Skip to main content
S
simalarie
Participant
February 17, 2009
Question

Newbie FMS Output Quality

  • February 17, 2009
  • 3 replies
  • 738 views
Hi there.

Just installed FMS3.5 and obtain very low output quality. On a side-by-side comparison of the capture and output ( FMS start page ) the stream on the output size is big time choppy and pixelized.

I read that FMS is doing automatic bandwith detection but even that, I'm testing on localhost. Is there some specific setup on server side ?

Thanks for help.
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    S
    simalarieAuthor
    Participant
    February 17, 2009
    Jay I thank you.

    It all makes sense to me and I'm gonna build on that recommandations.

    Simon,
    Montreal.
    A
    Anonymous
    February 17, 2009
    Since you're using the flashplayer as the publishing client, you can expect crappy, blocky video at any bitrate under about 500kbps. Sorenson spark (the encoder that the flashplayer uses) produces very low quality images at low bitrates.

    Your publishing bitrate is determined by the camera.setQuality method on the client side. If you are not explicitly setting the bitrate, video will be encoded at the default 128kbps... very low quality

    The reason the preview image looks better than the final image is likely because your are looking at the uncompressed camera image in your preview (i.e attaching the camera directly to the video object).

    Also, make sure the camera supports 320x240 natively (most do, but one never knows). If it doesn't, the flashplayer will capture the camera at the camera's closest native resolution, in which case the image has to be scaled to fit in a 320x240 area. Any such scaling has a negative impact on image quality.

    On the note of automatic bandwidth detection... the included server side methods do nothing more than determine a client's server-to-client bandwidth. It's up to the programmer to take the results of that bandwidth test and apply it to client side actionscript (for example, choose a specific version of a video to play when bandwidth is limited). FMS doesn't do any sort of recompression of streams, so you would need to publish multiple streams at varied bitrates to take advantage of bandwidth targeted content delivery.
    A
    Anonymous
    February 17, 2009
    It would help to know what you're doing:

    1. What publishing client are you using (i.e Flash Media Encoder, flashplayer, etc)
    2. What bitrate are you publishing at?
    3. What resolution are your publishing at?
    4. In the playback application, what is the size of the video object?
    A
    andyG928
    Known Participant
    February 17, 2009
    I also installed it yesterday and would say the quality is quite OK - all depends on your bandwidth. I have been playing with variable bandwidth selector and it is OK for 500K (for my connection), though keeps buffering the stream all the time on 750K.

    How does the automatic bandwidth detection work? Are there any links to manuals for that?

    S
    simalarieAuthor
    Participant
    February 17, 2009
    As mentioned the problem is on FMS 3.5 StartPage (nteractive tag), or whatever Flashplayer publishing context. I do not work with Live Encoder because I need a all in one solution video broadcasting + chat without the option to install anything else on client.

    Capture and playback is at 320 x 240 and for the bitrate I have no idea. That's the part I guessed for automatic detection.

    I'm on a localhost developpment server. Cheap camera I should say, but the input view is very clean.



    I'm on a localhost
    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices