Monday, May 5, 2008
ESP LTD KH-603 Test (Battery cover)
By the way...just purchased the ESP LTD KH-603...now I want the 2008 Fender
Advanced YouTube Encoding
By default, YouTube converts uploaded videos to 320x240 pixel, 200kbps, Sorenson Spark-compressed Flash files, with 22.05kHz, 64kbps mono sound. (I don't like the video look, but I HATE the sound.) Some savvy producers discovered that you can upload Flash FLV files directly and bypass the destructive re-encoding process. The technique is insanely complex, but the results are undeniably great, and it doesn't depend on URL trickery. Check out this encoding of the trailer for the movie 300. It looks awesome. Sounds great, too:
Of course, these hacks work for now, but there are no guarantees they'll endure.
Beyond YouTube: Alternate Video Delivery
For complete control (albeit a potential bandwidth overload), you can also post a higher quality video on your site and link to that from the About This Video box on your YouTube page.
You can also make a lower resolution version that's small enough for people to email. I did this with my “Kitty Lickin' Good” video, linking to this two-meg WMV version of it. It's had over 10,000 downloads from people emailing a link on my blog — almost three times the views of the YouTube page. I encoded it at 320x240 with 128kbps MP3 sound. It even looks half-decent full screen. Over to you, David....
Beautiful YouTube Poster Images
When you embed a YouTube movie in your site the standard way — by pasting YouTube's HTML code — you get a repulsive placeholder image. This poster frame is so blurry and seemingly random that your visitors often have no clue what the video is about. I (David) am sure I've missed seeing lots of good movies simply because their posters were so hideous.
YouTube apparently creates the poster frame by grabbing the frame exactly halfway through the movie and JPEG-compressing the heck out of it. If you're making your own video and don't mind compromising the flow, you could insert something photogenic at the halfway point. But YouTube will still smack it with the JPEG Ugly Stick. And what if you want to show other people's videos?
Having worked out a sneaky way to make poster images for embedded QuickTime movies, I thought I'd try the same technique on YouTube videos.
Here's a screenshot of the normal cruddy YouTube poster:
Now here's a crisper poster I made by taking a screenshot of the video and overlaying a border and text. Click it to see the YouTube Poster Swapper in action:
The technique uses JavaScript to replace a still image with the movie-embedding code. Visitors with JavaScript disabled will still see the movie, just in a new window. Here's how it works.
I started with the standard YouTube embedding code:
from O'Reilly digital media