Mini CDN For My Blog Videos
After posting an example of 720p resolution H.264 video I was annoyed that whilst viewing my own blog I was not receiving the best video load rates, as my blog is hosted on a server in the USA and I am located in the UK.
Regular encoded .flv videos would load perfectly well as I could download from the USA at 200kB/sec and these videos only require about 90kB/sec of bandwidth, but the H.264 video requires about 470kB/sec to load/play instantly.
So, I have coded a simple CDN solution and now videos for users from the Western hemisphere will load from a server in the USA and videos for users east of the Atlantic will load from my server in the UK. I now receive download speeds of 480kB/sec which is just enough for the H.264 video and only limited by my broadband connection.
I shall expand upon the CDN code in due course, but for now it is a perfect and fully automated solution requiring no maintenance.
If you experience any troubles with the videos on the site then please let me know by posting a comment below.
H.264 Video in Flash
Adobe announced last year that the beta flash player supported H.264 video, and since then the latest Flash Player 9 release version with H.264 has rolled out and most people seem to have it installed (thanks to MySpace and other large social networks often forcing flash player updates).
H.264 is a more processor intensive codec than previous codecs allowing for much higher quality video to be stored in smaller files. Apple has been making use of this technology for a while now within their .mov offering, but the ability to play H.264 video with the flash player means that web video can easily take advantage of this technology.
I just grabbed the Transformers movie trailer from Apple (in 720p .mov format, encoded with H.264) totalling 105MB, and have plugged it into the flash player below. Check out the full screen quality!
Previously even with ON2 VP6 such quality would of required around a 170MB file.
Update 29th May 2008: I have uploaded three copies of the IronMan movie trailer to demo the quality of H.264 at various bitrates and filesizes. Honestly I have a hard time telling the difference in quality even on a 24" monitor. The 480p seems like a perfect solution for full screen web video.
480p 56mB
720p 121mB
1080p 197mB
TF2 Gameplay
One of the projects that I am working on is centered around gaming. I thought that I would post this video of some Team Fortress 2 gameplay, just for fun.
The machine specs: Dell Dimension 9200, Quad Core 2.4ghz, 4gig ram, RAID 0 HDD, GeForce 8800 GTX 768mb, and a Dell 24" wide monitor running at 1920 * 1200.
Update 30th May 2008: Added another TF2 video, this time with me playing as Pyro. Low and high quality versions below.