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Thread: Flash MX video performance

  1. #1
    Does anyone have experience with the Flash MX video performance? I've produced a broadband video file with Sorenson Squeeze, but it's dropping frames on a 2x400 Mhz dual pentium II.
    The videofile is 320x240 @ 25 fps.
    What are the minimum requirements for Sorenson Spark?

    videostream:
    http://home.et.fh-osnabrueck.de/~st.../streaming.html

  2. #2
    Brian Monnone
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    I've just written a chapter for Friends Of Ed about Squeeze...I'll try to help.

    Nothing is really mentioned about CPU speed but:

    Microsoft Windows 98, ME, 2000, or XP
    QuickTime 5.0.2
    64MB RAM
    10MB hard disk space

    What format are you exporting too? QT, FLV, SWF? Your link doesn't work. I need to know that first.

    - Sigma

  3. #3
    Senior Member
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    It is only dropping frames? If that is your only problem then consider yourself blessed. At this point I believe you are doing everything right. On a slower computer the video is going to react like your flash movie would. If the machine can't handle the animation it is going to drop some frames.

  4. #4

    Post

    But I wouldn't consider a Dual Pentium II as a slow machine. I'm wondering if I can replace Realvideo or Quicktime videos in Flash Websites with Flash MX videos, but if it need too much performance, it's pretty hard to persuade clients that Flash MX streaming is an option.

  5. #5
    Brian Monnone
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    Again, what format are you exporting to??

    Your machine should not drop frames.

    - Sigma

  6. #6
    I'm exporting it as an swf file. The demo link is above.

  7. #7
    Ooops, the link doesn't seem to work.
    But this one:
    http://home.et.fh-osnabrueck.de/~std...streaming.html

  8. #8
    Brian Monnone
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    Sorry, I said before it doesn't work...still doesn't.

  9. #9
    Brian Monnone
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    Checking it now...
    THANKS!

  10. #10
    Brian Monnone
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    Well, I don't think it should be dropping frames like that. Highlight the output settings inthe right window. From the menu up top, choose Edit/Output Compression Settings. Then in Video Output click the Options button. Tab through that section and make sure that you don't have "Drop Frames" on. I would also make sure the Minimum Quality is off as well.

    - Sigma

  11. #11
    Senior Member
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    I just tried the movie on 2 contrasting computer systems. The first one I tried it on was my dual 1.4 system and it worked great. Then I went and tried it on the #!$@ computer in the office which is a pentium 2. The pentium 2 had very little difference. The frame rate could have dropped down all the way to 10 frames... but I would never have noticed. The human eye can only see at 10 frames per second. Really the only things that could look bad at around 10 frames per second are things that are most common to our eye. The best example I can think of is someone talking. When you see someone on video at 10 fps you notice. As far as I could see from my testing here you have nothing to worry about.

  12. #12
    Brian Monnone
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    I have to disagree with you JHarlequin. The human eye can see more the just 10 FPS. The actual number has been debated about for a long time. Some say 36, some say no more than 24. The facts are this: Film is recorded at 24 FPS and 29.97 for Broadcast NTSC formats because that is rate that closely matches the eye. The movie appears smooth because of this. Anything lower than 24 FPS WILL appear jerky, no matter what. Some also suggest that each person's "Eye FPS" is different; some seeing at 36 FPS others at 27. What ever the case, 10 FPS WILL be noticably jerky. The slower the FPS, the more times your eye will capture the same scene - leading to jerky or seemingly imprecise images.

    There has also been debate over whether anything above 30 FPS is a waste of time. Well, even though I am fully aware of the eye frame rate thing, I STILL believe that a 60 FPS Flash movie is much smoother for the ANIMATION, not the VIDEO portion of a Flash movie. The VIDEO should always be set to 30 FPS. Video in a 60 fps Flash movie will only play back at 30 fps, duplicating every frame. Which in our case is fine.

    I could go on and on, but the fact is that 10 FPS will be jerky to MOST human's eyes.

    As far as the computer dropping frames, that should not happen at a noticable level. Even slow computers should not drop frames at a noticable level. It will just simply take longer to compress! Dropped frames is USUALLY invoked by the user. Frames can be dropped during capture of video but usually not while compressing (encoding). So check out some of the settings in Squeeze and make sure that they are set accordingly.

    Good luck!

    - Sigma

  13. #13
    I have to agree, 10 frames is too less for the human eye.
    I've checked the setting for Squeeze now. I've used the default "broadband" settings and increased the frames from 1:2 to 1:1, which means it plays with 25 frames (european pal). The default setting with 12 frames are to less for the project. The option "drop frames" is disabled.
    I've done another test with the broadband_high setting, and didn't change anything - it's still dropping frames. Does the video playback require something like "direct draw", because the test system is NT 4.0. The cpu usage is below 50%.

  14. #14
    Brian Monnone
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    I don't think it uses anything like that...I can check though. How are you certain it's dropping frames? After all the compression will make it look different.

    Have you uploaded the new video? What is this anyway, it's cool!

    Updated post: Check here too:

    http://www.sorenson.com/content.php?...t_version_id=1

    - Sigma
    [Edited by Sigma on 04-23-2002 at 12:55 PM]

  15. #15
    I've checked it on different computers:

    - Pentium 2 Dual 400 (tnt2) -> dropping frames
    - Pentium 3 650 (tnt2) -> not dropping frames
    - Apple Powerbook -> playback okay (althougth dropping some frames)
    - Pentium 166 -> dropping frames heavily

    I'm sure, that it's really dropping frames. But maybe the system configuration of the Pentium Dual 400 is not that good.
    The question: Is it safe to switch from Windows Media or Quicktime to Flash MX or are there more buggy machines out there?

    (btw. how is the book called, you're writing for friends of ed?)

  16. #16
    Brian Monnone
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    So, are you asking if frames are being dropped while the video is being viewed? Not compressed?

    I am running:
    Athlon 1.8G+
    1.2 Gig Ram
    Geforce3 Ti200

    There is no way it's dropping frames for me obviously but...

    The book is called Macromedia Flash MX Video:

    http://www.friendsofed.com/books/fla...deo/index.html

    It doesn't come out until June.

    - Sigma

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