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Encoding and decoding H264 videos
H264 videos can be produced at favorable quality/weight raios using most recent video editing suites, such as Final Cut ou Premiere. Their most common extensions are .mov, .mp4 or .f4v.
Streamlike players natively play H264 encoded videos, providing improved picture quality and motion smoothness over traditionnal FLVs. High definition videos can be encoded at significantly lower bitrates with the H264 codec, making HD videos accessible to a wider base of broadband users.
The Streamlike server includes a custom H264 encoder that transforms videos of any format (avi, mpeg, mov, mp4, wmv...) into three H264 files optimized in picture size and bitrate.
Sample H264 videos
This selection of clips below shows the level of quality that can be achieved at very reasonable bitrates. Be sure to watch the videos if full screen mode to view the HD versions, bandwidth permitting.
| Clip title |
HD format, Low / Med / High bitrates |
| Speedway |
720p, 128 kbps / 357 kbps / 1088 kbps |
| Gitana 80 |
720p, 125 kbps / 350kbps / 1065 kbps |
| Hermes |
720p, 132 kbps / 376 bps / 1133 bps |
| Steal this film II |
720p, 1619 Kkps |
Check out the H264 channel of our sample WebTV for more examples.
What is H264?
H.264 is a standard for video compression.
It is also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, or MPEG-4 AVC (for Advanced Video Coding).
The intent of the H.264/AVC project was to create a standard capable of providing good video quality at substantially lower bit rates (e.g. half or less the bit rate of MPEG-2, H.263, or MPEG-4 Part 2).
An additional goal was to allow the standard to be applied to a wide variety of applications on a wide variety of networks and systems (internet, telephony, broadcast, DVD, IPTV...).
In other words, H264 uses less bandwidth to deliver a better picture quality to more systems. |
