Mission: investigate Silverlight video codec support

[David V]

The new Silverlight media player can play some, but not all of the
videos on Mises.org.

I need someone to find out why, and what we can do about it.

For example, this video will not play:
http://mises.org/media/1766
It plays using the built-in codecs:
http://mises.org/media/1766?silverlight=0

It's encoded with WMV3, which Silverlight claims to support.

Possible solutions:
*Use a different player.
*Re-encode videos in a different format. (Note: FLV and Ogg are not
options at this time.)
*Change player parameters.

Bonus missions:
*Find a better-looking Silverlight video player component
*Fix the UI bugs with the current video page - play around with it,
and you will find several obvious ones.
*Improve our embedded player as well.

[Jeffrey Tucker]

thank you for looking at this. Anyone who can solve this issue will be responsible for a huge increase in Mises.org traffic. It is probably the most important current priority of Mises.org

[Dustin Townsend]

Not sure why FLV can't be used, but Flow Player flowplayer.org is an open source flash player that looks pretty sweet.  I have not used it.

Dustin Townsend

[David Veksler]

The majority of the videos on Mises.org is in Windows Media Video format, and it is not practical to convert 120GB of video files (and manage multiple copies so people can download the originals) at this time.

Flash does not support the WMV format, unless someone knows of a plugin for it.

---
Regards,
David V.

PGP Key: http://www.rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt

[fred concklin]

I would recommend ffmpeg (http://ffmpeg.org/index.html) for any bulk
transcoding needs with ogg/theora or H.264 (youtube uses this)
streaming. I am root on a cluster at UMASS Amherst that could do a
bulk transcode of all the wmv if necessary <manic.cs.umass.edu>. The
<video> tag is the standard for streaming as of HTML5. A nice example
of this can be seen with Plumi -- which is built on top of Plone --
<http://demo.plumi.org/>. Plumi is a good video cms, but it is a pain
to get working and requires a deprecated version of Plone. However,
all of the video streaming that you'll see on the demo page is just
the <video> tag.

If this is something you're interested in pursuing, here is a general
feature list + overview:

EngageMedia is very excited to announce the first beta release of
Plumi, a GPL licensed video sharing Content Management System based on
Plone. Plumi enables you to create your own sophisticated video
sharing site; by adding it to an existing Plone instance you can
quickly have a wide array of functionality to facilitate video
distribution and community creation.
Plumi Released!

Plumi [P(lone) Lumi(iere)] is based on the Plone Content Management
System and enables a wide array of functionality including:

* Video uploading in any format (over http)
* Automatic server-side flash transcoding and embedded playback
* Expanded video metadata set
* Classifications system into country, genre and topic
* RSS2 feeds with media enclosures (or "vodcasts") created
automatically from taxonomy items - eg country, genre, member, topic,
or through creating custom smart folders
* Tagging
* a sophisticated permissions and workflow system
* Playback of Quicktime, Flash video, Real and Windows Media
within the browser
* Custom templates for browsing videos
* Custom profile page for site members with personal latest videos
vodcast feed
* Open Content Licensing including Creative Commons (through their
API), the GNU Free Documentation License and the ability to add your
own custom licenses

Future features will include:

* Automatic creation and seeding of BitTorrent files upon video upload
* Large video file uploads
* Mobile phone uploads and downloads
* Specialised calendar
* Transmission metadata standard
* Donations system for contributors and online purchasing
* Integration with gnutella and other p2p networks
* Collaborative film production tools

<http://demo.plumi.org/Members/testerplone/news/g8-tv/view>

- Fred Concklin
<fp...@hampshire.edu>
<eph...@cs.umass.edu>

[David Veksler]

I would love to use <video> but 80% of our visitors do not use a browser that support it.

If you want to automate bulk transcoding for all our videos, that would be great.

Currently, only Microsoft's Silverlight offers a solution which all browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux support.

---
Regards,
David V.

PGP Key: http://www.rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt

[David Veksler]

Well I feel pretty silly - I just didn't wait for it to buffer.  More of a usability issue.

Still, the current player (both media page and embdedded) kind of sucks.

How about implementing this one:  http://www.codeplex.com/slvideoplayer/

We need to add a feature to the MetaParser to extract a frame from the video when a preview image is not provided.

We could do some really neat things with Silverlight, like implement Cover Flow for media or daily articles:

http://silverlightcoverflow.codeplex.com/

---
Regards,
David V.

PGP Key: http://www.rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Ramon Huisman <ramo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I've just tried the example out and it seems to work fine for me, using the link without silverlight=0 (just to make sure). My system is a MacBook with bootcamp running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit edition. The movie used Silverlight 3 on my machine. It took between 30 and 60 seconds for the movie to start, but otherwise it is fine. The delay could be explained by the fact that I connect from Australia.

Did somebody already tackle the problem?

Ramon

ps: I am new and hope to start contributing code soon.

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:06 AM, steve moyer <moyer...@gmail.com> wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: steve moyer <moyer...@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 9:35 AM
Subject: Fwd: [Mises.org Dev] Mission: investigate Silverlight video codec support
To: Ramon Huisman <rhui...@thoughtworks.com>

[Jeffrey Tucker]

doesn't seem like it has a nice embedding feature

[David Veksler]

I haven't found any that do.   It's open source, so we could add it ourselves..

---
Regards,
David V.

PGP Key: http://www.rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt

[DustinT]

This one might be worth a look.

http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-wmv-player/

It is open source and free for non-profit use.

Even if we don't use the player, their web site seems to be a good
learning resource.

On Nov 16, 8:54 pm, David Veksler <her...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I haven't found any that do.   It's open source, so we could add it
> ourselves..
> ---
> Regards,
> David V.
>
> PGP Key:http://www.rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt
>
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Jeffrey Tucker

> <jeffrey.a.tuc...@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
>
> > doesn't seem like it has a nice embedding feature
>
> > On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 5:42 PM, David Veksler <her...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Well I feel pretty silly - I just didn't wait for it to buffer.  More of a
> >> usability issue.
>
> >> Still, the current player (both media page and embdedded) kind of sucks.
>
> >> How about implementing this one:  http://www.codeplex.com/slvideoplayer/
>
> >> We need to add a feature to the MetaParser to extract a frame from the
> >> video when a preview image is not provided.
>
> >> We could do some really neat things with Silverlight, like implement Cover
> >> Flow for media or daily articles:
>
> >>http://silverlightcoverflow.codeplex.com/
>
> >> ---
> >> Regards,
> >> David V.
>
> >> PGP Key:http://www.rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt
>

> >> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Ramon Huisman <ramone...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>> Hi,
>
> >>> I've just tried the example out and it seems to work fine for me, using

> >>> the link *without* silverlight=0 (just to make sure). My system is a

> >>> MacBook with bootcamp running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit edition. The movie
> >>> used Silverlight 3 on my machine. It took between 30 and 60 seconds for the
> >>> movie to start, but otherwise it is fine. The delay could be explained by
> >>> the fact that I connect from Australia.
>
> >>> Did somebody already tackle the problem?
>
> >>> Ramon
>
> >>> ps: I am new and hope to start contributing code soon.
>

[cpx]

Question: What would be the required and desired features of a Mises
video player?

I'm personally often more inclined towards writing custom solutions
myself, rather than digging around for hours trying to find free
solutions that kinda, sorta fit the bill. I know this is for some
programmers a somewhat controversial view; don't reinvent the wheel,
et cetera. I don't know if it's due to actual practicality or if we
programmers are just, generally speaking, lazy bums ;-)'

But anyway. That's what I would do and the reason I'm writing this, is
because it is a project that I would be willing to undertake. I'd
venture to say I have a considerable amount of experience in WPF, and
from what I can tell, writing your own video player wouldn't really be
THAT much of a hassle.

One feature which would be nice to have, which a third-party player
wouldn't be able to provide, is to have links to other videos posted
in the same category. So if you're watching a video from a specific
seminar or event, you'll get links to all the other videos recorded
from the same event. Another possibility would be to provide links to
all other videos featuring the same speaker, et cetera. Once you go
for a custom solution, the possibilities really are endless :-)

Anyway, I'd gladly contribute some of my free time to ensure that
Mises.org gets a kickass media player worthy of the content it
services! :-D

[Randall Sutton]

This is an interesting player.  Simple and elegant.  I think a buffering message would still need to be added.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mgrayson/archive/2008/08/20/my-new-silverlight-media-player-for-my-blog.aspx

Thanks,
Randall

[cpx]

A player which I think is incredibly kickass is this sample player
from Microsoft: http://www.iis.net/expand/SmoothStreaming

It was originally developed for NBC's Olympics broadcast. The cool
thing is that the video is encoded in multiple bitrates and chopped
into a myriad of small packets, and the server automatically switches
between bitrates as it sends packets to the client. Thus, the viewer
will automatically get the best possible quality available for their
bandwidth. Another thing which is very noticable if you check the
player, is that loading and seeking is extremely fast.

I think building a player based on IIS Smooth Streaming would be a
very good start towards a better Mises player. The current player is
oftentimes very slow, which would be solved by this. I also know, but
have not yet tested, that Smooth Streaming also has features for doing
live streaming (again, a lot of this was developed during the
Olympics), which perhaps in time could replace the Ustream live video?

AFAIK, what is needed to get Smooth Streaming up and running, is IIS 7
with the (free) Media Services add-on, and Expression Encoder 3, in
order to transcode the video. The transcoding is prolly the most time-
consuming, but there is apparently an SDK available for automated
server-side encoding. The encoder is available with Expression Studio
and Expression Web, selling for ~$600 and ~$150 dollars respectively.

Christian

On Dec 8, 1:30 pm, Randall Sutton <randallsut...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an interesting player.  Simple and elegant.  I think a buffering
> message would still need to be added.
>

> http://blogs.msdn.com/mgrayson/archive/2008/08/20/my-new-silverlight-...
>
> Thanks,
> Randall

[Jeffrey Tucker]

wow! Is there any reason why this wouldn't work for us?

[David Veksler]

Yes - it requires a whole infrastructure to be in place for generating the media files.  It's not as simple as a new player.

Sent from my iPhone

[Connor Boyack]

Side note:

Smooth streaming is MS's implementation of technology that was pioneered/refined by Move Networks (a company I used to work for):

http://www.movenetworks.com

They're a one-stop shop version of the service, so companies/organizations can partner w/ them to handle all their video needs. Not sure what their pricing and all that is (as I was just a lowly developer), but it might be worth exploring if we want to achieve the same effect but not set up the infrastructure on our side.

Connor

--
Connor Boyack
connorboyack.com

"The true source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think. . . . Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write." —John Adams

[cpx]

How many video files do are there and how many gigabytes are they?

On Dec 10, 12:51 am, David Veksler <her...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes - it requires a whole infrastructure to be in place for generating  
> the media files.  It's not as simple as a new player.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Dec 9, 2009, at 5:35 PM, Jeffrey Tucker  
>

[David Veksler]

> How many video files do are there and how many gigabytes are they?

wmv: 343 files 43.0 GB

mp4:  104 files 30.9 GB

mp3:  2231 files 18.3GB

Total for multimedia folder: 98.6 GB 2886 files.

http://mises.org/multimedia/

---
Regards,
David V.

PGP Key: http://www.rationalmind.net/david/DavidLeoVeksler.txt