Tag Archives: movies

Audio / Video player updated – to jwplayer v8.2

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We updated our audio/video (and TV) 3rd party JS-based player from v6.8 to v8.2 today.

This was updated with some code to have the same feature set as before, as well as new:

  • much nicer cosmetic/look updates
  • nice “rewind 10 seconds” button
  • controls are now in an updated control bar
  • (video) ‘Related Items’ now uses the same (better) recommendations from the bottom of an archive.org /details/ page
  • Airplay (Safari) and Chromecast basic casting controls in player
  • playback speed rate control now easier to use / set
  • playback keyboard control with SPACE and left , right and up, down keys
  • (video) Web VTT (captions) has much better user interface and display
  • flash is now only used to play audio/video if html5 doesnt work (flash does not do layout or controls now)

Here’s some before / after screenshots:

Archive video now supports WebVTT for captions

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We now support .vtt files (Web Video Text Tracks) in addition to .srt (SubRip) (.srt we have supported for years) files for captioning your videos.

It’s as simple as uploading a “parallel filename” to your video file(s).

Examples:

  • myvid.mp4
  • myvid.srt
  • myvid.vtt

Multi-lang support:

  • myvid.webm
  • myvid.en.vtt
  • myvid.en.srt
  • myvid.es.vtt

Here’s a nice example item:
https://archive.org/details/cruz-test

VTT with caption picker (and upcoming A/V player too!)

(We will have an updated A/V player with a better “picker” for so many language tracks in days, have no fear 😎

Enjoy!

 

new mp4 (h.264) derivative technique — simpler and easy!

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Greetings video geeks!  😎

We’ve updated the process and way we create our .mp4 files that are shown on video pages on archive.org

It’s a much cleaner/clearer process, namely:

  • We opted to ditch ffpreset files in favor of command-line argument 100% equivalents.  It seems a bit easier for someone reading the task log of their item, trying to see what we did.
  • We no longer need qt-faststart step and dropped it.  we use the cmd-line modern ffmpeg “-movflags faststart”
  • Entire processing is now done 100% with ffmpeg, in the standard “2-pass” mode
  • As before, this derivative plays in modern html5 video tag compatible browsers, plays in flash plugin within browsers, and works on all iOS devices.   it also makes sure the “moov atom” is at the front of the file, so browsers can playback before downloading the entire file, etc.)
Here is an example (you would tailor especially the “scale=640:480” depending on source aspect ratio and desired output size;  change or drop altogether the “-r 20” option (the source was 20 fps, so we make the dest 20 fps);  tailor the bitrate args to taste):
  • ffmpeg -y -i stairs.avi -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf yadif,scale=640:480 -profile:v baseline -x264opts cabac=0:bframes=0:ref=1:weightp=0:level=30:bitrate=700:vbv_maxrate=768:vbv_bufsize=1400 -movflags faststart -ac 2 -b:a 128k -ar 44100 -r 20 -threads 2 -map_metadata -1,g:0,g -pass 1 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -acodec aac -strict experimental stairs.mp4;
  • ffmpeg -y -i stairs.avi -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf yadif,scale=640:480 -profile:v baseline -x264opts cabac=0:bframes=0:ref=1:weightp=0:level=30:bitrate=700:vbv_maxrate=768:vbv_bufsize=1400 -movflags faststart -ac 2 -b:a 128k -ar 44100 -r 20 -threads 2 -map_metadata -1,g:0,g -pass 2 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -acodec aac -strict experimental -metadata title='”Stairs where i work” – lame test item, bear with us – http://archive.org/details/stairs’ -metadata year=’2004′ -metadata comment=license:’http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/’ stairs.mp4;

Happy hacking and creating!

PS: here is the way we compile ffmpeg (we use ubuntu linux, but works on macosx, too).

files.xml and metadata API now showing video file’s width, height, and duration

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For those video oriented of you who inspect our _files.xml directly, or use a metadata API (JSON) for items, you’ll likely be pleased to know that for all new items, as well as items that update (eg: review posted, metadata changes, rederives), that:

we now detect and stamp into each video file fields for
width
height
length (duration in seconds)

here is an example file listing (in JSON results) demonstrating:
{“name”:”anamorphic.mov”,
“source”:”original”,
“format”:”h.264″,
“length”:”3.03″,
“height”:”720″,
“width”:”1280″,
“mtime”:”1355278126″,
“size”:”375646″,
“md5″:”94a0b479869ab7ee997b36b45d9edb7a”,
“crc32″:”0b8e4162”,
“sha1″:”c21b65ee8e9153f0812d7397fe89224d6f3f80fd”}

we will even attempt to “correct” the width in the case of “anamorphic” videos (eg: the pixels are “rectangular” and not “square”) to the scaled width in square pixel terms (like the one above)

cheers!

Improved theora/ogg video derivatives!

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We’ve made our ogg video derivatives slightly better via:

  • minor bump up to “thusnelda” release
  • “upgrade” from 1-pass video encoding to 2-pass video encoding
  • direct ffmpeg creation of the video (you’ll need to re/compile ffmpeg minimally with “–enable-libtheora –enable-libvorbis” configure flags)

ffmpeg -y -i ‘camels.avi’ -q:vscale 3 -b:v 512k -vcodec libtheora -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf yadif,scale=400:300 -r 20 -threads 2 -map_metadata -1,g:0,g -pass 1 -an -f null /dev/null;

ffmpeg -y -i ‘camels.avi’ -q:vscale 3 -b:v 512k -vcodec libtheora -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf yadif,scale=400:300 -r 20 -threads 2 -map_metadata -1,g:0,g -pass 2 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -acodec libvorbis -ac 2 -ab 128k -ar 44100 -metadata TITLE=’Camels at a Zoo’ -metadata LICENSE=’http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/’ -metadata DATE=’2004′ -metadata ORGANIZATION=’Dumb Bunny Productions’ -metadata LOCATION=http://archive.org/details/camels camels.ogv

some notes:

  • You’d want to adjust the “scale=WIDTH:HEIGHT” accordingly, as well as the “-r FRAMES-PER-SECOND” related args, to your source video.
  • I made a small patch to allow *both* bitrate target *and* quality level for theora in ffmpeg, after comparing the other popular tool “ffmpeg2theora” code with the libtheoraenc.c inside ffmpeg.  It may not be necessary, but I believe I saw *slightly* better quality coming out of theora/thusnelda ogg video.  For what it’s worth, my minor patch is here:  http://archive.org/~tracey/downloads/patches/ffmpeg-theora.patch
  • The way we compile ffmpeg (ubuntu/linux) is here.  (Alt MacOS version here )
  • (Edited post above after I removed this step) It’s *quite* odd, I realize to have ffmpeg transcode both the audio/video together, only to split/demux them back out temporarily.  However, for some videos, the “oggz-comment” step would wipe out the first video keyframe and cause unplayability in chrome (and the expected visual artifacts for things that could play it).   So, we split, comment the audio track, then re-stitch it back together.

We’ve dropped the www.! Our preferred/canonical url is now http://archive.org

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Dear Patrons,

Last Thursday we pushed out changes to drop the “www.” prefix from our urls
so that we have the newer/shorter style urls start like:

http://archive.org

We intend to keep this change permanently.

We know there will be a few minor breaks here and there especially from some third-party applications that might not handle “301 Moved Temporarily” redirects (if you have something flash-based that needs http://www.archive.org/crossdomain.xml we caught that breakage and that url still works now (that is, it can be either requested either with or without the lead “www.” as an exception now). We’re happy to work with anyone having issues — feel free to reply to this post and let us know.

Best wishes, and now go spend those four characters saved on something fun 😉

new off-site video/audio embed codes

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We are about to rollout a “new new” video/audio player 😎

You can see it in action now with our upcoming embed codes to go with this new player.

It will allow for additional much wanted features like:
– off-site playlists
– fullscreen in many cases
– subtitles/captions

as well as the standard arbitrary width/height and “autoplay” options.

You can see some examples here:

http://www.archive.org/help/video.php

The rest is coming soon (if you are eager, you can even “opt in” now by clicking here:

http://www.archive.org/details/movies&newplayer=jw

(then take a look at one of your favorite items).

Now relax, sit back, and enjoy an archive video!

Cheers!
–tracey

improved h.264 derivatives!

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We have thoroughly tested a newer and simpler way to create h.264 derivatives!

Changes you’ll notice:

  • More pixels!  previously 320 x 240    goes to 640 x 480 pixels
  • Slightly higher video bitrate — from about 512kb/s   to   about  700kb/s bitrate
  • Switching from mp4creator container maker to ffmpeg container + qt-faststart
  • Less back-end commands to make high-quality derivative

Nice things about this derivative (similar to prior derivative):

  • Plays in adobe flash plugin
  • Plays on all versions of iphone and ipad
  • Starts quickly, nearly instant seeking even to unbuffered areas of the video

Here’s a sample of how we do it with just 3 simple commands.  (We do/you should adjust “-r” argument appropriately to your video’s frames-per-second.  We also adjust the “640” in the “-vf scale” argument to be appropriate for the video’s *actual* aspect ratio, etc.  So for example, the 640 might become 852 for 16:9 widescreen video.  Although for our .mp4 specific derivative and playback ability on iPhone (1st gen and thus all versions), we would actually downrez that to 640×360).

ffmpeg -deinterlace -y -i 'camels.avi' -vcodec libx264 -fpre libx264-IA.ffpreset -vf scale=640:480 -r 20 -threads 2 -map_meta_data -1:0 -pass 1 -an tmp.mp4


ffmpeg -deinterlace -y -i 'camels.avi' -vcodec libx264 -fpre libx264-IA.ffpreset -vf scale=640:480 -r 20 -threads 2 -map_meta_data -1:0 -pass 2 -acodec aac -strict experimental -ab 128k -ac 2 -ar 44100 -metadata title='Camels at a Zoo - http://www.archive.org/details/camels' -metadata year='2004' -metadata comment=license:'http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/' tmp.mp4

qt-faststart tmp.mp4 'camels.mp4'

our preset file:
http://www.archive.org/~tracey/downloads/libx264-IA.ffpreset

 

For the adventurous out there, you can create this same setup by building ffmpeg on mac, linux, or windows.  Linux is easy, but personally, I’m a mac gal.  So here’s some ffmpeg build tips on the mac.

Happy viewing!

 

better mp4 (h.264) derivatives at archive.org!

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Late last week, we pushed live a new video deriving technique, as well as in the process updated our audio/video file reader, ffmpeg.

New items will benefit from this newer method, and prior items can be re-derived by users if they desire (probably by the end of the year, we will rederive all our movies automatically).

The video will have significantly less “noise”, a higher PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), and less”blocking” — all at similar or faster deriving speed to build and the same bitrate and filesize!

example new derivative frame

example new derivative frame

example old derivative frame

example old derivative frame

We now open the source video file up with ffmpeg, resize and convert it to raw video, and pipe it to the most recent build of “x264” tool (opting for baseline profile for iPhone, etc. compatibility).
For the very curious (and the very geeky 😉 here is a how we make our h.264 MPEG4 video files now:

• ffmpeg -i camels.avi -vn -acodec libfaac -ab 64k -ac 2 temp.aac
• ffmpeg -an -deinterlace -i camels.avi -s 320x240 -r 20 -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -f rawvideo - 2>/dev/null | ffmpeg -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 -r 20 -i - -f yuv4mpegpipe - 2>/dev/null | x264 --bitrate 512 --vbv-maxrate 768 --vbv-bufsize 1024 --profile baseline --pass 1 /dev/stdin --demuxer y4m -o temp.h264
• ffmpeg -an -deinterlace -i camels.avi -s 320x240 -r 20 -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -f rawvideo - 2>/dev/null | ffmpeg -an -f rawvideo -s 320x240 -r 20 -i - -f yuv4mpegpipe - 2>/dev/null | x264 --bitrate 512 --vbv-maxrate 768 --vbv-bufsize 1024 --profile baseline --pass 2 /dev/stdin --demuxer y4m -o temp.h264
• mp4creator -c temp.h264 -r 20 t2.mp4
• mp4creator -c temp.aac -interleave t2.mp4
• ffmpeg -i t2.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy -metadata title="Camels at a Zoo - http://www.archive.org/details/camels" -metadata year="2004" -metadata comment="license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/" camels_512kb.mp4
• mp4creator -optimize camels_512kb.mp4

–Tracey Jaquith

archive.org supports the new [video] HTML tag!

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We now support the new [video] HTML tag when viewing movies from our site.

You’ll need Firefox v3.5+ (full or beta release) or Safari v4+ for us to show you a “try the new [video] tag” section under the “click to play” video area.

You can even persist a choice to always use it on our site (by us setting a cookie for you) (and you can change your mind and go back to the normal flash plugin based option).

-Tracey Jaquith


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