High Def (720p) issue or perhaps ThickBox?

[Stray Genius]

I have a number of 720p .wmv videos setup to play using vPIP (and
vPIPPlugin) on a Mediawiki Wiki here ::

http://malicia.straygenius.com/wiki/index.php?title=Videos

The problem I am having is that the videos don't play consistantly.
Typically one will work
for a number of minutes (one of the vidoes is 33 minutes) then stop
without warning or
any indication of what is wrong. No matter how long you wait, it does
not resume playing
at all (so it's probably not a simple matter of a slow internet
connection, i.e. buffering).
Sometimes you can get vPIP to play again by closing the vPIP and then
reopening it. However,
most times vPIP will not play after that, and any other of the vidoes
will not play either, as when
you open them, the vPIP interface is displayed and the internet
activity suggests it is streaming
the video down, but the view remains blank.

I recently changed web host providers (for an unrelated reason) and
disappointingly after
reinstalling and setting everything up once again, the problem
remains.

The videos are rather large (1280x720 or "720p high defiinition") with
the largest (33 minutes)
weighing in at 1.18GB. However, I would hate to have to drop down the
resolution, as the
game being video'ed is actually displayed at 1920x1080 and the scaling
down is a major issue,
as scaling by image only is not as effective as game engine scaling,
and looks pretty bad
when reduced that much (any screen text in the game is undreadable
below 720p).

When I calculate the throughput needed for the video to stream real-
time (with the 1.18GB
33 minute video in this case) I get 625.4KB/s down, which is possible
with most cable/dsl
type connections or better, but certainly pretty high.

So I'm wondering if the issue is a matter of "shared web space
hosting", which is the type
of web space I can afford (as opposed to "private server hosting",
which is about x9 more
expensive).

Also, I am considering trying the windows media vPIP in "dynamic
embedded" instead
of thickbox, but I am not clear on how to go about that, the
vPIPPlugin is pretty limited
on options being passed to vPIP, I may have to modify the .php for it.

Any comments are welcome, thanks in advance, Stray Genius.

[Enric]

Hi Stray Genius,

A few questions and points to start out:

* Which OS (Windows, Mac), version and browser(s) and version is
this happening in?
* Videos at HD resolution can still be compressed with H.264
keeping most of their quality. The compression can take some time,
but it makes their size smaller and more available.
* vPIP is open source javascript, feel free to modify and debug to
your needs. If you solve a problem, let me know and I'll look at
including it in a future version.

Best,

Enric

[Stray Genius]

Hi Enric, thanks for the fast response!

Doh, if you were looking at the wiki page you may have had problems as
I was
changing the skin a tad more to leave off the "history" button in the
upper
right unless the user is logged in for editing (the wiki is publicly
viewable
but privately editable). So the Wiki was fubar there for a bit, but
it's fine
now.

OS: Win7
Browser: IE8
(Detailed info here :: http://pcpitstop.com/betapit/sec.asp?conid=23766139)

I'm pretty sure IE8 and Windows Media Player are set up nominally
(defaults except the browser additional features set up during install
are all disabled... like accelerators and "smart filtering").

How do I force "thick box" off so that I can test that mode?

Thanks in advance,
Stray Genius

[Stray Genius]

I got thickbox disabled by modifying vpip.js in the vPIP directory.
I'm currently testing the smaller size 720x480, it seems to work fine.
I'm going to try the larger 720p ones "on the page" embedded now,
I'll post the results.

[Enric]

Cool, thanks for the info.

-- Enric

[Stray Genius]

Enric,

vPIP seems to work better as an "on the page" embed.
I played the longest video and it made it about halfway (15 minutes or
so)
before stopping. This is a huge improvement.

I just noticed the "X Close" graphic cuts into the video 26 vertical
pixels
instead of adding the graphic above the video display. I'm
compensating
by making the "image" or background graphic "placeholder" 26 pixels
larger vertically, so that hopefully the 720p will be displayed in
native
(full) resolution.

I also just noticed that I have to redo and re-upload all the videos,
as when I converted from avi clips by FRAPS using Windows Movie Maker,
I neglected to switch to "widescreen" aspect, so all the vidoes have a
large black border. Doh, I'm such a noob.

[Enric]

Cool, glad it's moving forward for you.

-- Enric

[Stray Genius]

OK I've succeeded in "hacking" the plug-in and vPIP so that the videos
play "on the page" as an embed, and that they play native (full)
resolution with no added border (1280x720). I tried using a solution
that made sense but I got into a situation where the <div> describing
the area the playing video occupied was erroneously huge, so I simply
forced the height to 764 where it reads that value in the play
JavaScript routine (720 + 44, 44 for the player controls).

I'm not totally sure I have helped the stopping playing situation any,
but I have tried. I could be wrong about this but it appears the
actual JavaScript "play" function that invokes the browser "windows
media extension" was running many times for a single user click to
play the video. I tried to fix that in my copy of vPIP by putting in
a check to see if the href was the same as the last used and ignoring
it if it is (the "last href" variable is then cleared to null on
closing a video to enable reopening the same video).

It seems more predictable in that when it fails (stops playing) I can
generally close the player and reopen it and it will start playing
again. Anyhow I'm still testing, but you are welcome to check out the
current stuff ::

http://malicia.straygenius.com/wiki/index.php?title=Videos

Thanks for your responses, Enric.

Stray Genius

[Stray Genius]

I need to say that at this point I don't think
the plugin or vPIP is a problem, I think it's the
connection / streaming that the activex extension
is providing.

I left the 33 minute one playing and it stopped,
but unlike prior tests, it started playing again
on it's own after a few minutes passed.

By the way the big black border on all but the
top video on the wiki page are my fault, I had
the wrong aspect enabled when I made the
.wmv files. Unfortunately I also deleted the
original 1080p source AVIs (for all but the
one featured at top "Beautiful Planet etc", which
I did fix and re-upload).

[Stray Genius]

Great news!

I found a better player object to use, I found the info here ::
http://www.mioplanet.com/rsc/embed_mediaplayer.htm

I got it working, it's fantastic, tons better than the older
"nsmp2inf.cab" codebase.
OLD ::
else if (this.sMediaFormat == "windowsmedia") {
this.sReplace = "<OBJECT class='vPIPEmbed' CLASSID='CLSID:22d6f312-
b0f6-11d0-94ab-0080c74c7e95' ";
this.sReplace += "codebase='http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/
controls/mplayer/en/nsmp2inf.cab' ";
this.sReplace += "standby='Loading Microsoft Windows Media Player
components...' type='application/x-oleobject' ";
this.sReplace += "width='" + this.iWidth + "' height='" + this.iHeight
+ "' id='" + this.sName + "' >";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM NAME='fileName' VALUE='" + this.sHREF + "'
><PARAM NAME='autoStart' VALUE='" + this.byAutostart;
this.sReplace += "'><PARAM NAME='showControls' VALUE='" +
this.byController + "'>";
this.sReplace += "<EMBED type='application/x-mplayer2'
pluginspage='http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/MediaPlayer/' id='";
this.sReplace += this.sName + "' name='" + this.sName + "'
showcontrols='" + this.byController + "' width='" + this.iWidth + "'
height='";
this.sReplace += 44 + "' src='" + this.sHREF + "' autostart='" +
this.byAutostart + "'></EMBED></OBJECT>";
}


NEW ::
else if (this.sMediaFormat == "windowsmedia") {
this.sReplace = "<OBJECT id=\"VIDEO\" width=\"" + this.iWidth + "\"
height=\"" + (Number(this.iHeight) + 64).toString() + "\"";
this.sReplace += "style=\"position:absolute; left:0;top:50;\"";
this.sReplace += "CLASSID=\"CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-
B153-00C04F79FAA6\"";
this.sReplace += "type=\"application/x-oleobject\">";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM NAME=\"URL\" VALUE=\"" + this.sHREF + "\">";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM NAME=\"WindowlessVideo\" VALUE=\"True\">";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM NAME=\"InvokeURLs\" VALUE=\"False\">";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM NAME=\"Enabled\" VALUE=\"True\">";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM name=\"PlayCount\" value=\"9999\">";
this.sReplace += "</OBJECT>";
}


It took some trial and error but this works great.
BTW my thoughts about the thing running many times
for a single click were totally bogus, wrong, stupid, etc.
But this is right :D

Stray Genius

[Stray Genius]

This is to replace what is there around line 623 in vPIP/vpip.js ...

else if (this.sMediaFormat == "windowsmedia") {
this.sReplace = "<OBJECT id=\"VIDEO\" width=\"" + this.iWidth + "\"
height=\"" + (Number(this.iHeight) + 64).toString() + "\"";
this.sReplace += "style=\"position:absolute; left:0;top:50;\"";
this.sReplace += "CLASSID=\"CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-
B153-00C04F79FAA6\"";
this.sReplace += "type=\"application/x-oleobject\">";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM NAME=\"URL\" VALUE=\"" + this.sHREF + "\">";

this.sReplace += "<PARAM NAME=\"Enabled\" VALUE=\"True\">";
this.sReplace += "<PARAM name=\"PlayCount\" value=\"9999\">";
this.sReplace += "</OBJECT>";
}

Note that because the windows media player is
embedded here and not an extension, it has full
MWP functionality, such as showing buffering info
and being able to set setting with right mouse click.

[Enric]

Nice, I'll test toward updating to that CLSID in a future vPIP
release.

Thanks!,

Enric

[Stray Genius]

You are very welcome.

Yes, not using the older and deprecated extension ::

"http://activex.microsoft.com/activex/controls/mplayer/en/
nsmp2inf.cab'"

is a huge improvement.

BTW "thickbox" was probably not an issue,
it may not have been an issue for anyone.
I'm pretty sure the issue was using the old
nsmp2inf.cab extension.

[Stray Genius]

Doh, I forgot to mention, you will have to play with
the top:50 offset I listed, the 50 is for my wiki page
where the play button is actually above a placeholder
graphic.

You also might look at the ::
(Number(this.iHeight) + 64).toString()
which is adding 64 pixels for the Windows
Media Player controls (I hardwired that).
If you use that you will need to disable
the adding of controls height in vpip.js.

[Enric]

Thanks for the pointers and tips.  I'll use them when I work again on the vPIP code.

  Best,

   Enric

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vPIP" group.
To post to this group, send email to vp...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to vpip+uns...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vpip?hl=en.

[Enric]

Thanks.  I haven't worked on vPIP in awhile.  It may take sometime until I get to this.  But, thanks for the update to making WMV's work well.

   -- Enric

On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 10:31 PM, Stray Genius <stray...@hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

Enric you are very welcome, strangely I really don't
get any feedback from the people that play the game
which the wiki is based on, or even feedback from the
people in the group (whom the wiki belongs to).

I couldn't leave the wiki like it was, so I spent
another bunch of hours making it work like vPIP was
intended to work, with the placeholder graphic
actually representing the view area, rather than as I
had it, in which instance it was not being used (in
the wiki text I had a graphic after the </video> that
was being used to reserve the viewing area).

In addition to getting the placeholder working
properly, I placed the "X Close" graphic inside the
viewing area rather than above it, in the top right
corner, and use a 3D red boxed "X" as per windows
apps close button (made the graphic from a cropped
screenshot of a windows close button).

So in this setup the width and height passed in from
vPIPPlugin are the actual size of the video, but the
"placeholder" graphic has to be those dimensions +64
pixels in height (if the video is to play "in place"
and not move stuff down when it starts).

Notable differences from my prior <OBJECT> for the
Windows Media Player are ::

1.Style is now position:relative, not absolute.

2.BufferingTime parameter was added (2 seconds).

3.Playcount was changed from "9999" to "1" (this
prevents the video from looping but you can still
play the video repeatly).

I have cut out the parts of vpip.js that are
pertinent, and put a "<SNIP>" text at points
indicating where cutting occurred.  The result is the
part of the ".show" function of the vPIP player that
does all the work starting a .WMV video playing in
place, the "this.sReplace" definition with the
<OBJECT>, and the <div> for the close button.

http://straygenius.com/vpip.js.snippet.txt

Stray Genius

[Stray Genius]

Enric you are very welcome, strangely I really don't
get any feedback from the people that play the game
which the wiki is based on, or even feedback from the
people in the group (whom the wiki belongs to).

I couldn't leave the wiki like it was, so I spent
another bunch of hours making it work like vPIP was
intended to work, with the placeholder graphic
actually representing the view area, rather than as I
had it, in which instance it was not being used (in
the wiki text I had a graphic after the </video> that
was being used to reserve the viewing area).

In addition to getting the placeholder working
properly, I placed the "X Close" graphic inside the
viewing area rather than above it, in the top right
corner, and use a 3D red boxed "X" as per windows
apps close button (made the graphic from a cropped
screenshot of a windows close button).

So in this setup the width and height passed in from
vPIPPlugin are the actual size of the video, but the
"placeholder" graphic has to be those dimensions +64
pixels in height (if the video is to play "in place"
and not move stuff down when it starts).

Notable differences from my prior <OBJECT> for the

[Stray Genius]