "no conversion required".

Are there any reasons why this couldn't, or shouldn't be implemented here, when all parties would benefit?
Soxiam 2 months ago

i don't think we will do that. we've been asked this question many times before and we understand how it could be beneficial for us and the users but the potential risk is just too great and too real (i.e. people uploading other people's videos they ripped off from other video sharing services.)
P Tv 2 months ago

But some will download others videos and repost them, regardless of video quality degradation, so it seems like a worse scenario to hamper the ability of high-quality video sharing for everyone due to a quality-control factor that cannot be controlled, only reduced.
Soxiam 2 months ago

i guess i am trying to make a subtle difference between "other's videos" and OTHER's videos -- as in thousands of people who firmly believe that the purpose of videosharing service is to upload copyrighted television shows, movie trailers, game trailers, viral videos, etc. we want to do whatever we can to discourage their appearance on vimeo.
Marty Wichtmann 2 months ago

so does this mean that their 'will not' be native h.264/x264 support ??? with flash or not ?? are you guys keeping it the way it is atm ??
John Hope 2 months ago

I love the Vimeo scheme:
flash for everyone and every bandwidth, and mov + wmv download to watch the highest quality possible for those who care.
This is to me the best solution ever.