WMP 11 penetration in the wild - any stats?

[badmonkey]

Any data on this?

Considering using VC1 for an embedded video, and I'm interested in the figures webmasters can expect from an average website audience, i.e. what % of 'em have WMP 11 these days.

[audyovydeo]

Any data on this?

Considering using VC1 for an embedded video, and I'm interested in the figures webmasters can expect from an average website audience, i.e. what % of 'em have WMP 11 these days.

I don't have official stats, but let's consider :

100% of Vista users
99% of XP users
??% of Windows_other users
0% of non-Windows users

so just from your website stats you can start making educated quantity guesses.

But the real question, apart from "why are you excluding non-Windows users", which concerns you solely, is "what % of your target audience uses FireFox with wmp plugin installed" ?

with Flash player, JW FLV MEDIA PLAYER and a x264.mp4 file, you'll be targeting just about every combination of OS+browser.

cheers
audyovydeo

[Sharktooth]

any browser with flash plugin: 100% ...

[Dark Shikari]

Any data on this?

Considering using VC1 for an embedded video, and I'm interested in the figures webmasters can expect from an average website audience, i.e. what % of 'em have WMP 11 these days.Just use Flash. Its proven, has better quality, and is more compatible.

[Sharktooth]

and multiplatform

[badmonkey]

Hey guys I asked for stats on WMP not the Doom9 dogma.

I fully agree that Flash is the obvious choice, especially given that 95% of folk registering in Google Analytics on this site have ver 9, i.e. we can use MPEG-4. The perfect solution.

I guess MSIE x64 is the one example that might be contributing to the other 5%. What about the current version of Flash player for Linux?

Anyway, I intend to migrate to Flash in the future. That is obvious. But it is a bit of a project. In the meantime we have a WMV9 video, and it would be very easy to upgrade it to WM9 Advanced (VC-1). I was just wondering if there was any data that spoke to how many visitors that would screw with.

There are three options on there atm from the years-old original development: QuickTime, WM, and Real. WM gets about 80% of all video playback, QT most of the rest.

Here's something interesting: some JavaScript decides what version of QuickTime player is present on the client, and serves H264 if possible (v7+) and the old Sorenson 3 if not. You'd think that everyone who has QT would have v7 by now eh? Not so. Only about two thirds get served the H264 - the rest end up with S3. Great huh.

So I guess the interesting question is touched above by audyovydeo - except I'm very cynical that Win XP has 99%, as he assumes.

[Dark Shikari]

Hey guys I asked for stats on WMP not the Doom9 dogma.I don't know any stats. But if you want anecdotal evidence, I don't use WMV9 video because it often doesn't work in my Firefox (sometimes it just crashes the whole thing), and Firefox is over 20% of the browser market. And I have WMP11 installed.Anyway, I intend to migrate to Flash in the future. That is obvious. But it is a bit of a project. In the meantime we have a WMV9 video, and it would be very easy to upgrade it to WM9 Advanced (VC-1). I was just wondering if there was any data that spoke to how many visitors that would screw with.WMV9 is VC-1, for most intents and purposes. You're not going to get any quality benefit by upgrading--VC-1 is just a slightly modified WMV9 for the purposes of getting standardized with SMPTE.

I wouldn't say upgrading to Flash is very difficult (it takes me less than 2 minutes to write the appropriate HTML to embed a flash video), unless you're referring to changing your internal encoding chain, in which case that's probably true.

[badmonkey]

WMV9 is VC-1, for most intents and purposes. You're not going to get any quality benefit by upgrading--VC-1 is just a slightly modified WMV9 for the purposes of getting standardized with SMPTE.
Isn't the Advanced Profile VC-1 a more significant improvement over the old standard WMV9?
I thought it was comparable to the jump from the old MPEG-4 Part 2 up to Part 10.
Is there no real difference?

[Dark Shikari]

Isn't the Advanced Profile VC-1 a more significant improvement over the old standard WMV9?
I thought it was comparable to the jump from the old MPEG-4 Part 2 up to Part 10.
Is there no real difference?No, no real difference.

VC-1, if I recall correctly, just added some things like interlaced video support. You'd have to ask the Microsoft guru here (benwaggoner) for exact information on what was added, but its nothing hugely significant.

What you're thinking was the upgrade from MSMPEG4 (WMV7 generation) to WMV9; the latter adds things like adaptive transform size, bitplane coding, inloop deblocking, overlap filter, bicubic motion compensation, and bit-exact transform.

[Sharktooth]

nothing significant at all.
however:
- flash player for linux is up to date and working.
- quicktime for linux does not exists.
- windows media player for linux, are we kidding?

so, all in all, flash is more supported and multiplatform and even if it lacks 64bits support (it's coming though) there's a 32bit internet explorer bundled win win64... flash plugin works with it.

[badmonkey]

Right. Will accelerate the migration to Flash then.

Well, while I'm asking dumb questions, any pointers on the SWF side of things for a template embedded flash video player?

I seem to remember some templates in Flash, or was it Dreamweaver, a few years back.

Need something that's customizable obviously, don't want a YouTube wannabe interface.

[Sharktooth]

i always used JW player: http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Media_Player

[Dark Shikari]

Right. Will accelerate the migration to Flash then.

Well, while I'm asking dumb questions, any pointers on the SWF side of things for a template embedded flash video player?

I seem to remember some templates in Flash, or was it Dreamweaver, a few years back.

Need something that's customizable obviously, don't want a YouTube wannabe interface.I'd recommend JW here also, though there's also FloPlayer and some others.

Example videos:

Example 1 (280kbps video, 32kbps audio, 24fps) (http://norp.ath.cx/h264.html)

Example 2 (1.5 mbps, 128kbps audio, 60fps) (http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/Flash/mof.html)

[Sharktooth]

JW is skinnable. i dont know about FloPlayer or others though.

[badmonkey]

Yeah I got FlowPlayer working with FLVs. But it won't play H264.

Those videos Dark posted work fine, I have the latest player, etc.

x264 > MP4Box encodes don't seem to want to work. Is there any specific encoding requirement for Flash?

[Dark Shikari]

Yeah I got FlowPlayer working with FLVs. But it won't play H264.

Those videos Dark posted work fine, I have the latest player, etc.

x264 > MP4Box encodes don't seem to want to work. Is there any specific encoding requirement for Flash?x264 for video, AAC audio (I use NeroAACEnc), and mp4box works fine here. For some reason MP3 doesn't seem to work.

[badmonkey]

I did add metadata with mp4UI, could that have broken it?

[Dark Shikari]

I did add metadata with mp4UI, could that have broken it?Possibly; I never do anything of the sort, just straight .h264 + mp4 output from Nero -> mp4box.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

x264 for video, AAC audio (I use NeroAACEnc), and mp4box works fine here. For some reason MP3 doesn't seem to work.

MP3 does work, but the "Disable Reservoir" option needs to be checked.

That is an option Avidemux offers form LAME. I don't know if there is a similar option available in other tools...

[codeguru]

well, it does a good job in playing "saved" asf and wmv streams, actually it is possible to move forward and backwards without loosing the audio.
Also the default checkboxes during installation are really kind - noone is checked, a great improvement in comparision to WMP9, and the design is just cool.

But why the hell they want to check my windows if it is legal? There are thousands of media players out there, for free :-)