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Support for "webm" video format?

Patrick Van Pelt

September 01, 2015 14:26

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Hey, so I haven't seen any info on this, and RVIO 4.0.7 gave me an error when I tried it.  I was wondering if you had any plans for supporting "webm" as a destination video format.

The main reason I ask is for Shotgun integration, they state that its best to upload both MP4's and WEBM's for browser compatibility (check their Transcoding page for reference).  We're already using RVIO for generating the MP4's, but it looks like WEBM's are currently only generated by FFmpeg.  I'd rather use RVIO for this though, if at all possible.

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17 comments

• 0
  
  Jon Morley September 03, 2015 07:44

  Hi Patrick,

  We are in the process of adding writing support to our ffmpeg based quicktime plugin. Once we complete that ideally we should have a way for you to access any of the codecs ffmpeg can.

  Keep in mind though that we cannot legally distribute with all of them enabled. Some are patent encumbered. However as we already do for reading, we will give you directions to recompile with support for any codecs you like so long as you take legal responsibility for enabling them yourself.

  Stay tuned.

  Thanks,
  Jon

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  Patrick Van Pelt September 03, 2015 07:44

  Thanks for the update!

  Yeah, I'll stay tuned.  I don't know if the "webm" format falls under the patent zone, and the whole legal aspect gets a little scary I suppose, but I can sort that with my superiors.

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  Robyn Rindge September 03, 2015 07:44

  I had a very similar question as well. Now that rvio has switched to ffmpeg I was hoping this might start working. However I still get an error from rvio 4.0.12 where it says no plugins support webm.

  rvio ~/media_examples/16_field_chart_99.101.jpeg -o /tmp/rvio.webm
  /apps/shared/rv/4.0.12/bin/rvio.bin
  Version 4.0.12, built on May  1 2014 at 09:48:43 (64bit). (L)
  Copyright (c) 2008-2013 Tweak Software. All rights reserved.
  INFO: /home/rrindge/media_examples/16_field_chart_99.101.jpeg
  INFO: setting view to single Source
  ERROR: TwkMovie: No plugins support (write) format: webm
  ERROR: cannot find a way to write /tmp/rvio.webm

  -Robyn

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  Jon Morley September 03, 2015 07:44

  I am pretty sure the entire point of webm is to get away from patent problems, but I am no lawyer so my opinion is worthless. In any case for now I will focus on the technical issue of getting it working!

  Thanks,
  Jon

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  Jon Morley September 03, 2015 07:44

  Hi Robyn,

  I am going to investigate the licensing terms and technical compilation details of the libvpx and libvorbis libraries in order to support WebM. We do not currently include those libraries when compiling our ffmpeg based plugin and since we offer symmetric support on Windows, Mac, and Liunx it could be a while if ever before we do. I will report back here if anything changes.

  Thanks,
  Jon

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  tommy zhu January 25, 2016 20:33

  hey Jon, 

  I know it's only been a few months but just wondering if there are any updates on this.  We love the scrubbing (with sound) capability of RV, as well we also like webm codec since it plays natively on firefox/chrome.  

  Since RV usually leave it upto the user to compile in the codecs into RV, is it fare to say the challenge for webm integration is a technical one rather than a legal one.  

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  Jon Morley January 25, 2016 21:07

  Hi Tommy,

  I think the issue with the current release (6.2.6) is that the version of ffmpeg it uses (2.6.1) does not have good support for webm. However in my test pre-release copy slated for 6.3.0 webm seems to work. Though I will say vorbis audio is not working. Can you send me sample file (in a private ticket if you like) that represents the kinds of movies you would like to play and I can keep in on my radar?

  Thanks,
  Jon

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  tommy zhu January 26, 2016 15:46

  Thanks for the update, please keep us posted.  I've attached a video clip (with audio) we generated with RV and then encoded using gstreamer into the webm format.  

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  Jon Morley January 26, 2016 17:17

  Well that was easy. "Spider Pig!" plays nicely on my dev build of RV. Both audio and video. I will let you know when to expect this capability in a release.

  Thanks,
  Jon

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  tommy zhu January 26, 2016 17:26

  Haha, that's good to know, can I confirm that RV can scrubs the video frame by frame with with audio as well?  (that's big one for animators, I am pretty confident RV will work since it cache everything after it decodes the video, right?)

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  Jon Morley January 26, 2016 17:42

  Hi Tommy,

  It appears that there are some video seek issues. If I try to play the movie backwards some of the frames cannot be read correctly and ffmpeg reports "Discarding interframe without a prior keyframe!". Maybe I was overzealous in my earlier reporting. I will see if there is anything I can do to improve it including testing more changes from ffmpeg.

  Thanks,
  Jon

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  tommy zhu January 26, 2016 18:24

  hey Jon, is this even after RV has "ingested" all the frames into cache?  I was under the impression RV only initially use ffmpeg to decode and cache the clip data.  Once cached (the bar turns green), doesn't that mean RV already have every frame decoded and loaded in memory and hence ffmpeg is no longer used?  Thanks for your help

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  Jon Morley January 26, 2016 20:16

  Hi Tommy,

  Your understanding is correct. The issue is that if you enable caching then there will be more than one thread attempting to read frames with ffmpeg. The display thread plus any number of reader threads you have configured in the preferences will seek with ffmpeg to an as yet undecoded frame to decode it. What it returns will be garbage and be forever cached as garbage in RV. The only way to avoid this is to first play through the entire clip in forwards order without caching enabled. Not ideal. I will make time for a closer look. Ideally I can make it better before the next release, but I can't make any promises.

  Thanks,
  Jon

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  tommy zhu January 26, 2016 21:19

  Ah I see, thanks for the clarification.  As for letting the entire clip play forward once, that might be an ok workaround for now since those reference clips are usually pretty short.  Thanks for all your effort, let me know if you need a longer webm clip, maybe with frames index visible on each frame.

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  Jon Morley January 26, 2016 21:37

  That would certainly be a nicer sample file. Sound and watermarks if possible. Thanks!

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  tommy zhu August 01, 2016 19:52

  hey Jon,

  I just downloaded RV-7.0.0 and had a quick look, does this version of RV/RVIO support webm?

   

• 0
  
  Jon Morley August 01, 2016 21:16

  Hi Tommy,

  Nothing has been changed lately related to webm. It is still not listed among the officially supported containers, however it still works with mio_ffmpeg when bruteForce is enabled. I don't think we plan to add webm to the officially supported container list until we have a legitimate solution to the vorbis audio playback which is most commonly used in conjunction with webm.

  Thanks,
  Jon