More Encoding Tests!

It's time for another TWiT encoding test. Please download the files below, try them out on your favorite devices to watch TWiT shows on (like Rokus, iPads, etc) and leave your results in the comments.

We're looking for:

• Does it play?

• Does it play smoothly?

• How is the artifacting?

• How is the quality?

• Is it in sync?

• And most importantly: compatibility. Try these on your devices and let us know if your favorite one for watching TWiT doesn't work.

Please leave your results in the comments below. Don't email them - leave them in the comments below.

Files labeled "existing" are what you get today when you download a TWiT netcast. Files labeled "proposed" are the new versions.

Existing SD mobile
http://twit.cachefly.net/video/ztest/ztest7400/ztest7400_h264b_640x368_256.mp4
MPEG 4 AVC Constrained Baseline (Level 3.0) 640x368 at 256kbps Video with AAC CBR 96kbps 2CH 48Khz 16-bit Audio

Proposed New SD mobile 
http://twit.cachefly.net/video/ztest/ztest7500/ztest7500_h264b_640x368_256.mp4
MPEG 4 AVC Constrained Baseline (Level 3.0) 640x368 at 256kbps Video with AAC VBR 96kbps 2CH 48Khz 16-bit Audio

Existing SD high
http://twit.cachefly.net/video/ztest/ztest7400/ztest7400_h264b_864x480_500.mp4
MPEG 4 AVC Constrained Baseline (Level 3.0) 864x480 at 500kbps Video with AAC CBR 96kbps 2CH 48Khz 16-bit Audio

Proposed New SD high 
http://twit.cachefly.net/video/ztest/ztest7500/ztest7500_h264m_864x480_500.mp4
MPEG 4 AVC Main (Level 3.1) 864x480 at 500kbps Video with AAC VBR 96kbps 2CH 48Khz 16-bit Audio

Existing HD
http://twit.cachefly.net/video/ztest/ztest7400/ztest7400_h264b_1280x720_2560.mp4
MPEG 4 AVC Constrained Baseline (Level 3.0) 1280x720 at 2560kbps Video with AAC CBR 128kbps 2CH 48Khz 16-bit Audio

Proposed New HD 
http://twit.cachefly.net/video/ztest/ztest7500/ztest7500_h264m_1280x720_1872.mp4
MPEG 4 AVC Main (Level 3.2) 1280x720 at 1872kbps Video with AAC CBR 256kbps 2CH 48Khz 16-bit Audio

EDIT: Thanks for all the feedback so far. One thing I forgot to include is that these are obviously going to work on a computer running VLC or your other favorite media player software. What we're looking for is DEVICES you like to watch TWiT on. That is, things that are not your computer. Your portable devices and the boxes hooekd up to your TV.

Comments

[conor.hogan.2]

Everything works fine on OSX.

[kevindublin]

I watched all these on my first generation iPad:

Two SD mobiles look pretty similar, and by that I mean really bad on the iPad!
New SD is a big improvement. Much nicer quality than the existing. closer to HD than to the previous SD high.
New HD is also a lot better than the current, but I'm still wary of the huge file sizes otherwise I wouldn't watch TWiT any other way! The HD is really, really good.
Sound was great, but much better as the video quality increased obviously.

Really like how the new stuff looks. Pretty promising!

[TimC]

Why are you encoding to 864x480 which is 1.8 aspect ratio aka not 16:9 (1.77ish). 854x480 is the proper ratio and removes the the annoying thin black bars on the top and bottom of my monitor and phone. Please fix.

[oldmangeek]

Proposed New SD high, big improvement with video quality on main windows 7 machine. No problems with any parts of the video.
On the Ipad 3 both versions of the SD mobile were poor little difference between them.
Proposed New SD high, video a little clearer ,only a little improvement.
Proposed New HD works great the best video by far.
All parts in syn on Ipad.
Regards Perth Australia.

[Clarence]

New SD looks fine, no glitches.
New HD looks great, again no glitch, no errors.
Tested on an iPad3 wifi
w/Comcast 12 mb/s down.
I likes this!

[Anatoly Nechaev]

Win7, MPC HC (MPC Video Decoder), 1080p, Fullscreen.
New SD Mobile looks worse, more blocky (Tom's head on Studio camera).
New SD high looks more crisp (you can almost read the memo over the sink).
Didn't see the difference in HD.

Everything is playing smoothly, in sync.

[fortythieves]

Proposed HD doesn't work on my old Nexus One - "Video cannot play". Otherwise, everything else looks good and felt quicker to download.

[Eric J]

I also wonder shouldn't the resolution be 853x480?

[Jessica Duffy]

New HD looked alright in chrome on windows 7. There was some slight artifacting and video lines around the 1 minute mark while Burke is in the kitchen. I haven't watched the regular HD to see if it shows up there or not.

Have also tried this new HD file streaming on my ipad from the site and it works great. Also the artifacting I mentioned earlier doesn't appear on my ipad. Must be an issue with Chrome on my Windows 7 machine.

[Jessica Duffy]

The compression artefacts I mentioned before are showing up on the old HD file. Chrome must have trouble with the video file.

I haven't seen any compression issues on my iPad 2.

[Sid]

They all work on the Tf101 transformer. The new sd encodes looks awesome. Couldnt really see a difference in the HD, but my screen isnt 1080p so Im not surprised. Good stuff!

[Jake]

All proposed versions worked fine on my Windows Phone 7.5 phone

[Anders Ahlberg]

New SD High and new HD work fine on HTC One S (except possibly a slight sync issue I did not experience on the PC, but that may be in my head). Have not tried the ohers.

[Eric]

New HD is by far the best and shines on the new iPad, please, even if it's a pay thing do this for all your shows. The sd looks really bad on the new iPad, where I watch 90% of my twit programming. Great job!

[Norb]

NEW SD Mobile look fine, but the website shot the text look bad.
NEW SD High look very good the text problem on the SD Mobile it not present.

I test on a Galaxy S2 i9100 with CM9 20120512 ROM

[Jan]

I tested these on a Windows 7 PC with 4 GB Ram and Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.33 GHz
All the proposed formats are better than the previous ones.
The screen capture in the last part of the demo was a bit of a low quality in all formats.
And I could notice a stutter occurring every 3 or 4 seconds in all formats.
All formats are in perfect sync.

[Jeremy G]

Only problem i saw was the website text shot. The text was a little hard to read on all of them. Otherwise they looked and played back great on my macbook.

[BluPhoenix]

Big improvement on my AppleTV (2nd Gen). Not nearly as much artifacts especially on the SD version BUT still noticeable on my 40" HDTV. I might actually be able to watch again if this format is adopted. Currently the artifacts bug me too much to watch, it became all I saw while watching especially on TNT. Even with this change I can imagine artifacts to still be a problem on larger screens. If you could push up the quality a tad more I think it would be close to perfect. Keep up the good work.

[pwguru]

as an overall look the HD was out of the park good the only part 4 me was the part where the website was shown it glitched 2 times first as it came on and as the music was playing ..... just trying to help thx

[David Parry]

http://twit.cachefly.net/video/ztest/ztest7400/ztest7400_h264b_640x368_256.mp4 can only here the sound on my android nexus one

[Effen_Dunn]

I downlaoded the proposed HD directly to my ipad2 through Safari and it plays great, looks awesome... and is a great quality....

[cgw]

864x480 is used as 864 is mod16 - basically, 864 can be divided by 16 without a remainder. This is important for two reasons: firstly - and notably for this compatibility test - making it divisible by 16 increases compatibility, secondly most encoders work in 16x16 blocks, so if there aren't 16x16 blocks to work with, the encoder will have to fill in extra unnecessary data.

[Eric J]

Thanks for that info CGW that is some pretty interesting information!

[webfoot]

I viewed on a desktop computer quad i5's, 8 gb ram NVIDEA GeForce GT 240 while running BOINC and maxing out my cpu's. I also was crunching GPUGrid work units my puny GT 240 at the same time. Hey! That is how I normally watch TWIT.

I ran both SD files one time on VLC at 864 x 480 -> No Problems
I ran both SD files one time on Media Player at 864 x 480 -> No Problems

I ran both SD files 3 times on VLC at full screen 1920 X 1080 some break-up one time on each SD file. The other
two times No Problems.
I ran both SD files 1 time on Media Player at full screen 1920 X 1080 No problems.

I ran both HD files one time on VLC at 1280 x 720 -> No Problems
I ran both HD files one time on Media Player at 1280 x 720 -> No Problems

I ran both HD files one time on VLC at at full screen 1920 X 1080 No problems.
I ran both HD files one time on Media Player at full screen 1920 X 1080 No problems.

[Khalid]

I tested the new and proposed HD video files on a Windows 7 desktop, which is how I ordinarily watch almost all TWiT content.
I honestly couldn't tell the difference, other than the latter being a smaller file, obviously. That's pretty great!