Soccer streaming on the web!

[benwaggoner]

So, for years, I’ve been giving live soccer as an example of content that’s impossible to encode well at web bitrates.

I underestimated my colleagues :):

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/player.html?assetid=0806_hd_fbw_en001&channelcode=sportho

Make sure to click to the “Enhanced Player.”

Grass! Grass texture without blocking or keyframe popping!

…and I think my stomach muscles have unclenched for the first time in six months…

[CruNcher]

Now is that advertising or just being proud about a product without seeing how the competition does hmmm or at least show the public how it can be done, but yeah who streams publicly the Olympic Games in SOA H.264 should be the question then, btw i find my term "keyframe pulseing" more addequate for this compression (quality balance problem @ low bitrates and too short gops) problem ;)

tough i couldn't even watch it if i wanted you know a thing named "Online Content Distribution Rights" yeah how was the slogan "One World One Dream" tough it's still a Dream ;)


PS: Sure i could avoid the geoip check but is it legal i doubt :P

[benwaggoner]

Now is that advertising or just being proud about a product without seeing how the competition does hmmm or at least show the public how it can be done, but yeah who streams publicly the Olympic Games in SOA H.264 should be the question then, btw i find my term "keyframe pulseing" more addequate for this compression (quality balance problem @ low bitrates and too short gops) problem ;)
If you have a link to any of the events being broadcast in H.264, I'd love to see them. That said, this is much more about tooling and workflow than one codec v. another. Getting all those streams encoded in real-time and out of Beijing reliably 24/7 is quite a challenge!

I think we've hit the turning point in the industry where the real challenges and innovations are happening on the systems level, not the codec level.

But as someone who's been working in web video since day 1, I'm really proud we've come this far as an industry in barely a decade.

[CruNcher]

I see prety heavy pulseing even in the audience :D live footbal room, especialy when the camera is close to the audience it pulses like hell indeed on the grass it's lower seems some adaptive magic ;)
New Zealand and China Enter the Stadium now :) arround 40% CPU usage (Nvidia G92) for 20 seconds i had a 100% spike hmm.

Please Standby we adjusting your Video Feed/Quality... <- guess it's doing MBR switching so my transmission speed is to low :P

Hmm can i get the Stream status somehow the good old WMP reception Status i see no info anywhere :D

[Danisan]

I'm sure the U.S. members of this board can describe the beauty of your encodes in vivid detail, of course, to us foreign types.

[benwaggoner]

I see prety heavy pulseing even in the audience :D live footbal room, especialy when the camera is close to the audience it pulses like hell indeed on the grass it's lower seems some adaptive magic ;)
New Zealand and China Enter the Stadium now :) arround 40% CPU usage (Nvidia G92) for 20 seconds i had a 100% spike hmm.
Yeah, that's a Live Rewind clip. Those are lower bitrates than the higher-profile Encore events.

Please Standby we adjusting your Video Feed/Quality... <- guess it's doing MBR switching so my transmission speed is to low :P
What URL are you trying to play?

Hmm can i get the Stream status somehow the good old WMP reception Status i see no info anywhere :D
Silverlight doesn't have an explicit equivalent unless the developer implements it themselves. NetMon? Alternatively, you could uninstall Silverlight 2 for a bit, which would trigger the WMP OCX fallback experience. Although in some cases, particularly Encore, you'll get the content delivered differently, as Silverlight allows us to do a whole lot of cool new stuff.

[IgorC]

As author didn't bother to mention that these videos are available only in US area I must say:
Don't even install beta version of Microsoft “Enhanced Player” if you are foreign.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Really annoying site! First it exclusively works with IE (32-Bit version). I can't get it to display more than an error message in Firefox or Safari, although the very same error message lists both browsers as supported. SeaMonkey, my preferred browser, doesn't work either. Same for the 64-Bit version of IE. Then I need to download & install a Beta version of Sliverlight via IE. And finally it tells me that the content is restricted to people living in the USA. They could have told me before all this crap :mad:

[prOnorama]

@ LordMulder: we can't watch because it's soccer* ;)

*American slang for football, the Olympic sport played solely by foot and referred to most of the world's population as...football.

(In contrast to another non-Olympic sport played almost exclusively in North America and quite illogically referred to as (American) football since they grab the ball with their hands all the time :p )

[IgorC]

Really annoying site! First it exclusively works with IE (32-Bit version). I can't get it to display more than an error message in Firefox or Safari, although the very same error message lists both browsers as supported. SeaMonkey, my preferred browser, doesn't work either. Same for the 64-Bit version of IE. Then I need to download & install a Beta version of Sliverlight via IE. And finally it tells me that the content is restricted to people living in the USA. They could have told me before all this crap :mad:
And no chance for Linux support.

[benwaggoner]

Really annoying site! First it exclusively works with IE (32-Bit version). I can't get it to display more than an error message in Firefox or Safari, although the very same error message lists both browsers as supported. SeaMonkey, my preferred browser, doesn't work either. Same for the 64-Bit version of IE. Then I need to download & install a Beta version of Sliverlight via IE. And finally it tells me that the content is restricted to people living in the USA. They could have told me before all this crap :mad:
Both FireFox and IE are supported for Silverlight on Windows, as is Safari and FireFox on Mac.

Why your preference for 64-bit browsers? There's very few 64-bit plugins, and it's hard to imagine a browser needed 2+ GB of RAM all to itself.

Sorry, I should have mentioned the USA geolocation more specifically.

There are number of other countires using Silverlight for their Olympics coverage, but I don't have the list in front of me.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Both FireFox and IE are supported for Silverlight on Windows, as is Safari and FireFox on Mac.

That didn't prevent the web-site to display an error message in Firefox/Safari. Only IE (32-Bit) worked for me... :scared:

Why your preference for 64-bit browsers? There's very few 64-bit plugins, and it's hard to imagine a browser needed 2+ GB of RAM all to itself.

I don't. I use SeaMonkey 2.0 (32-Bit) :)

But on x64 Windows the "default" version of IE is the 64-Bit version. So I happened to type "iexplore" in the Run dialog and hence got the 64-Bit edition.
Result: The web-site again didn't work. I had to explicitly launch the 32-Bit version of IE in order to learn that they don't let me watch it from here ;)

[CruNcher]

Ok the quality is actualy quiet good for the live events if it doesn't switch to the low quality (good reception) just watched Sabre, the comentary stuff isnt working yet or only for special events ?, also it's sad no fullscreen :( i uninstall silverlight now and try the fallback.

[Razorholt]

Ok, first here is a screenshot for those who can't have access to the site:

http://69.46.26.200/silverlightcrap.png
(my speed: 1.5Mbps - 3.4Ghz/1gb RAM)

Second, by "grass" you meant "crap", right?

This is your post today on StreamingMedia List:

Let me spread a bit of a broader net if I may

I’d love to hear reactions to the web video up on http://NBCOlympics.com/video from anyone in the USA.
• How’s the audio/video quality?
• How’s the start time and random access performance?
• Anyone having any issues?

Feel free to email me directly, or post back here.

We’re trying a number of innovative things here in encoding, delivery, and in the Silverlight client. I’ll have more details on all that later on, but first I want to know what people think is working or not about the experience.

A number of other countries are also doing the Olympics in Silverlight as well, but I wasn’t involved in the implementation details for those too much.


Ben Waggoner
Principal Video Strategist, Silverlight
Microsoft Corporation

Compression Blog: on10.net/blogs/benwagg/
Compression Classes at Stanford and PSU: on10.net/blogs/benwagg/21622/



Can't stop promoting your M$ crap, can you?


- Dan

[benwaggoner]

Second, by "grass" you meant "crap", right?
Sheesh, what's your PC speed and bandwidth?

You clearly got throttled down to the low bitrate fallback. 100 Kbps maybe? It's the first I've ever seen it in the production version :).

If you've got 1 Mbps and a decent machine, you'll get an enormously better experience.

-Ben

[CruNcher]

Also be carefull the Recorded stuff seems to be of lower quality actually even with good reception look @ the live events (red live symbol) i watched badminton and it looked very good Zwiebler won vs Evans yeahh ;)
i like the 4 stream @ once experience tough i have a higher delay switching from the low thumbnail bitrate streams to the big full ones, but thats a connection problem i think the switch should be faster then for me taking arround 2 minutes currently (black screen) before starting to buffer also i have the same amount of delay you can actually see this @ the live events looking in the commentary how long your delay is :)
What i really like even with the 4 stream experience CPU usage is very low it seems the Silverlight Application as itself doesn't consumes much CPU (you can see that in all Silverlight Examples also the Fox Movie Player and more they are all super fast low cpu usage guis) only the Video, crazy difference to Flash if you know it, so im not sure if it's right to compare Silverlight with Flash i would more compare it with Apollo :)

Sure this is more a Techdemo of Microsofts complete Online content Delivery System then anything else but it shows that it's working efficiently (also VC-1 does here) and till now i saw no Full H.264 Live Broadcast system for Public viewing in Action not even commercial ones (Web Browser based) on this large scale, are they even existing except Joost Live Events ?

Ok, first here is a screenshot for those who can't have access to the site:

http://69.46.26.200/silverlightcrap.png
(my speed: 1.5Mbps - 3.4Ghz/1gb RAM)

Second, by "grass" you meant "crap", right?

This is your post today on StreamingMedia List:




Can't stop promoting your M$ crap, can you?

Please stay fair even if you don't like Microsoft you talking nonsense here about stuff you dont know anything about !
Here is how your Stream should look like :)

http://s3.directupload.net/images/080809/3igb8gyq.png

It's adaptively changeing the bitrate to your packet loss (if it can't do this anymore efficiently it will change the complete stream to a lower bitrate one like happened in your example)


@benwaggoner

Silverlight doesn't have an explicit equivalent unless the developer implements it themselves. NetMon? Alternatively, you could uninstall Silverlight 2 for a bit, which would trigger the WMP OCX fallback experience. Although in some cases, particularly Encore, you'll get the content delivered differently, as Silverlight allows us to do a whole lot of cool new stuff.


Tried that it doesn't fallback it uses the other player and that is as restricted in terms of fullscreen usage as the other that's really restrictive don't you think ?

Our local TV here Broadcasts this way the live stuff


http://s8.directupload.net/images/080809/ltdivd45.png

Video
Format : VC-1
Format profile : MP@ML
Codec ID : WMV3
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Video 9
Codec ID/Hint : WMV3
Duration : 6min 40s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1400 Kbps
Width : 688 Pixel
Height : 384 Pixel
Display aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Resolution : 24 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.212
Language : Deutsch

Audio
Format : WMA2
Format profile : L3
Codec ID : 161
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Audio 2
Description of the codec : Windows Media Audio 9 - 192 kbps, 48 kHz, stereo (A/V) 1-pass CBR
Duration : 6min 40s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 Kanäle
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Language : Deutsch

Here in comparision the NBC Broadcast of the IBC stream (tried to capture a not so high motion situation to be sure that eventual reception problems don't mess it up to much (tough i cant say anything because you dont see anything) still trying to capture the stream ;)

http://s4.directupload.net/images/080809/grfgu7ff.png


Here a VOD sample

http://s4.directupload.net/images/080809/k6dhpxef.png
@all
Please show us your Local Country Olympic Live Web Broadcasts and Quality (also US NBC users with cleaner 1st hand reception) :)

PS: The NBC Web Broadcast has a very heavy saturated look & feel when i compare with our Local one but i guess it's not the PAL/NTSC equipment difference so is it artificialy created turning saturation extremely up ?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Here is something from German television:
rtsp://c36000-os.m.core.cdn.streamfarm.net/2NqgbaF7M/36000zdf/ondemand/3546zdf/geozdf/geoloc_zdf-de/08/08/080809_1700_kompakt_olz_vh.mp4

Video: H.264, 688 x 384, ~1.474 kbps, 25.0 fps
Audio: AAC, 128 kbps, 48.000 Hz

Sample: http://uploaded.to/?id=bxb5l1

[fightdapopo]

A couple of US images. Nothing different or cleaner. The tennis is a live event from a good connection. The table tennis is a "rewind" event from a <good connection. The rowing is a "rewind" event from a <good connection.
Unscientifically the live stuff seems to have a higher cap on quality. I do not often watch broadcast streaming sports so I cannot comment on quality other than the badminton the first or second night was as good as it needed to be. I could clearly see every movement and the shuttle was very clear the entire time. This was on a mediocre (cheap) hotel wireless connection. Silverlight 2 downloaded in the sub 50KB/s range.
The full screen, "high resolution" did not seem to be any better on my connection.

http://www.directupload.com/uploads/263ac0e93ef5dd86e0f5396aa7e5bab6//Noname2.png

http://www.directupload.com/uploads/263ac0e93ef5dd86e0f5396aa7e5bab6//Noname3.png

http://www.directupload.com/uploads/263ac0e93ef5dd86e0f5396aa7e5bab6//Noname.png

[zambelli]

I'll be blogging about the encoding specs of the NBC Olympics video feeds in more detail over the next few days, but in the meantime, here's the summary so you know how to adjust your expectations:

All video is encoded with VC-1 AP in 1-pass CBR mode with fixed-length short GOP (for seeking and other needs).
All audio is encoded with WMA 10 Professional (Low Bitrate Mode) at 48 kbps 44.1 kHz stereo.

Live/Rewind feeds:

592x336 25 fps @ 600 kbps
320x176 25 fps @ 300 kbps
128x96 12.5 fps @ 50 kbps - PiP

Both WMP and Silverlight clients receive the same live feeds.

Highlights/Encore (anything NBC is producing in New York):

320x176 29.97 fps @ 350 kbps - min
(2 additional medium bitrates here)
848x480 29.97 fps @ 1450 kbps - max
128x96 15 fps @ 50 kbps - PiP


Silverlight clients have the ability to automatically and seamlessly move between streams depending on client bandwidth and CPU power. So essentially in order to enjoy the highest quality NBC has to offer, you need Silverlight, a decent modern machine and at least a 1.5 Mbps connection.

WMP clients don't have the ability to seamlessly move between bitrates and are also limited to just the bottom 2 bitrates - their quality is more similar to the Live/Rewind experience.

[Schrade]

Here is something from German television:
rtsp://c36000-os.m.core.cdn.streamfarm.net/2NqgbaF7M/36000zdf/ondemand/3546zdf/geozdf/geoloc_zdf-de/08/08/080809_1700_kompakt_olz_vh.mp4

Where can one get a DirectShow filter to be able to stream MP4 via RTSP?

(I want to be able to stream stuff in Media Player Classic Home Cinema but nothing streams via rtsp or http :( )

[Inventive Software]

I'll be blogging about the encoding specs of the NBC Olympics video feeds in more detail over the next few days, but in the meantime, here's the summary so you know how to adjust your expectations:

All video is encoded with VC-1 AP in 1-pass CBR mode with fixed-length short GOP (for seeking and other needs).
All audio is encoded with WMA 10 Professional (Low Bitrate Mode) at 48 kbps 44.1 kHz stereo.

Live/Rewind feeds:

592x336 25 fps @ 600 kbps
320x176 25 fps @ 300 kbps
128x96 12.5 fps @ 50 kbps - PiP

Both WMP and Silverlight clients receive the same live feeds.

Highlights/Encore (anything NBC is producing in New York):

320x176 29.97 fps @ 350 kbps - min
(2 additional medium bitrates here)
848x480 29.97 fps @ 1450 kbps - max
128x96 15 fps @ 50 kbps - PiP


Silverlight clients have the ability to automatically and seamlessly move between streams depending on client bandwidth and CPU power. So essentially in order to enjoy the highest quality NBC has to offer, you need Silverlight, a decent modern machine and at least a 1.5 Mbps connection.

WMP clients don't have the ability to seamlessly move between bitrates and are also limited to just the bottom 2 bitrates - their quality is more similar to the Live/Rewind experience.

If NBC are broadcasting it, why are they using PAL framerates? :eek:

[benwaggoner]

If NBC are broadcasting it, why are they using PAL framerates? :eek:
China's a PAL country, so all the feeds there are PAL. So we're just keeping the native framerate there.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Where can one get a DirectShow filter to be able to stream MP4 via RTSP?

(I want to be able to stream stuff in Media Player Classic Home Cinema but nothing streams via rtsp or http :( )

I don't know. But VLC Player is able to play and dump those streams. MPlayer fails to play that stream though...

[zambelli]

China's a PAL country, so all the feeds there are PAL. So we're just keeping the native framerate there.
Indeed, the live/rewind content is all 25 fps (PAL), whereas the rest of it (NBC produced) is 30 fps.

[smok3]

a. what type of signal/multiplex/encode is input to this encodes?
b. please change the topic title, add 'us only'.

[500 Kip]

Has anyone got any direct links to the mms:// feeds of the live streams so we can have a look at them in other players, MPC for example?

[Golgot13]

Hello all,

a little message to know if some people can record a stream
to see something when I will come back from my holiday.
I recommand OrbitDownloader software to record the stream.

Ben, I'm sure than H264 codec can do better with same bitrate ;)
About H264 stream in France, ISP "Free" broadcast more than 16 channels
in H264 at 1,5Mbps (developped for people with bad ADSL line)

Before to be in holiday (second part), I see some files from H264 hardware encoder
in developpment (for archiving, authoring studio use, "High422" profile...), so realtime encoder
and I surprise by quality (studio quality for BD use at 12Mbps average,...).
This year or before NAB2009, we will see two good news:
- Nice developpment of BDJ authoring software (Sonic will surprise many people :D)
- H264 hardware encoder

I can put a video at 6Mbps in 1920x1080 24P (I have a CG in CAVLC !!!)
from a guy who work on this project.

[zambelli]

a. what type of signal/multiplex/encode is input to this encodes?
Live encodes are getting a live PAL SD video feed over SDI, downconverted from HD in realtime by hardware converters. Offline encodes are done using a similar process, except MXF MPEG-2 30Mbps format is used as the SD mezzannine.

[zambelli]

Ben, I'm sure than H264 codec can do better with same bitrate ;)
That's possible, but it would certainly depend on the H.264 encoder used. Most high-volume transcoding systems use MainConcept H.264 SDK - which is decent, but not quite the same quality as x264 or Ateme. The latter two need to work harder on getting mainstream adoption if they really want to raise the bar of H.264 quality in the world (which I hope they do - QuickTime gives H.264 a bad name).

As for live encoding, I've seen some excellent H.264 realtime encoders such as the Scientific Atlanta (now Cisco), but quality is not the only requirement - the encoders need to scale well too. In NBC's case each encoder workstation takes 2 input sources and outputs 6 (3+3) streams. That kind of requirement definitely narrows down the field of suitable H.264 realtime encoders.

Anyway, I doubt H.264 would make a lot of difference in this case. The biggest challenge to video quality in these Olympics is the wide range of content complexity (imagine encoding both tennis and waterpolo at the same bitrate) and the lack of good deblocking in the Silverlight VC-1 decoder. Aside from those 2 things - I'm generally pretty happy with the Olympics video quality.

[benwaggoner]

Just to follow up on Zambelli's point, implementation matters even more for live encoding than offline. Our Enterprise VC-1 SDK has a number of very useful live features that make it compelling for this kind of use, particularly with 8+ core encoder boxes.

Adaptive Complexity:
Each instance can be set to use a certian maximum percentage of CPU available. The codec will dynamically adjust the complexity of the encoding in order to provide as good an encode as possible without dropping frames, within that window. So, for example, larger frame instances can be set to use a higher percentage of the CPU.

Processor Affinity:
Each instance can use up four threads for encoding, and we support affinitizing them to particular cores or limiting how many threads each instance get. Thus, two encoders using the same source could be affinitized to cores sharing the same cache.

Lookahead Rate Control:
We can buffer ahead in the encode, doing an iniital frame analysis but not doing the final encode until a certain number of future frames have been analyzed. This lets us know when I-frames are coming, or whether a really hard frame is follows up by easier frames or a long sequence of hard frames. We've done a lot of tuning on this, and it actually exceeds the efficiency of our 2-pass CBR algorithm in many cases.

[smok3]

In NBC's case each encoder workstation takes 2 input sources and outputs 6 (3+3) streams. That kind of requirement definitely narrows down the field of suitable H.264 realtime encoders.


And the alternative is to bother people with stream switching methods based on net bandwidth at that moment? which means you are wasting bits just to talk to the server all the time?

but not doing the final encode until a certain number of future frames have been analyzed

And hoping that kamera doesn't show real time clock?

Our Enterprise VC-1 SDK has a number of very useful live features that make it compelling for this kind of use

my after-shave has a number of very useful features that make it compelling for this kind of use..., what are you trying to say here?

[slavickas]

And hoping that kamera doesn't show real time clock?

well digital broadcasts already have so much delays everywhere that lets say 0,5 sec lookahead didnt matter much IMHO

[benwaggoner]

And the alternative is to bother people with stream switching methods based on net bandwidth at that moment? which means you are wasting bits just to talk to the server all the time?
No, there's not significant customer pain with stream switching, or a "chatty" protocol between encoder and server; the encoder just pushes the bits out to NBC's stateside servers without needing really any data back

And hoping that kamera doesn't show real time clock?
Pretty immaterial given the total end-to-end delays.

my after-shave has a number of very useful features that make it compelling for this kind of use..., what are you trying to say here?
That the existing WMV/VC-1 product ecosystem has some big quality and cost advantages for a complex live encoding system like this.

[zambelli]

Here's the detailed blog post I had promised earlier:
http://alexzambelli.com/blog/2008/08/21/an-inside-look-at-nbc-olympics-video-player/

[zambelli]

And hoping that kamera doesn't show real time clock?
Did you really think any live web streaming event is actually broadcast to you without a delay? :confused: NBC Olympics is not a webcam chat, man.

Generally speaking, EVERY digitally compressed broadcast has an inherent minimum delay. The size of the encoder's VBV buffer determines the encoding delay, and the same delay is repeated on the viewing end.

In IP streaming there's streaming server bounceback delay on top of that, especially if caching is involved... Then there's just general IP network delay... When you add it all up, the latency can be anywhere between 10 and 100 seconds.

In case of the NBC Olympics, don't forget the censorship delay and commentary delay. I'd say that you're probably looking at a 5-minute latency end to end.

[CruNcher]

http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/pdc08/WMV-HQ/PC39.wmv

Very interesting on how Microsoft realized the Workflow in Detail (especially the Adaptive (Chunk) based Client/Server streaming) :)
Alex is also mentioned ;)

So again congrats to this amazing work from the user side experience it worked almost perfect, despite what the actual Video technology used was capable of (visually @ those bitrates) i mean this chunk encoding is practically a improvised manual scaling (heavy encoding resources are needed) and will be replaced by a full scalable Video Codec like SVC in the future, but for now it's a nice way of improvising such user experience.