False advertising on HD internet streams?

iusedtoberich

iusedtoberich

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Is HD on live or youtube video streams really HD?

I watch youtube a lot, and they have the 720p and 1080p options on many videos. These don't look anything like broadcast over the air 720p or 1080i true high definition TV. Things are pixelated, especially during quick motion.

I've even seen some stuff by Blackjack recently that were old matches from the 90's that youtube had a 1080p option for. HD didn't even exist then.

I just watched the Accustats PPV one pocket stream, and I noticed the same thing. Let me say the stream was excellent, compared to other streams I've seen. However, it is way way way short of broadcast over the air 720p or 1080i true high definition TV. For example, the pool looked very good, because its relatively slow moving. Yes, the ball moves quickly, but the table is the same in the background, so the pixels are mostly the same from frame to frame. But when they cut out to an advertisement, and had a fast moving video transition (meaning the whole screen was redrawn compared to the previous frame), you could see tons of pixelation.

I recall a post by JCIN a couple years ago, mentioning something to the affect that true HD is impossible over most internet connections. I think I'm seeing what he was talking about now.

Thoughts on this? It seems this is video industry wide (both pool and non-pool industry). Just doesn't seem right to me if everything is advertised as HD, but it doesn't look anything like true HD over the air broadcasts.

I've been researching camcorders over the past few months, and read a ton on the various formats. But I'm still at the stage where I don't know what I don't know (for you Inner Game of Tennis Fans:)) when it comes to video. Am I off base here, or am I not watching HD when its labeled HD?
 
Last edited:
I hope some of the experts will answer your question more fully, but here is my understanding of the details...

I think that for you, the missing link is video compression. Raw footage from a video camera has to be compressed in order to be small enough to stream over a reasonable Internet connection.

As you mentioned, as the video goes from frame to frame, if most of the pixels are the same, the compression is more efficient, resulting in a higher quality.

If most or all of the pixels are changing from frame to frame, the compressor must do more work. In that case, the algorithms must choose between speed and quality. As these are live streams, speed is more important, so quality will tend to suffer a bit during transitions or fast camera movements.

When I'm making videos for YouTube, I have the luxury of waiting as long as I want for the compression, so I can specify a higher quality at the cost of speed and size.

HD, whether 720p or 1080p, is just a resolution (number of pixels). When you see the pixelation during a fast transition, you are seeing the compressor sacrifice quality by working with larger blocks of pixels instead of working with each individual pixel. On the HD streams, you are still "getting" every pixel, but during these transitions, the compressor must take shortcuts and render groups of pixels together.

There are countless varieties of compressors/decompressors, known as codecs. Each is designed to accomplish a specific task. Some are better for live streaming (fast, efficient, and able to sacrifice quality on the fly when needed), and some are better for DVD production (highest quality, not as efficient, and unable to adapt).

In my opinion, the Accu-Stats stream I've been watching all weekend is one of the highest quality streams available. TAR is another one. They have a "home court advantage" because they are working in a studio with a known broadband speed, great computer equipment (which doesn't need to be as mobile), and carefully designed and controlled lighting. Over time, they also are able to tweak their encoding settings to maximize quality because they are working in a familiar environment.

TVMike and BigTruck also do a great job with quality, but they are forced to adapt to the environment of the particular venue they are featuring.

Obviously, sometimes there are issues that are beyond the control of the live streamers, such as a slow or inconsistent broadband connection, poor lighting, or any number of other technical issues. Ustream itself is known to be finicky at times (for both the transmitter and the viewer), no matter how well everything else if set up.

Anyone that watches a lot of streams and participates in the chats will know that I watch a ton of streams. I appreciate all of them, and I don't get too frustrated when issues arise. I'm just grateful to have access to the content!

I hope this helps, and if anyone sees any points that I was wrong about, please let us know. I have lots of experience working with codecs and video in general, but I'm certainly no expert when it comes to live streaming.

-Blake
 
High Def Steaming

Hi Guys - Hi Nick

Great question - maybe a header that is a little misleading - but great question.

Every time we get ready to do a Live PPV I watch a video of Penn Jillette juggling. There are a lot of factors to be considered.

Even though internet connections have gotten better over the past few years they are still a far cry from broadcast TV. I expect that to change in the future (two years).

We have noticed that pixelation you mentioned and are working on the reason. A new graphics package making its debut here. The learning curve. The interaction with the rest of the equipment etc. Possibly just restartng the equpment between sessions will fix this.

As an aside - except for maybe Ken Shuman mentioning HD, Accu-Stats never makes mention of HD on the website or Facebook. We'd rather concentrate on the quality of the performance.

The juggling I mentioned is trying to pick a streaming speed to match the internet capabililites at the venue, that produces a fair sized viewer on the customer's computer, and that can be viewed by the highest percentage of viewers without freezing and buffering.

You are VERY correct that as long as the background remains bascally the same the pixels remain the same and the picture remains clear. You can see this when the cameras are stationary. The combination, for Accu-Stats, of the use of the jib, moving side cameras, players walking, balls rolling, makes our situation a little different.

We shoot in 1080i - except for the camera attached to the Telestrator/Pointmaker that is in 720p.

Again I try to pick a good, reasonable stream rate that makes the costs to the customer reasonable.

True HD streaming requires a rate between 1800 - 3500 kbps depending on the size of the viewscreen used. I believe Justin tried his last PPV at a 1500 kbps rate with a 1280 by 720 viewer. It looked beautiful!

Except for events we do at home I have not found a venue that can handle upload speeds this fast.

For the producers - streaming HD is a costly endeavor. A 1500 kbps stream costs the producer about 3 times as much in bandwidth fees (yes this is a simplification because the unit cost per megabyte goes down as bandwidth usage increases.)

This increased cost can NOT always be passed on to the customer. If it was, I fear pool would have even fewer viewers.

Please remember I am NOT talking about Ustream or Livestream or any of the FREE platforms. They are different animals from what we use.

In closing, do we record at HD - yes. All of our programs are shown on ESPN-Star/Fox Sports in Asia and they require 1080i HD content.

Oddly enough, ESPN in the US will only accept 720p because of the fast nature of professional sports and that pixelation you mention.

Do we STREAM in HD? - Semantical, but I would say damn close.

Download speeds for the customers are only a small part of the equation.
Download speed alone MUST be maintainable at ALL times for a great stream.

CPU processor speed, CPU usage, TSR's running, RAM, graphics cards, wired or wireless connections, other programs customers have running, regisrty issues, various and sundry other issues all must be taken into account.

Pass me the Indian clubs Penn!

Jim
Accu-Stats
 
Thank you both for the great responses. Jim, I modified the title to make it more neutral. [Edit, see it only changed first post, not whole thread]... I agree, the Accu-Stats stream was excellent. I too notice that most other streamers have a stationary camera, while the accustats has the moving cameras, which leads to the changing backgrounds. I will say, as a viewer, even though this may lead to periodic pixelation, being able to move the cameras to get close to the balls makes a huge improvement in the viewer experience. I love being able to see the numbers on the balls. I mentioned in another thread, that I'm colorblind, and this is the first pool video of any kind (live or dvd), that I've been able to know what balls the commentators were referring to because I could see the numbers, and didn't have to rely on the colors.

Slomoholic: a few questions from what I gathered from your post:

1. Broadcaset over the air TV has a much higher bandwidth that affords a higher data rate than typical cable or fiber optic internet available today?

2. When TV pro's broadcast live football games on over the air broadcast tv, the equipment they use compresses data faster than what the typical pool stream has access to? Or maybe if #1 is true, the data does not have to be compressed as much to begin with, so the computers available don't have to do a lot of heavy number crunching?

BTW, I spent lots of time reading all the widipedia I could find on HD, mpeg2, mpeg4, h264, DTV, mini-dv, HDV, AVCHD, HDMI, SDI to learn more about video. Yes, I read them all in their entirety, I get obsessed with new stuff, lol. One page I spent a lot of time on besides the various Wikipeda pages is below. You guys into video might find it interesting, or may already know it. I think the guy who set up this page really knows his stuff.

http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ISSUES/what_is_ATSC.html
 
Last edited:
I'm glad you're doing some research. Quick answer is: yes, both #1 and #2.

I gotta hit the sack but I'll post up some more details tomorrow.

-Blake
 
Both Jim and SloMo summed it up better than I can.

Regarding YouTube HD: In the end it all comes down to bit rate. Basically how much data from the uncompressed recording is crunched down and compressed to form the web version. Standard recommendations for compression for YouTube and Vimeo are 720p (which is a resolution of 1280 pixels x 720 pixels) at a bit rate of 5000kbps. 1080 is 1920x1080 with a bit rate starting at 8000kbps.

No one that I know of streams anywhere close to these rates. Its just not practical for many of the reasons mentioned. So while the viewer of a stream like our last one is at an HD resolution of 1280x720 the bit rate is low in comparison to something that would be compressed for YouTube. We streamed at 1500kbps. I think the sweet spot may be somewhere smaller than the 1280x720 viewer but with a higher bit rate than the normal 650 we run on the traditional 640x360 stream.

I know just enough about this stuff to get myself into trouble and just keep playing with things to see what works well. In a nutshell streaming is the art of shoving ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.
 
All I can say is...

YOu people better be glad that I am not handling streaming for us. We'd all be scrod.

For all the peeps out there, bringing pool to my home: :bow-down:
 
Most stuff you watch on TV that is HD is 720p anyway. To me I notice little difference between 1080 and 720, both look great. As for your original posting about videos years ago being supposedly 1080, I can take a 480p video and make it show as 1080p HD on Youtube because I render it that way but its still really 480p, I was just tricking Youtube.
 
iusedtoberich said:
I watch youtube a lot, and they have the 720p and 1080p options on many videos. These don't look anything like broadcast over the air 720p or 1080i true high definition TV. Things are pixelated, especially during quick motion.

I've even seen some stuff by Blackjack recently that were old matches from the 90's that youtube had a 1080p option for. HD didn't even exist then.

I just watched the Accustats PPV one pocket stream, and I noticed the same thing. Let me say the stream was excellent, compared to other streams I've seen. However, it is way way way short of broadcast over the air 720p or 1080i true high definition TV. For example, the pool looked very good, because its relatively slow moving. Yes, the ball moves quickly, but the table is the same in the background, so the pixels are mostly the same from frame to frame. But when they cut out to an advertisement, and had a fast moving video transition (meaning the whole screen was redrawn compared to the previous frame), you could see tons of pixelation.

I recall a post by JCIN a couple years ago, mentioning something to the affect that true HD is impossible over most internet connections. I think I'm seeing what he was talking about now.

Thoughts on this? It seems this is video industry wide (both pool and non-pool industry). Just doesn't seem right to me if everything is advertised as HD, but it doesn't look anything like true HD over the air broadcasts.

I've been researching camcorders over the past few months, and read a ton on the various formats. But I'm still at the stage where I don't know what I don't know (for you Inner Game of Tennis Fans:)) when it comes to video. Am I off base here, or am I not watching HD when its labeled HD?
Click to expand...

YouTube will let you select HD upload quality even if the original video is not. If the original source is not good (say copied off a VHS tape that has 240 lines of resolution), even if YouTube lists it at HD, it won't be. People that upload videos may be under the impression that YouTube will somehow make the videos in HD quality or just think that it will give them the best quality when it gets converted.
 
hang-the-9 said:
YouTube will let you select HD upload quality even if the original video is not. If the original source is not good (say copied off a VHS tape that has 240 lines of resolution), even if YouTube lists it at HD, it won't be. People that upload videos may be under the impression that YouTube will somehow make the videos in HD quality or just think that it will give them the best quality when it gets converted.
Click to expand...

There are two main reasons I choose to upload my YouTube videos in HD, despite the majority of my content being far less than HD quality:

1. Graphics and text look really crappy if I don't render to HD.

2. YouTube's converter does indeed render HD video at a much higher quality than the same video in SD. It doesn't make any sense, but it's the truth. Since my slow motion camera is already at a relatively low resolution, there is no way I would let the stupid YouTube encoder reduce the quality even more.

Just my $0.02...
 
SloMoHolic said:
There are two main reasons I choose to upload my YouTube videos in HD, despite the majority of my content being far less than HD quality:

1. Graphics and text look really crappy if I don't render to HD.

2. YouTube's converter does indeed render HD video at a much higher quality than the same video in SD. It doesn't make any sense, but it's the truth. Since my slow motion camera is already at a relatively low resolution, there is no way I would let the stupid YouTube encoder reduce the quality even more.

Just my $0.02...
Click to expand...

You will get better quality because the bit rate will be higher (so they can use less compression), but it won't make a low res file look like it's HD. As long as the source is in good quality, it will look good.
 
JCIN said:
Both Jim and SloMo summed it up better than I can.

...

In a nutshell streaming is the art of shoving ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you win the prize for best explanation. :)

Thanks for all that you do!

-Blake
 
hang-the-9 said:
You will get better quality because the bit rate will be higher (so they can use less compression), but it won't make a low res file look like it's HD. As long as the source is in good quality, it will look good.
Click to expand...

True. I almost edited my post right after I wrote it. I certainly don't expect YouTube to "upsample" my videos to HD quality. But you're right, the HD encoding is at a higher bitrate, so that's what I'll be sticking with for now. Thanks for the clarification.

-Blake
 
It may be technically incorrect on some level to label something HD, but I don't think any attempt was made to trick viewers. The term was around since the 80's and the standards for what was "high definition" back then would make us laugh today.

In this case, I think "HD" is being used to say "what you're about to see is better than the standard you're used to, for this product". And as long as there are 720 horizontal lines, you are technically correct to call something 720p, even if it was recorded with a cell phone camera with a scratched lens.

Anyway, thanks to the guys who have made the hefty investment (time and money both) to get us sharper feeds. I love being able to see the numbers on the balls or the reflection of the chalk in the rail.
 
An update to this thread, I bought the Shane aiming video from Vimeo. I actually bought it solely to see the video quality and production. I watched it streaming, and then also downloaded the full file and watched it locally from my hard drive.

The 720P looked much better on that video than the past live PPV events (both TAR and Accu-Stats). Now I understand why, so much of it has to do with bit rate.

I also found a few tutorial videos on Vimeo explaining many basic topics on frame rate, resolution, bit rate, etc. They were quite helpful.

Finally, I'm trying to upload a video or two of my awesome shooting so you can all see how jam up I play. In this quest, I've used two different camcorders, 2 different computers, many feet of firewire cables (I have old cameras...), iMovie, quicktime, learning editing in iMovie, learning converting the DV and HDV footage to reasonable file sizes (holly sh!t that takes forever!!!), figuring out how to make a youtube and vimeo account, and then figuring out what resolution to send it to the youtube/vimeo as.

This is a TON of work, I've been at it for months. You guys that learned all this stuff from scratch I give my congrats to.
 
iusedtoberich said:
An update to this thread, I bought the Shane aiming video from Vimeo. I actually bought it solely to see the video quality and production. I watched it streaming, and then also downloaded the full file and watched it locally from my hard drive.

The 720P looked much better on that video than the past live PPV events (both TAR and Accu-Stats). Now I understand why, so much of it has to do with bit rate.

I also found a few tutorial videos on Vimeo explaining many basic topics on frame rate, resolution, bit rate, etc. They were quite helpful.

Finally, I'm trying to upload a video or two of my awesome shooting so you can all see how jam up I play. In this quest, I've used two different camcorders, 2 different computers, many feet of firewire cables (I have old cameras...), iMovie, quicktime, learning editing in iMovie, learning converting the DV and HDV footage to reasonable file sizes (holly sh!t that takes forever!!!), figuring out how to make a youtube and vimeo account, and then figuring out what resolution to send it to the youtube/vimeo as.

This is a TON of work, I've been at it for months. You guys that learned all this stuff from scratch I give my congrats to.
Click to expand...
Welcome to the wonderful world of video.

Vimeo and YouTube are your friend. Whenever I get stuck I just google for tutorials and somewhere its out there.
 
JCIN said:
....Standard recommendations for compression for YouTube and Vimeo are 720p (which is a resolution of 1280 pixels x 720 pixels) at a bit rate of 5000kbps. 1080 is 1920x1080 with a bit rate starting at 8000kbps.

No one that I know of streams anywhere close to these rates. Its just not practical for many of the reasons mentioned. ......
Click to expand...

Yup.. to shove data down a pipe at that rate means you own the whole pipe (point of collection through distribution) and work for a DOD acronym (think.. NSA...) :eek:
 
iusedtoberich said:
This is a TON of work, I've been at it for months. You guys that learned all this stuff from scratch I give my congrats to.
Click to expand...

My stuff is nowhere close to TAR or the other guys, but yeah... It's a ton of work. And it takes a lot of time, even for short videos.

Feel free to PM if you need help. I'll try my best to steer you in the right direction. I might do the same if I get stuck in something.

Also, make sure you check out Iulian's video(s). He is EagleTrickShots on AZB. That kid does some amazing photography, video, and especially editing! I have lots to learn from him.
 
Is there a real legal definition of 'HD' ?

I mean they are selling HD Sunglasses, Clinical Strength this and that but if there is no standard for them-what does it really mean?

I remember in the early days of 'Recycling', Paper manufacturers were picking up scraps from the floor and throwing it in the pulp and calling it recycled paper.

I have no idea if this is part of the problem here-just babbling.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top