Unit 62 Assignment 1 ezine

The Art of Digital Video

Gradually, digital video has become increasingly important within the media industry, especially within interactive platform such as computers, phones and tablets. This article will go into detail on how such platforms adopt digital videos and in which format. In addition, this article will venture into the technical side of creating effective digital videos detailing file formats, resolution, media players and data rates.

Before we get started, I will talk about and explain some key technical terms relating to digital video! Therefore, when we get onto the evaluation of each website, you will know about each technical term, what it means, what it entails and how they will affect the outcome digital videos hosted on the web.

-          Resolution: The dimensions of each frame in the video. The larger the resolution, the higher the quality but higher the file size. With a lower resolution, file sizes tend to decrease while quality appears reduced. Phrases such as “240p” and “1080p” refer to the vertical component of a resolution.

-          File format: The file format normally refers to the type of codec and compression used in the video file. While all file formats achieve similar outcomes, the file size, quality and data rates can vary dramatically from format to format. To identify a file format, you must research the file extension of the file in question. For example, if a file was named “Dancing Cat.mp4”, the file format is MP4 since the file extension states this.

-           Bitrate: Bitrate or data rate directly refers to the amount of data transferred per second. In addition, this directly refers to the file size. Similar to the pattern of resolution, the higher the data rate, the higher and the quality and higher the file size and vice versa. With higher bitrates, videos become clearer since each pixel is clearly defined. With lower bitrates, pixels of similar colours are grouped together to make a net area of the same shade – making the picture somewhat less clear. Bitrate never affects the resolution.

-          File sizes are written with prefixes. In ascending order, each prefix increases by a factor of roughly one thousand in relation to the previous prefix. For example 1mb is equal to roughly 1000kb (1024 precisely)

B

Kb

Mb

Gb
Tb

YouTube is the application that 99% of every computer user is comfortable and familiar with. Using a flash based decoder, YouTube is a suitable platform for a range of professional or user-generated content. Therefore, it is an ideal location to house trailers, adverts, short films and instructional shorts. YouTube is an excellent location for professional users to post content where it will invariably receive by a large range of any target audience. Similarly, film companies are likely to post trailers onto YouTube since their content is virtually guaranteed to be received by a large selection of audience.

For a user`s point of view, seeing a film trailer on YouTube may entertain, interest or advertise to a user. While seeing E-learning videos are able to educate and entertain users as well as giving them an opportunity to appreciate the wide range of content available on the application. In short, having such a huge variety of digital film on YouTube is excellent due to the lack of a distinct target audience. Therefore, whoever you are, you will find content that appeals to you and your interest group.

 Despite YouTube being sourced for PC use, its simple design (as well as use of the universal flash application) means that it can easily be accessed by phones tablets and many other portable devices. This means that YouTube is one of the best ways to access high quality and up to date digital videos on the internet. With the use of streaming, the application provides quick and easy access to any video. Streaming means that a computer is able to download a video file from the internet and begin to assume playback before the file transfer is complete. Therefore, as soon as the first few seconds have been received by the system, the video will begin to play. Unfortunately, streaming has its limitations: If a computer has a rather slow internet speed, users may find that the rate of the playing video is lower than the streaming rate. As a result, users receive the somewhat irritating “buffer” logo and are forced to wait for their internet connection to speed up. When a file is not streamed, the clip often must be downloaded in its entirety before playback can begin.

Note: Different resolution videos take different measures of bandwidth to stream. Therefore, users will slower internet connections may benefit from viewing videos in 240p or 320p.

Interestingly, YouTube will accept and convert a huge variety of file formats including the common MPEG2, MP4, MOV and WMV.  On the right are more examples of the huge range of file formats recognized by the YouTube uploader  However, in my experience, once uploaded – video files are then encoded into H.264 (mp4) or WebM formats which can be easily accessed by users through flash player and have relatively low file sizes for optimal streaming. In addition to YouTube`s automatic encoding upon upload, each video is rendered into a range of resolutions starting with 240p and ranging up to 3072p (As of late)

To conclude this section on YouTube, if a user requires a simple, efficient and popular platform on which to stream video files, then YouTube is a suitable choice. In addition, with the exception of explicit or inappropriate content, YouTube enforces no restriction on the style, genre or purpose of any video – including advertising and marketing! However, restrictions do apply when copyrighted content is detected.

BBC I player is a convenient on-line application which allows users to locate and view recent television programs aired on most of the BBC channels.

In comparison to YouTube, this application still streams flash based video to users. However, the reduced range of playback resolutions means that the application is slightly less versatile than YouTube.

Another major difference is that BBC I Player features only professional content and, obviously, as a result, users are not permitted to upload/edit any content on the website. Instead, users within the UK are able to view a range of programs according to their preference.

In addition to the featuring television programs, other adverts in the form of Digital videos are frequently displayed at set intervals between longer pieces of content. This relates to the traditional use of the television; commercial breaks. Therefore, where television commercials would normally interrupt playback, BBC I player substitutes in shorter but similar advertisements – usually only one at a time. Since the BBC is a professional website, having user generated content would clog the website with unprofessional content which could restrict the convenience of the website. Therefore, having purely BBC generated content achieves continuity between videos. Similarly, since users of the website are likely to be interested in film and television, having trailers and commercials benefits users since the BBC can optimise trailers and commercials to suit each user and the particular piece of media that they are viewing.

Unfortunately, the BBC I player has an inconveniently long buffer times in comparison to YouTube. This could be a result of the file formats used which are H.264 MP4. Usually, these formats are associated with high resolution, large file size and complicated compression when encoding. Luckily, this means that content on I player is liable to be higher quality and less lossy than those on YouTube. On further thought, this is because the site is optimised for professionals who use HDV cameras which film in the AVCHD MP4 format. As a result, using lossy compression would seem a waste of the time, equipment and planning that goes into the creating of the digital videos.

TTSonline is a simple website that is NOT optimised for streaming videos. Therefore, in this section, I will criticize the pros and cons of a website not being optimised for streaming and why I believe the videos on this website are of poor and inconvenient design.

Again, compared to the best site: YouTube, the videos on this website are NOT streamed! This is potentially terrible since the entire video file would have to be temporarily downloaded before the clip will even start to play.

To make matters worse, the video is compressed as a high quality MP4 file. Despite MP4 files normally being heavily compressed, the high bitrate used on TTSonline means that the video files are simply too large to download online. For the video illustrated above, the bitrate is set to 20mb/s. The clip is 2 minutes long. Therefore, running some simple calculations, the total file size will be well in excess of 2 GB since there are 120 seconds of footage in the clip.

Obviously, there are positive sides to such a large bitrate – despite the insignificance that they happen to be. This positive point is the fact that such a high bitrate means that the loss of data in the clip is invariably minimal and, as a result, the quality of the video clip appears to be very high indeed. However, the resolution of 480p is not particularly high and therefore, this 2 GB file is rather unnecessary and incredibly excessive. It is also rather destructive for those with an average internet connection since the loading time for this video potentially could take well over half an hour.

Similar to the BBC, this website does not allow any user generated content. However, since the website creators are clearly also rather unprofessional (based on the analysis of compression and file sizes – along with the fact that it is very difficult to access their videos whatsoever), the final outcome is rather disappointing in comparison to dedicated digital video websites. Nonetheless, this video can be called a promotional video since it promotes the school`s ethos and perception of sport.

Similar usage:

In addition to these online video sites, videos can often be found in Kiosks, DVD`s, E-mails and many more!

When displaying videos through a public kiosk, file size and resolution are often not an issue. In fact, the hardware of the kiosk is often the only liming factor. Therefore, if the graphics processing unit is not of a high quality, HD playback (720p or higher) may look unprofessional and may also stutter. Kiosks are useful since online streaming is not an issue when all video files are normally stored on a local hard drive or SSD.

However, in DVD`s, file size is often an issue. With the maximum size of a DVD being 4.7 gb or 8gb, it is not productive to burn HD footage onto them. Even if DVDs had larger capacities, very few DVD players have a processor powerful enough to play HD video and, in addition, DVD players tend only to support scart or RCA jacks – neither of which are capable of carrying HD footage. Instead, DVDs use the popular MPEG2 file formats to compress their digital videos in a standard definition of 480p with a reasonably high bitrate.

Lastly, digital videos transferred by e-mails should be somewhat avoided. Since emails are sent as a whole, streaming of videos with this method are impossible. Instead, the entire file must be sent in one go. Even despite a fast internet connection, most email providers prohibit file sizes of over 50mb and, as a result, this causes the quality, length and convenience of digital video to be severely handicapped.

In summary, I have discussed technical terms relating to digital video on similar platforms such as DVDs and the Internet. More specifically, I have discussed the technicalities involving online media and other platforms such as kiosks. The art of digital video is one which never ends and can be endlessly explored; this article is just the beginning!