Tag Archives: video

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://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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Archive supports subtitles now!

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Our flash-based player supports “SubRip” files (files with “.srt” extension). About a month ago, we updated our video pages to automatically support subtitles.

One simply needs to upload a file with a “.srt” extension (in the SubRip format) along with the video file to get started. If the item includes multiple video files/tracks, you can make multiple .srt files, example:
cow1.avi
cow1.srt
cow2.mov
cow2.srt

We support multilingual subtitling as well. Our suggested naming of .srt files for language-based tracks for the best display on our site is like:
cow.mov
cow.en.srt (english)
cow.fr.srt (french)
cow.hu.srt (hungarian)
and our site will show a selector for the three different languages
subtitle: [ en | fr | hu ]
next to the video track in our player.

Example short video with subtitling.

Enjoy!
–Tracey Jaquith

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Audio and Video improvements

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Hi Patrons,

Yesterday we made live a large update to the way we create the audio and video displayed on our site.  Most folks might not notice the changes, so here’s a rundown:

For Audio:

  • We can now read and make mp3s from 24-bit Flac files. This has been requested for many years and we are thrilled to get it working.
  • The Ogg audio files that we create from audio files will now be using an updated “libvorbis” library.  (The library we were using before today was from 2001! 😎 )
  • We are no longer making 64kb MP3s (or zips or m3u playlists of those files).  This was a judgement call — given how poor the sound quality is for these files and the fact that most people are getting more and more bandwidth to their devices and computers.
  • Simplified back-end system, relying more and more on “ffmpeg” for format conversion.
  • We will now (try to) make derivatives from “.aac” (Advanced Audio Coding) files and “.ra”/”.rm” (Real Audio) files.
  • General ability to read more kinds of audio files more reliably.

For Movies:

  • The Ogg Video files that we create from movies files will now be using an updated “libvorbis” library for their audio.  (Previously we were using the “non reference” library ogg encoder.  Now we are using the much asked for and newer “libvorbis” library).
  • Updated ffmpeg to v0.5. This allows for a much wider range of source audio/video containers and codecs.  We will be able to derive HD-quality video formats like DV-50 and DV-100.   (For those interested in ffmpeg, changelog).
  • Better detection of widescreen movies (so less of our movies on our site will incorrectly appear “squooshed”).
  • General ability to read more kinds of video files more reliably.
  • Noting the prior point, we were able to get streaming videos for about 170 TV archive items that we could not process previously.

Enjoy!

–Tracey Jaquith

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New strategy for Internet Archive movies!

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We have rebuilt all of our nearly 200,000 videos at the archive!

[We finished this Dec 1, 2008]

Related cross-blog with OLPC.

Here is a table-based chart of which video formats will be “derived” into which formats (we are creating 4 formats per video now):

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

Improvements and Changes from our prior movies techniques:

  • We will make a new Ogg Theora (with Vorbis audio) opensource/free-based video derivative. This derivative will play natively in Firefox 3.1 release (v3.1 is due around the end of 2008).
  • We are re/making h.264 MPEG-4 derivatives. We have updated the format to work with lighttpd “mod_h264_streaming” (which allows jumping into a movie at a specified time) but in the process will be losing the ability to serve/stream this file with RTSP.  This derivative also plays in the Adobe Flash plugin and plays on iPods/iPhones.
  • We are removing older 64kb and 256kb MPEG-4 derivatives.  With “progressive download” support becoming ubiquitous, even modems and phones are doing much better with downloading larger files.
  • We are removing older .flv “Flash Video” derivatives.  Since the much better quality h.264 derivative plays in recent flash plugins (as well as many other devices and browsers), the flash video alternative is seen as less ideal.
  • We are removing older .mpg MPEG-1 derivatives.  Their usefulness has declined in recent years, especially compared to h.264 alternatives.
  • We are remaking our animated GIFs. They attempt to make 30 thumbnails from each uploaded video.  We now evenly space them across the entire video.
  • We are remaking our Thumbnails. Similar to the GIF, we are spreading them across the videos better, and making less Thumbnails for items with *many* videos.  Additionally, we are renaming the thumbnails to indicate the second position in the video they were created at.  This will allow for the next bullet item…
  • We have developed the ability to jump into videos by clicking on the thumbnail image (to go to that scene!) We are finalizing the URL / permalinks for these “jump into video” URLs and will release this live to the public as soon as we can.

-tracey jaquith