FFMPEG + MP4Box + h.264 question

From the MP4box documentation here: http://gpac.sourceforge.net/doc_mp4box.php

As of version 0.2.4, MP4Box always stores the file with 0.5 second interleaving and meta-data at the begining, making it suitable for HTTP streaming.

-inter Duration : interleaves media data in chunks of desired duration (in seconds). This is usefull to optimize the file for HTTP/FTP streaming or reducing disk access. All meta data are placed first in the file, allowing a player to start playback while downloading the content. By default MP4Box always stores files with half a second interleaving and performs drift checking between tracks while interleaving. Specifying a 0 interleaving time will result in the file being stored without interleaving, with all meta-data placed at beginning of the file.

So, use:

Did, just that...

http://66.90.73.189/sampler/test.html

and still, taking a good while to start playing...

Also:

The MOOV atoms make up a large percentage of the overall size of an H.264 encoded video in a MP4 container.

For your video file with a total time of 1:30:13, 30seconds to load the matadata is not unreasonable.

You could try interleaving at a slightly longer interval (the default is 0.5seconds), but you won't see much improvement in the initial startup time.

Also, since you're using LightTPD to stream the MP4, it has some delay while it pre-processes the metadata. More information is available at the code-shop website (code-shop makes the H.264 streaming modules).

So, when I see the circle turning, it is actually downloading the meta data first?

I could always MUX the mp4 to flv to keep the quality

ffmpeg -i name_file.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy name_file.flv

and then use flvtool2 to add the metadata, would this work or is it trivial?

Nobody has come up with a method of pseudostreaming H.264 in a FLV container.

You can MUX it and it will work as a progressive download, but not pseudostreaming.

Some of the available tools will create and inject the metadata into the FLV, but it won't work correctly.

I just noticed that, i was able to move forward into the video but no image, just sound... *sighs*.. Btw, thanks for your help, im learning as I go rick... the quality of the video is great with the presets that im currently using, for h.264, however, do you know a good command line to convert to vimeo similar quality for flv (they use flv)

Two-pass encoding is always much better.

This is what I use for HD. Change the size and bump the bitrate up a bit for your video.

qt-faststart is similar to MP4Box, but I'm finding that MP4Box is better.

Great, thats for mp4 though,

I'm thinking if I can achieve the same quality that vimeo uses for videos(they convert to flv) - as convert X to *.flv - and then inject with flvtool2 to allow psstreaming, any thoughts?

OH! Yeah... Well...

H.264 will always give you a smaller file, much higher quality, less CPU (display + download) usage on the client. Still, there's that pesky startup delay.

(I don't know if you've noticed it, but Flash is a real CPU hog when it is displaying and simultaneously downloading. The CPU usage drops considerably once the download is done.)

For FLV, it depends on the source codec. Is it already compressed with something like XviD, or straight off of a DVD?

There's a lot of good transcoding information at the doom9 forums and videohelp.com.

How long should I expect MP4Box end.mp4 to take? it happens all too fast on a 360mb video (40 minutes long)

Sorry, I think I shortened the command line too much. And there should be a progress bar.

It should take about 10seconds per 100MB.

Rick, the command line above outputs the following:

Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 29.98 (65535/2186) -> 29.97 (2997003/100000)
Input #0, avi, from 'mythbusters.avi':
Duration: 00:43:02.76, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1132 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 624x352 [PAR 1:1 DAR 39:22], 29.97 tbr, 29.97 tbn, 29.98 tbc
Stream #0.1: Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s
Invalid value '1' for option 'loop'

and closes right after that, do you get the same?

ffmpeg is constantly changing.

Run it with the -h switch to get the help output.

Depending on the version that you are using, the correct switch to enable the loop filter may be:

None of this works....

Is any chance of a MP4BOX line to use to convert mp4 in order they play on the JW PLAYER?

Hope anyone test and post their working result here...

Cheers

The JW FLV Player plays H.264 video in the MP4 container; no conversion is necessary.

MP4Box is only used to shift the MOOV atoms to the beginning of the MP4 container so the file starts playing quickly.

@rick: have you tried pseudostreaming h264 in flv with scrubbing, with JWPlayer v3 series, or Flowplayer v3 series? Works just fine. The metadata injectors are fine even though they don't parse and include all the extra data they normally do (e.g. video size); they get the keyframe offsets correctly, which is all that matters in this case.

Must be b/c the client player caches info about the video, b/c the actual scrubbed video returned by lighttpd is not a well-formed FLV on its own. I.e. mplayer will not play it.

JW v3 is quite obsolete; it's almost time for JW v5.

The available H.264 streaming solutions such as nginx, LightTPD, and Apache2 with the streaming modules work great, so there's no need to fool around with H.264 in the FLV container anymore.

Red5 with RTMP H.264 will also be available soon.

Sure JW v3 obsolete, but Flowplayer v3 is not. Just pointing out where its feasible (h264 in flv scrubbing).

Sure, mp4 pseudo-streaming w/scrubbing works too, but here you have the hassle of the size of the moov atom. Hassle for the server, hassle for the client to wait for the new moov atom once scrubbed. Depends on the number of keyframes, of course. None of these hassles with h264 in flv though. :)

@mark: h264 in FLV? how ? :D

@Mario - have you tried with jw3.x or FlowPlayer v3? (I had it working with FlowPlayer 3.07 - haven't tested more recent 3.1, 3.1.1).

Regarding MP4 and the moov atom, I tried MP4Box and just couldn't get it to work. I then switched to Atomic Parsley, and have never had a problem. Like X264, Atomic Parsley is open source, freely available, and my host easily installed it. :)

I've found that Adobe Media Encoder CS4 v4.2.0.006 places the moov atoms where they belong for progressive downloading of .f4v files (at the start).

Hello, I'm trying to play a video on JWPlayer . I was wondering what it would take to create an mp4 with ffmpeg to be able to psudostream?

I can stream flv's without any problem.

Here is my ffmpeg capture command.

ffmpeg -i test.mp4 -metadata title="Test" -metadata artist="Test" -metadata date="2011" -acodec copy -vcodec copy test2.mp4

The resulting file has these attributes...

Output #0, mp4, to 'test2.mp4':
Metadata:
date : 1995
artist : Test
title : Test
Stream #0.0(und): Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 426x320 [PAR 1:1 DAR 213:160], q=2-
31, 867 kb/s, 24 tbn, 24 tbc
Stream #0.1(und): Audio: aac, 44100 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
Press [q] to stop encoding
frame= 4293 fps= 0 q=-1.0 size= 21289kB time=177.89 bitrate= 980.4kbits/s
frame= 5362 fps=5047 q=-1.0 size= 25763kB time=222.40 bitrate= 949.0kbits/s
frame= 5850 fps=3707 q=-1.0 size= 29562kB time=242.74 bitrate= 997.7kbits/s
frame= 6631 fps=3596 q=-1.0 Lsize= 33711kB time=276.13 bitrate=1000.1kbits/s

video:29248kB audio:4315kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.441274%

when i run the video file it starts buffering, waits until completion of the buffer and plays the video. Here video not working but audio working.

my metadata looks like this

(Array)#0
[aacaot] 2
[audiochannels] 2
[audiocodecid] "mp4a"
[audiosamplerate] 44100
[duration] 276.1317006802721
[moovposition] 34368017
[tags] (Array)#1
[©nam] "Test"
[©too] "Lavf52.48.0"
[trackinfo] (Array)#2
[0] (Object)#3
language = "und"
length = 6631
sampledescription = (Array)#4
[0] (Object)#5
sampletype = "mp4v"
timescale = 24
[1] (Object)#6
language = "und"
length = 12177408
sampledescription = (Array)#7
[0] (Object)#8
sampletype = "mp4a"
timescale = 44100

Can anyone Help. How to inject an mp4 file
Thanks in Advance.

There seem to be two problems:

*) Your video doesn't seem to be in H264 format. Anything but H264 will not play in Flash. You probably use Mpeg4 / DivX / XviD?

*) The "MOOV" box of your MP4 seems to be at the end of the video. That prevents streaming, since the entire file needs loading until metadata is available. There's tools out there that can move this box to the start of the file, e.g. "qtfaststart".

This thread is pretty old, just case people still interested in doing it in php. I am in the assumption here that the mp4 video has already been processed or encoded, and what is there to do is to move the moov atom.

given:
$mp4_loc = "somedirectory"; //directory where the mp4 is located this is important. Do not include the video. Just the directory for the mp4box to write temp file. make sure the directory is writable.

$mp4_file_loc = "somedirectory/somefile.mp4"; //here you need to include the video..
$mp4box_loc = "/usr/bin/MP4Box"; //your server location of mp4Box
$atom_m = ($mp4box_loc." -tmp ".$mp4_loc." -hint $mp4_file_loc");
@exec($atom_m." > /dev/null &"); //execute the process in the background.

I hope this helps, courtesy of PoorBoy from http://veedeoo.com/forum/

What would be the best settings to encode HD and SD files with ffmpeg 2 pass encoding with H264 video codec, format Mp4, any idea of the commands lines?

Please see our blog, we have a few articles on this:

http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/blog/tag/transcoding/entries

Hi, very good approach.

But i can't find a lot about the command lines for ffmpeg to achieve the presets you recommend...

Do you have a link for that?
I found a lot, but I am not sure to use the correct ones.
thanks.

I'm afraid that's also a bit too techie for me.

One tool that always produces great encodes is Handbrake. Why don't you download that tool and look at the setting they use? I believe they display it in one of the settings tabs.

how to insert meta data in mp4 video

http://renaun.com/blog/2010/06/qtindexswapper-2/