Test Clips

Over the last week or so (I've been either busy or sick - and I missed a local Una Voce meeting also), whenever I can get a spare moment, I've been encoding that episode of "The Catholic Hour" at different bit rates to see how well it performed. Tests were done at 500kb, 800kb, 1800kb, 2000kb, and 3000kb. Obviously, the higher the bit rate, the better it looked. The thing that stuck out to me most, though, is that the difference between 500kb, 800kb, and 1800kb was just about negligible. This is good, at least in the interim. I'm not going to have near the bandwidth that I will need to do 3000kb or even 2000kb bit rates, even though that ultimately, MDTV will be on it's own line (it's actually waiting - we have had DSL for a while now, and cable internet came with my day job, so like, two lines). I know what kind of bandwidth will be needed, but it's going to take a little time to get there. In the meantime, I'm hoping a dedicated cable line will do the trick.

And the only way it can do the trick, if what I'm thinking is correct, is to stream out at 500kb. That way, the bandwidth won't be eaten up too much and the file size will still remain small; roughly 120MB for a 30 minute program, compared to 189MB for the 800kb stream, 342MB for the 1800kb stream, 450MB for the 2000kb stream, and 667 for the 3000kb stream.

Next, we move the file over to the linux server and set VLC up to stream MPEG-4 on VOD.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Right size...

...wrong container. I think. What I was trying to do was put an MPEG-TS container around an H.264 file. MediaCoder didn't seem to like that too much. I think when I'm done with capturing footage for tonight, I may just go ahead and try again, but this time with a simple MPEG-4 container on it. The size was good, though; a 30 minute program that's normally about 2GB in size was only 209 MB. Perfect.

Oh, and I found some more footage from that friend for whom we're transferring films, this time a parish's 50th Anniversary Celebration complete with 4th Degree Knights of Columbus and everything. And they're going to allow us to use them for MDTV too! It's so cool to have some good stock footage of various things Catholic.

Now, what to do with them...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Transcoding and Transferring

The results of last night's transcoding test are in....

Don't ever, EVER transcode from one MPEG format to another.

I did this last night, taking a copy of "Our Lady's Shrine" from MPEG-2 to H.264 (MPEG-4 basically) in an MPEG-TS container, and I got the same problems I had when trying to transcode from .mov files to .avi files back in about March or so. Really choppy, really jittery, and just not good.

So, I'm taking an .avi file and seeing how it comes out. This time, it's my episode of "The Catholic Hour: Rome Eternal Part III". Hopefully, taking it from uncompressed video to compressed will be better.

Oh, and in the midst of transferring my next client's videos, I found some footage of an old Mexican cathedral (the name eludes me right now - I saw a picture of the same cathedral up in the old La Hacienda restaurant in Fishers, IN before they moved, though), and equally as important, a few seconds of a memento mori. Since this footage belongs to some friends of ours, they may be willing to "donate" the clips that I need.

I'm pretty sure we can work something out.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Update/Progress

While the crack team of professionals at Red Hat have, in fact, patched Samba, I'm still trying to figure out how to configure it. There hasn't been much time in that regard, as I had a huge job of film transfer to do for someone else that was due the day before Thanksgiving. In any case, the linux box is still working (obviously - I'm typing this up on it) and I will figure out Samba as I'm down here working on my next film transfer job.

In the meantime, I think I found the answer to my previous question: Yes, I can transcode MPEG-4 to an MPEG-TS. What I'm doing now with MediaCoder is taking the film of "Our Lady's Shrine", at least the MPEG-2 file, and changing it to an H.264 file in an MPEG2-TS stream container. I'm not sure exactly how it's going to turn out yet, but VLC should be able to play it. If I see no difference in quality between the MPEG-2, the MPEG-TS, and the H.264 files, yet see a much smaller file with the H.264, then I'm in business. The next step after transcoding will be to load them up on the server and set up VLC for VOD.

Oh, and as far as new films go, I just got a short of Pope Pius XII shutting the door after the Holy Year of 1950 was officially closed. I'll have to take a look at it all the way through, but it looks like it came from Off-Network Productions. I'm not sure if it's public domain or not, but for five bucks it was worth the risk.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

OK...Next Question...

As I wait for the crack team of experts at Red Hat to help me work on my Samba problem, the next question remains in my head: Now that I know I can encode MPEG-TS files from MPEG-2 files, can I do it with MPEG-4? The reason why I wonder this is simple: Bandwidth. MPEG-4 files are much smaller and less likely to clog up bandwidth for a high number of users.

Looks like I've got my next MDTV project.

In any case, I'm sorry there's little to no Catholic content on this blog right now. That will eventually change. At this point, though, this blog is helping me keep track of the whole troubleshooting record so I can refer back to whatever I may need in the future. The other plus side is that I'm transferring a large number of films right now, and I've discovered some nuances that are making them look better, so I'm getting better in that realm too.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Another Nice Step Forward

While taking a small break from transferring client films, I took the MPEG of "Trail of Fr. Kino" and decided to make it into an MPEG Transport Stream file so as to get started on setting up Mater Dei Television on a VoD platform, and it worked fantastically! I used MPEG Streamclip to do the job, and am watching it currently on VLC. Now, just getting the Fedora and Windows boxes to talk to one another is going to be another step, but I'm happy with finding out what I found out tonight.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Great Steps Forward

OK. While I didn't wind up going with Darwin Streaming Server, I did get a couple of alternatives together and downloaded them and installed them on the linux box. They are simply VLC and Mplayer. They're both great media players (at least VLC is - I've not tried Mplayer yet), but I've not used them in setting up a VoD server yet. As soon as I figure that out, I think we're off to the races. Still, what has been accomplished today have been great steps forward.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Success! I think...

OK...I finally got an OS successfully installed on what I hope is the video server. I wound up using Fedora Core 8. Now, anyone out there who knows anything about linux who would like to help me get this box networked to my Windows network, I'd be grateful.

Phase two: Getting the Darwin Streaming Server installed.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Not Jinxing It

OK. I'm sick of jinxing it.

I know, I know. I'm not supposed to believe in jinxes, but it never seems to fail; every single time I say I'm going to use a particular OS, I can't get it to install for some reason or another, or if I can, the GUI doesn't work, or the computer falls over and starts smoking or whatever.

So, I'm going to just say this much: I've got an OS loading on what I hope is eventually going to be my Darwin Streaming Server (at least until I get a faster computer to install this stuff on, then it can either be a backup or my web server). I'm not going to say which one it is. I'm not going to say I was successful. Not until I get the doggone thing to work.

In the meantime, back to work on film transfer.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Grumble..

OK...for some reason, that Debian distro wasn't bootable. No clue as to why. Perhaps it needs a bootloader or something. Don't know. I got frustrated enough that I downloaded the BitTorrent client to get a copy of Slackware. I would rather have my Darwin Streaming Server linux based if at all possible, and Slackware is actually the way I wanted to go to begin with this time around.

We shall see.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Back to the Drawing Board

OK. Tonight, in lieu of a dead KVM switch, I hooked up another monitor, keyboard and mouse to what I think is going to be my Darwin server. No, not THAT Darwin. I was talking about Apple's open source Darwin server that is used in an MPEG-4 based IPTV VOD system. I'm leaning towards Debian as my distro on this box, as the most success I've had with linux has been with a Debian based distro, so why not?

The idea at this point is to get a box running Debian, install the Darwin server on it, and then start playing with it. We'll see where things go from there.

It's late and I'm tired. I better bugger off.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Long Awaited Update - No, I'm Not Dead

Yeah...it's been awhile.

There's been a lot going on in our neck of the woods. We've had our struggles with a multitude of different things, and I went through a job change to a company that I didn't realize is diametrically opposed to both my Faith and my morals. The good news, though, is that we have a new baby boy, named Nigel and he's healthy and reasonably happy (although he's trying to get the jist of having siblings, and noisy siblings at that).

The one good thing that came out of my job change is that it gave me some better ideas to make Mater Dei Television more effective. We are now looking at an IPTV based VOD (Video On Demand) system that will allow people to view MDTV with either their computer or an after market set top box on their regular TV. Video on Demand seems like the way to go, but I just don't like the vlog look too much; being a TV man by trade, I like TV to look like, well, TV.

I'll write more later. There's much work to be done.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI