Since the demise of stage6 I've been looking round for the best alternatives to upload and download HD web content.

I like Vimeo but I find the playback quality of their HD (maximum resolution 720p) is not anywhere near as good as the DivX format stage6 used and often seems to stutter on ALL my various PC's. HD DivX video from stage6 typically used to play super smooth on my PC's, even for most of the 1920x1080p files.

I've looked a Veoh as well but that seems no better in terms of offering "good" (i.e. smooth and sharp) HD playback. Missing stage6 already :-(

Is this just me - how do you find Vimeo or Veoh's HD playback? Anthing better for HD?

Hi Andy. Vimeo shutters as it works with 30P. U got to make sure your output is the same framerate or that happens during their conversion. They also accept another frame rate but I'm not sure which is that. I use 30P now with WMV 720P and it looks better.

I think that currently Vimeo is as good as it gets for free, flash based HD video. It costs a lot to stream HD for so many people for free, so not a lot of sites are ready to step up to the plate.

I like the quality of Vimeo, but it does seem that a lot of computers have trouble playing it back without stuttering, and I'm not sure why. Even my Mac Pro will stutter on some HD videos even after letting it buffer the entire video. My guess is that it's because not only is Flash in general not optimized for the Mac, but I suspect that Flash isn't optimized for HD video on any platform. I could be wrong though.

Vimeo used to force all HD encodes to 720p24, and I understand that it would cause some framerate issues, especially on 30p content, but now they allow 720p30, which should allow for smoother motion. It's possible that the forced 24p encodes were causing the stuttery motion as opposed to hardware performance problems. I haven't seen too many 720p30 videos on there yet. Maybe someone else knows more about this than I do.

I'm grateful for Vimeo because it lets me stream very high quality videos compared to everyone else out there. I certainly don't have the bandwidth to do it on my own servers other than for an extremely small audience, so it's good to know that I can show my work a little bit closer to the way they were meant to be seen.

Hi Andy
you should look at the new dailymotion/hd

http://www.dailymotion.com/hd/video/x4rxsn_wanted-trailer-1-hd
http://www.dailymotion.com/hd/video/x4r5sl_fun-cup-moto-journal_extreme

they sometime take a bit long to load but quality is very good, its been there for a couple of weeks.you need to be a special user or creative content user to send hd video and submit to their rules.theres only a few special user so far,and I feel its becoming like stage6 alot of vidogame users sending their images so the creative use rule seems bizzare.

OK, I've spent all my spare time this last 24hrs testing different HD formats on Vimeo...well I am a scientist with a PhD.....This is what I've found.

The original WMV 1280x720p Video (9mins 33 sec) that I put on there nearly a week ago seems to stutter a bit on most people's PC's during playback from the Vimeo site (where its a Flash 9) but looks quite good! Of course, the original 354MB WMV video plays faultlessly on my PC when opened from one of my many USB hard drives! (well apart from my naff narration and shakey/pre-Libec Tripod camera stuff!) So, I was wondering if it was because I'd put on a 25 fps WMV rather than 30 (see comments earlier in this thread.)

Anyway, I've just completed some experiments with rendering (just) the first 35 seconds of this video in various formats and bit rates (each time direct from the original "master" Vegas file of course, project properties were progressive and renderings too - original source material is 1080i but that's not at all a factor in this experiment) and then uploading them onto Vimeo to then see how each one plays. The type of video is challenging for any format as it involves a lot of detail and often needs slow panning.

(a) A 1280x720p HD Quicktime7 Movie at 1 Mbps, 30 fps plays pretty smooth on my PC but stutters once I've got it on Vimeo.
(b) A 1280x720p WMV Movie at 4 Mbps, 30 fps plays superbly well on my PC but again stutters once I've got it on Vimeo.
(c) I also tested h.264 but that was really bad.

Both of the above (a) and (b) files are MUCH WORSER than my original 25 fps WMV 1280x720p (4MBps) that's on there right now (Note: I've currently got my experimental WMV and QT7 videos hidden from public view until I've sorted this out by the way.) In all 3 cases if you let the file fully load it will play smoother by the way (this is very fast on my connection but may take a while for some). My original is usually "watchable" and only stutters now and again once loaded on my various PC's but I'm unhappy with it as stage6 DivX HD videos used to play SUPERBLY well (even 1920x1080.) So now I don't know what to do! Come back stage 6!!!!

If anyone is interested in viewing this video on Vimeo it's called "Stoney Middleton" and I'll put a link in here.

Stoney Middleton: http://www.vimeo.com/811999

Let me know if you like it (on the Vimeo site, PLEASE!) Don't clutter up DvInfo with that stuff ....OK, just a little - if they are nice comments!!.... and any comments about how it plays too would be good. It's also on YouTube - but we won't even mention the quality there, even with the "quality hack" it's no where good enough for me.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to make a 1280x720p HD video play smoothly on Vimeo without occassional pauses/stuttering I would VERY MUCH like to hear it. Everyone I've talked to/e-mailed around the World says this is often an issue with this site for viewing various HD videos. Please put any information/suggestions about this on this thread (not in my Vimeo video comments) so others on DVinfo can benefit too!

Finally, I found this SUPERB video on Vimeo shot in London. Please let me take the liberty of linking it if you want to take a look (nice use of Radiohead music too although I'll bet without copyright approval!)

A Study on Stanley: http://www.vimeo.com/747892

I think this is really just FLV codec getting a little long in the tooth and such. It was never meant for HD and it isnt really that great of a codec to work with. I have done a lot of testing with my own videos in FLV format even when playing back localy the performace gets worse as the resolution goes higher. This is why I think that they are moving to H264 Mpeg4 play back. Once that becomes more mainstream you will also see software players that can utilize video cards to play back the material flawlessly.

Yes I suspect you're right. This neighbouring thread is interesting and is somewhat related. Certainly, early indications are that Xvid (and its near neighbour DivX) might just be the best format for right now - I really don't know why DivX has n't caught on more as it's so easy (and free) to download and use and, perfomance wise, is (IMHO) well ahead of the game.

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=117158

That trailer on Daily Motion was good quality! I found some other HD on there that was crap though. These sites use FLV right? Is the quality so bad because people upload compressed stuff, just to be compressed again into flv? Would it look best if we knew the exact settings and uploaded an flv?
And as for divx, I see a lot of bad quality stuff in that format. Isn't H264 and MP4 better than divx?

All sites that I know of re-encode, possibly with the exception of when you upload it exactly right. Vimeo HD FAQ tells you to deliver at 3000-5000 kbps, but I have never seen a 5k video on there.

My guestimate is that they get re-encoded to ~1500kbps or possibly some file-size limit (who knows?). This will give you fair results, but quality will suff especially in fast moving shots (many interframe changes) and with low lighting.

But, you know, it is free (unlike beer) and bandwidth costs money. I'm not complaining.

George/

P.S. Nevermind the beer paraphrase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_Libre)

Yeah, I know it's free. But so was stage6 and they did a much better job of it - but ultimately went down (so I guess that particular business model did n't work.)

Just trying to stretch the boundaries of HD for everyone, that's all.

Beer's worth paying for!

Beer's worth paying for!

Only as a last resort

Just as an update to all this.

I have been further experimenting with uploading various kinds of formats/frame rates/bit rates etc. etc. to Vimeo over the last week or so (in between the aforementioned beers!) Alas, so far I can't find a solution that gives good smooth playback (without stuttering) yet with good (720p) resolution playback with Vimeo. I've spent a lot of spare time on this and got nowhere/resorted to putting my videos on YouTube instead.

If anyone has a template that they know works for Vimeo (ideally in Vegas 7/8) I'd sure love to know the details.......

You really need to read the forums on the Vimeo site.

Vimeo has, over the past few weeks been experimenting with converting all video to either 24p or 30p at various times. During the time you uploaded your original files, I beleive they were converting eveything to 24p. At the moment they seem to be going to 30p with everything, but there is some pushback from the user community because the framerate seems to be overwhelming a lot of viewers' computers.

It's a sticky issue and one worth keeping an eye on.

Thanks! I read all through the forums/recommended upload settings a few weeks back in some considerable detail....did not realise I was also shooting at a moving target whilst I was not looking! Will go back in and read some more.

Edit: Have now done so. This is not good news at all. Sounds like Vimeo is dead in the water unless they get this sorted out soon. Seems HD videos are now unwatchable because of stuttering/jittery motion to most people with a PC (me included, on all 6 of them that I have) and it seems absolutely everyone with a Mac!....and the've cut the bit rate to add insult to injury!

http://www.simplethoughtproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/hd_test.html

I have been testing some HD playback again and I disabled some of the filters of my flash player such as smoothling which isnt really needed with the higher quality files and it seems to have really improved the playback for most people.

Wonder if Viemo is using smoothing and deblocking and might offer an option to turn it off.

there is no excuse for bad video.
look here
http://www.premiereprise.fr/cliptya/cliptya.mov

there is no excuse for bad video.
look here
http://www.premiereprise.fr/cliptya/cliptya.mov

Nice, but the typical user will have to wait over a minute to watch it. That does not feed the "I want it now generation" You could put that to h264 .mp4 and play it via the flash player though at the same quality and they would have to buffer for a few seconds though.

Actually, I waited 2 minutes on my 3 year old work laptop and gave up thinking the link might be dead (I have a superfast ADSL connection by the way.) Maybe I'm almost part of that generation then ;=) I'll try it on my fast editing PC once it's free from rendering!

Just as a further update, a friend of mine took one of my 2min 20 sec videos (1280x720p) and converted it Flash and then uploaded that to his own (currently still private) website so we could view this test.

Playback was really nice, almost faultless!

Then he uploaded the very same file to Vimeo for me (again as a test, it's still private/not viewable by anyone other than we two.) He had to create a .mov but then the file we now have on Vimeo got "converted" to a Std Def format in their Flash conversion and it now plays really badly, just like all the others with stuttering/pausing....(his word was it has been "Bug#4&4d" by Vimeo - I tend to agree!)

I too have been experimenting with Vimeo and this is how I make non-stuttering videos.

1. Encode your 1280x720p video to H.264, 2000 kilobytes per sec, at 15 FRAMES PER SECOND
2. Upload to Vimeo.

The video plays back perfectly without any pauses, at the expense of a slower frame rate.

This test was edited in slomo so it appears jittery.
http://vimeo.com/854132

I haven't tried encoding at a higher bitrate yet, maybe quality will be better.

Thanks Warren. I'll give it a go.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about.
My films on Vimeo play back fine on my MacBook unless the local network is congested.
Right now, 9.30 am, Andy's video and my own videos stutter. Last night my films were playing fine.
I've been using Vimeo to provide previews of the films I am making to people involved in production. Most people find it works fine. Not everyone, but most.

I just uploaded a video successfully to vimeo, and watched it in vimeo. The next day it was gone as if it never existed. So I went to the forum to post a new topic asking why. When I clicked post it went to the forum and didn't even post my question. It's so frustrating, it seems to be working but then nothing happens!

Aric,

there are a LOT of bugs on the Vimeo website. I hear others complain about them (personally to me and on Forums) and I see many strange happenings...sometimes my videos "disappear" at various stages of uploading or conversion. I then repeat the whole process and it's fine.

I suspect (but don't honestly know) that the've just been overwhelmed with so may people joining over the last 2 months since Stage 6 went away (especially folks like me who like to post/watch HD.)

With a bit of care and some correct management Vimeo's got the potential to become a really great place - but only time will tell. Mind you, as someone correctly reminded me of a while back, it's absolutely free so you can't knock it too much!

Andy... Vimeo's not perfect but I was playing around last night for about an hour and got stutter-free playback of HD files nearly all those I viewed. Now this was on a dual core 3.0gHz box on a 52" TV so there was lots of horsepower to process the files.

I've also used a 2.5 year old 1.99gHz laptop without problems as well so I'm at a loss to replicate your issue.

Until recently, Vimeo only supported 24fps and would unceremoniously drop six frames a second out of 30fps video which turns it all to rubbish. It would probably also extract a frame out of 25fps footage. Not as bad, but still noticeable.

Once I figured this out (takes me a while as I'm not so bright) I was quite happy with the results. You can check them out here: vimeo.com/whitemountains and judge for yourself.

I have heard from some people that the new 30fps files are difficult for some to play on all but the newest PCs.

Vimeo's still a work in progress, chasing the moving technology target. They're living on the bleeding edge but overall have done a nice job so far IMHO.

Nice HD video! (full link below for others)...unfortunately I still see constant stepping in the lovely slow pans, even on my 18 month old high spec core duo laptop with high speed BT Broadband ADSL connection...running at 7MBps this morning... and 54 MBs wireless connection to my Netgear router...I guess my hardware is just not up to it!!!!

Edit: I should add that all my PC's are XP SP2, mostly less than 4 years old, most have extra RAM etc. and are fully up to date with the very latest Flash 9. Some have mid/high perfomance graphics cards (at the time they were bought) and these have very latest drivers. Also, when I view HD videos I make sure my wife/kids are not also using the house wifi/ADSL connection too!

So I really don't know what else to try.

http://www.vimeo.com/whitemountains

Thanks Andy!

Since this is my first post to this forum, it may take me a couple of tries before I get the linking correct if it doesn't follow standard convention.

Hey Andy, I saw this thread and thought I may offer a couple of suggestions.

In their effort to optimize file size and format for streaming, both Vimeo and Veoh and most of the other streaming hosts compress videos using a couple different flash formats.

It is my understanding that Stage6 streamed original DivX content. That included the DivX codec in both the DivX and avi containers.

There is a new startup site, Hostmedia.us that is intent on becoming a Stage6 replacement.

Since they are still a fledgling site, streaming is slow and there are several bugs. Here's a brief summary:

• Currently their site is considered pre-alpha. I expect it will move quickly to beta as funding becomes available.
• They are currently upgrading the website to provide a more professional interface, likely more Stage6 appearance, but that's speculation on my part.
• They are planning to upgrade their servers to provide better streaming
• Justin is requesting donations to launch accelerate the development process

On the positive:

• Once the video has substantially streamed to your computer, quality is every bit as good as what one uploaded without conversion losses
• DivX only is streamed.
• No annoying advertisements
• No spyware.
• The site had grown to approx 600 videos in just about one month, with many HD's. And this is with limited streaming capabilities, I expect using an http web server rather than a streaming server.

There's another DivX hosting site I can think of, however they get their revenue from unscrupulous advertisers and I wouldn't recommend it for this reason as it wakes up my antispyware each time I visit. This is not the case with HostMedia.us

If you prefer to have your original content quality streamed, suggest to check out the site, keep an eye on progress, try a couple of vids and if you like it, join and participate any way you can. Technical support, advice, etc. is always welcome. Justin is open to suggestions.

By the way, they plan to change their domain name from HostMedia.us to another when they launch their new interface.

Here are a couple of links. Check out the quality in full screen even though not all was uploaded in Hi Def (including a couple I uploaded to test quality):

http://hostmedia.us/alpha/play.php?vid=168

http://hostmedia.us/alpha/play.php?vid=498

http://hostmedia.us/alpha/play.php?vid=227
__________________________________


And the following is my test for hotlinking on this site since it is my first post. If it doesn't work, just ignore it. And if I can edit later, I will and make it more functional or just remove it. Three tests in one.

Air Show Demo (http://hostmedia.us/alpha/play.php?vid=168)

And to see if they allow HTML:

<a href="http://hostmedia.us/alpha/play.php?vid=168"> Air Show Demo - HostMedia.us</a>
_______________________

Edit: It appears HTML isn't permittted.

Ted,

This is fantastic news. HD playback quality is absolutely superb, razor sharp and stutter free even on one of my old laptops! Vimeo can't match this quality AT ALL from what I've seen. The first link in particular is stunning (not least because it covers airshow type stuff which I love....lots of fast action!) Works super smoothly, especially when video fully loaded.

Thankyou so much for the information!!!!!!

I suspect all the former "Stage6ophiles" will be looking very carefully at this new site now we know about it.

Hello Andy

I uploaded another HD video to HostMedia you may wish to view: Lewis and Clark - Expedition Across America (http://hostmedia.us/alpha/play.php?vid=624).

Recommend viewing it in FULL SCREEN. The flyover is much like watching an IMAX film. DivX filesize is 93mb so I recommending downloading 100% before viewing. (Their streaming is still slow as UL/DL activity increases).

Stunning stuff! Great watching it on my 24-inch Dell 2408 monitor!

Ted. My suggestion is that you start a NEW THREAD about this HD video hosting site (you can always link in this Vimeo/Veoh thread in your post if you want.)

That way you can give it a good title and it'll get a lot more "visibility" for people on this forum (who are quite likely to be good providers of great HD video for it in the weeks and months ahead) rather than being buried at around posts 28-30 in a thread about Vimeo.

I could do it.... but since you brought this info to DVInfo it's best you do!

Stunning stuff! Great watching it on my 24-inch Dell 2408 monitor!

Ted. My suggestion is that you start a NEW THREAD about this HD video hosting site (you can always link in this Vimeo/Veoh thread in your post if you want.)

That way you can give it a good title and it'll get a lot more "visibility" for people on this forum (who are quite likely to be good providers of great HD video for it in the weeks and months ahead) rather than being buried at around posts 28-30 in a thread about Vimeo.

I could do it.... but since you brought this info to DVInfo it's best you do!

Andy, please feel free to start a new thread announcing the DivX hosting site. You know your way around this forum and quite possibly some of the participants much better than I, so I won't be offended in any way. (I'm still wet behind the ears here with just a couple of posts). I'll jump in periodically if and when I have something to offer.

Re HostMedia:

I realize streaming is slow, which will likely be a common complaint, but that's because HM doesn't yet have adequate funds to incorporate high performance streaming servers. However, it appears they have a plan for an improved hosting service once funds become available.

I am currently waiting for them to unveil their new professional template which is expected within the next few weeks.

I cannot vouch for the future of HostMedia, but for folk who enjoy watching their productions in non compromised high definition, I feel at this time they host the best quality I've found since the closure of Stage6 (IMO).

Done!

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=865781#post865781

Done!

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=865781#post865781


Andy, It appears the thread you you created has been either moved to another category or removed completely. On a search of 'Hostmedia', this is the only thread listed. Maybe admin can advise.

You're right Ted. I've just searched for all posts started by me around that time (about 22nd to 23rd April) when I created this the thread outlining Hostmedia and sure enough..... its gone!?!?!?

Admin, let us know what happened.

Ted, maybe you should post a new thread about Hostmedia?