Posted by Derrick on April 15, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression | 
Kaltura, Inc., developer of the first open source online video platform announced it will provide full support for Microsoft Silverlight to its existing customers and future prospects. The Silverlight-based player and Internet Information Services Smooth Streaming will be available with Kaltura’s hosted and self-hosted editions.
“Kaltura’s video platform will offer all major video technologies, including Silverlight, Adobe Flash, and HTML5. The addition of Silverlight enables rich new functionalities and provides greater flexibility to our users,” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman and CEO. “Silverlight is a great enhancement to our developer community as it enables developers who are fluent in the Microsoft developer platform to participate and build new applications that provide unique value to Silverlight publishers.”
“Microsoft is excited to see Kaltura invest support for Silverlight and Microsoft developer platform on its open source online video platform,” said Brian Goldfarb, director of the developer platform group at Microsoft Corp. “As online video development continues to grow, Web developers will be truly benefit from the tools offered by Kaltura.”
Posted by Derrick on April 1, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression |
The Web Stunning Player is simple and easy to use. If you’re looking for a Flash Player that doesn’t force you to learn a lot of coding to create great features for Flash video delivery, then Web Stunning is for you. If you work with Dreamweaver and Flash Video, this Flash Player will make your web authoring a breeze. There’s a free version watermarked version of the Web Stunning Player available for download.
Posted by Derrick on February 5, 2010 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Encoding Flash Linked Downloadable Streaming videos with Sorenson Media’s Sorenson Squeeze 6 is enhanced. This tutorial will help you if you’ve upgraded to Sorenson Squeeze 6 or purchased the new version and new Squeeze 6 license. This workflow in this tutorial is helpful if you need to encode Flash Linked .SWF and .FLV using the Sorenson Media player skins for Download Streaming. We’ll show you how to create a Flash Linked Downloadable Streaming video that is geared for high broadband users. The video that we’re encoding is a 720 x 480 DV progressive source with PCM audio and black edges.
Now, let’s get started.
Navigate to the Formats tab located in the Presets section. Twirl down the Adobe Flash Movie (.swf) templates and navigate to the F8 SWF 360p (4×3) compression preset. Now copy the preset to create a version you can customize. Select the preset and Right-click your mouse and select Copy Audience Preset from the Contextual Menu. You can also select the Creates a Copy button below the presets. Locate your new preset which should have copy at the end of the Preset name. Double-click the preset to open it for editing.
Once your preset opens you can adjust your settings but first you need to name your new preset. For this tutorial name your preset F8_flashlinked_DL_360. Remember it’s best to make sure you don’t have any spaces in your preset names as they are included in the name of your output file. Removing spaces mainly helps in the web authoring process.
OK. Now move to the Codec settings within the Video Tab. You’ll adjust our preset for Downloadable Streaming video for high broadband users. Keep in mind this is general preset. You might have to do some additional tweaking to get your desired quality for output. In your preset the On2 VP6 Pro Codec should be selected along with 2-Pass VBR. Since the video frame rate is 29.97 frames per second adjust your output frame rate to 15 fps. By doing this you’re cutting the frame rate in half which will give you smooth motion. For your target Data Rate adjust it to 600Kbps. You can keep VP6-E for the Profile with Auto Key Frames Enabled with an Auto Key Frame Threshold of 70.
For Frame Size select 480 x 360. You can select Maintain Aspect Ratio with Key Frames set to Key Frame Every 90 frames. So in this case the codec will ad a new key frame at least every 6 seconds since 15 fps is our output frame rate.
Moving onto the Audio settings within the Audio tab. The Fraunhofer MP3 Codec should be selected. Adjust your datarate to 40Kbps, Sample Rate set to 22050, Channels to Stereo and 16 bit for your Sample Size.
Next move to the Player Options Tab. At this point you’re going to determine the Player/Skin that you want to surround your video for playback on the web. For this tutorial select the Aluminum Player.
For the Video location you can leave the default value of http:// for the URL/Path and make sure Play Automatically is selected.
A new feature in Squeeze 6 is you can actually attach Filter presets within your compression presets. However, in this tutorial you want to create a filter that we can apply to other videos as well. Moving on, navigate to the Filters section on the left hand side within Squeeze 6.
Move down to the Web Generic Filter and select it then click the Creates a Copy button. Now double-click the Web Generic copy Filter you just created. When the Filter preset opens change your filter name to SD_Cropping_NoDeinterlace. You’re giving your Filter this name because you’re making a Filter preset for encoding Progressive SD sources that have blacking edges.
In the Filter preset settings you can check on uncheck items you don’t want to include. For this Filter uncheck Deinterlace since the source is progressive. Now check Crop, Brightness, Contrast and Audio Volume. For Brightness adjust to your setting to 10. For contrast adjust your setting to 15, and for Audio Choose Normalize and adjust to 90. Keep in mind if your source file is really bright you might need to deselect the Contrast and Brightness values.
For cropping off our black edges you’ll multiply the aspect ratio of 4:3 times 8 in which you’ll crop 32 pixels off the left and right and 24 pixels off the top and bottom. So for the Top input 12 pixels, for Bottom input 12 pixels, for the Left 16 pixels and for the Right input 16 pixels. Click OK once you’ve made all of your adjustments.
Now onto compressing your video. Drag your source file into the Batch Tree. You can also choose Import File from the Input Options and navigate to your desired video and click Open.
Next Select your F8_flashlinked_DL_360 Compression preset and drag it onto your video. In my case, I’ll drag the F8_flashlinked_DL_360 preset on top of my video called Car02 in the Batch Tree. Then drag your Filter preset over top of your Compression Preset in the Batch Tree. Looking at the image above you would drag your Filter preset over top of F8_flashlinked_DL_360 located under Source Settings. You’ll know your filter is applied when you see Filter : SD_Cropping_NoDeinterlace display within your applied Compression preset.
To select a custom output for you file you can adjust this within the Squeeze Preferences. Click the Edit Pull-down menu and choose Preferences.
When the dialog opens click the Output Tab and the Browse button to create an output location for all of your encodes. If you don’t select a custom output for your video Squeeze will put your output videos in the same location as your source. Click OK on the Preferences tab once you’re done.
Now you’re all set to encode your video. Click the Squeeze It! button.
Once your video is finished encoding you will have 3 files in your output location. All files will have the same name except for the file extension. One file is the .SWF file, another if the Flash .FLV file and the final file is an .HTML file. You will need these files when you author your video for your Web Page. For details on the authoring process for Flash Linked .SWF and .FLV files view the tutorial Authoring a Web Page for Flash Linked Downloadable Streaming with Dreamweaver CS4. Other tutorials are available on our blog as well.
Tags: .FLV, codec, Compression, Downloadable, encode, encoding, flash, Linked, On2, Player, preset, skin, Sorenson, Squeeze 6, streaming, SWF, tutorial, videos, vp6
Posted by Derrick on December 1, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
Authoring Flash Videos with Dreamweaver and the Web Stunning Player is something that many will start to do. Many have heard of the JW Player for authoring Flash content but the Web Stunning Player is another player available. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to install the Web Stunning Player as a Dreamweaver Extension and use it to author a Flash Real-time Streaming video.
Let’s get started. First go the Web Stunning website and download the Web Stunning FLV Player.
Once you download the player double-click the .zip file and install the Web Stunning Video Player Extension for Dreamweaver.
When you finish installing the Extension click the OK button.
With the Web Stunning Extension running you can see it displayed in the Extension Manager. Notice that the Web Stunning Player is supported on Dreamweaver 8. It also works with newer versions as well. Now we’re ready to start authoring our Flash Real-time Streaming video.
To get started we first need to create a new .html web page. In Dreamweaver go the the File Pull-down menu and select New.
At the dialog window choose HTML
and click the create button.
With your page open click Save from the File pull-down menu and save your file as WebStunningFlash.html. You can save your web page to where you save your .html pages.
Once you name your file choose your destination click the Save button.
Now let’s insert a table to help keep the video where we want. Select the Insert Pull-down menu and choose Table.
In the Rows text box type in 2 and in the Columns text box type in 1.
Next, click the OK button
Select the newly created table and in the Properties Inspector under Align choose Center from the Drop-down menu.
Notice that there are two rows for the table with only one column. In the first row let’s give our video a name. Type in Web Stunning Flash Real-time Streaming for the name. This will appear above the video. Now, to insert the streaming video you’ll need to select inside the second row. This space is where your video will appear.
From Dreamweaver, select the Insert Pull-down menu, then choose Media and from the Sub-menu click the Web Stunning Video Player.
Now you can see the Web Stunning Player options available.
First let’s look at the Playlist Tab. For this tutorial you can remove all the options outside of what is mentioned here. Remember we are authoring a Flash Real-time Streaming video which is a video that is sitting on a Flash Streaming Server.
For this exercise we’ll use a video titled bunny_532L_RT_HD12fpsS.flv that is located in the content folder of our Wowza Server. We are using the Fastplay application for On-demand streaming.
For the next step specify the name of your Flash .flv file. For my video I’m using bunny_532L_RT_HD12fpsS.flv. Under Element Title type your video name.
Under Type of Main Video Select the RTMP Stream (rtmp://Server_Path/Stream_Name) option. For Main Video type in RTMP for the protocol, the IP Address to the Server, the application name and the name of your file. In my case I’ll input the following:
rtmp://ServerIPAddress/fastplay/bunny_532K_RT_HD12fpsS.flv
You should see your video that you’re authoring displayed in the Preview. Select Save to retain your information. Now switch to the Player Tab.
On the Player Tab go down to Playback and click Auto Play. Save your settings and click the Insert/Update button on the right hand column.
Once you choose Insert/Update your Flash video populates the 2nd row of you table in Dreamweaver. Save your .html web page by choosing Save from the File Pull-down menu. Now upload your .html web page to your website. When the Dialog appears for Put dependent files? choose Yes. This will make sure any associated files get to your web server.
Once you upload your .html web page refresh the server and type in the URL to your web page in a Web Browser. Your video should appear and play automatically. Here’s what my video looks like using the Web Stunning Flash Player.
Posted by Derrick on November 26, 2009 under Video Streaming and Compression |
The Webstunning Flash Video Player is one of the coolest Flash Players that I’ve seen. What I like is it works as an extension of Dreamweaver and is backwards compatible to older Dreamweaver versions. If you need to author Flash content for downloadable or real-time streaming you have got to give this player a look. The option to add Flash video content appears directly in Dreamweaver which makes it easier for authoring. By the way, you don’t have to deal with any coding, which makes using this Flash Player great.
