So in this day and age where I can take a high definition video with my cell phone can someone explain why all pool vidoes are of crappy quality? I would love to be able to watch some high definition pool on my 56" television however most of the videos don't even hold up well on my computer screen.
Is this due to the streaming process/youtube limitations? Are these videos being compressed and losing quality??
No disrespect meant to todays streamers as I enjoy the videos, I just would like to know what it would take to get HD quality pool videos in the home.
There is a lot of bandwidth constraints today, and a large number of factors render streams good and some bad. Hang-The-9 is most certainly correct that streamed video from locations can vary based on the connection which will dictate 'live' quality, but not necessarily watching a replay on YouTube. Most streamers locally record and then upload the higher quality content after the fact to some form of on demand service. #1 choice, obviously, YouTube. #2 Vimeo.
Daniel @ POV did a tremendous job upgrading his equipment and his streams are as good as what the streaming networks will allow, and obviously, what the local bandwidth will allow as well.
YouTube (the masters at on the fly trans-coding) can now offer up superb quality options as of recent from uploaded local recordings at many resolutions and bit rates from just 1 high quality video stored on their network. This allows the video to adapt to bandwidth constraints or size of the screen of the viewer, which is great saving bandwidth ON BOTH ENDS!. (Mind you, YouTube is owned by Google and is why they succeed at everything they buy and touch.)
Everything we watch today on the internet is compressed with the h264 codec for the most part. Mind you, we also watch mpeg4 h264 on our televisions through the cable and satellites now too! This gives everyone who is involved with delivering video over any digital network flexibility.
The fuzz or stairs effect you see on some videos stems from the incompatibility of the camera ACVHD and the capturing device. I've noticed this with cheaper cameras. There are a few cameras on the market that output uncompressed AVCHD through HDMI or SDI which offer superb loss-less video before it is captured and encoded to h264 for Computers. Most affordable capture devices, $200 range, will only do 1080i (interlaced) which also degrades the quality before it hits the broadcasting software, and then it is re-encoded again in h264 at a specific resolution and bit rate to succeed over the current bandwidth from a venue or location. The Broadcasting software can also stream in VBR mode to combat fluctuations in the bandwidth path to the streaming CDN. This adds another affect on images viewed pixelating and actually seeing artifacts and ghosts intermittently because of this adaptation.
I could go for hours, and obviously sell out many secrets.
Hope that helps.
Zach.
Wireless devices from cellular providers can be costly and many places have inadequate lighting. :frown:
