High-definition video is much better than I would ever thought. And now that I see it playing on my laptop screen, off a broadband connection, my eyes are literally being sucked in by the crisp, high detail, color rich tones of what looks like some of the best online HD video I have ever seen to date. If you the bandwidth, check out this HD video when blown up to full screen resolution!

To see some impressive high definition video encoded in Flash / H.264 look further down in this article

But wait, there's more.

The cool thing is that there are already a small group of video sharing sites supporting this new high-quality video standard.

The greatest part of the merit for what you can see yourself on these great HD samples, is of Adobe, who over nine months ago, in August 2007, announced the integration of the high-quality H.264 video compression codec inside their Flash distribution and display technology. H.264 is such a higher level quality codec that the ability for any video distribution and sharing site to integrate it and use it will be just irresistible for most.

Here more details:

High definition video encoded in Flash / H.264 - play it in full screen to appreciate the quality of this - you do need a serious broadband connection

Smugmug New HD Video Sharing Offer

Nonetheless I had seen quite a few online HD video clips in the last few months, the one that I saw yesterday really blew off my glasses.

Smugmug, a quality photo sharing site with some very interesting features for passionate image takers, has just released a new facility for its Pro users which allows the upload, encoding and full video sharing of HD video.

For now, maximum duration is limited to 5 minutes or 512MB maximum file size, and up to 10 minutes in length at DVD quality. Most video recording formats are fully supported for encoding in H.264 and it supports resolutions all the way up to 1280×720p.

The result, as you can see for yourself right here, are nothing short of spectacular. Yes, you may need to have a good broadband connection to see this without having to wait a while, but here on my machine on a standard ADSL connection things do look really amazing.

Here the key details of their offer:

• Upload almost any video format you like.
• Auto-generation of multiple video format/sizes for you, so you’ll have a version that’s perfect for sharing on the web (YouTube size), perfect for using on your iPod/iPhone (DVD size), and even your Hi-Def TV in your living room.
• Automagically display the right-sized video for whichever browser and monitor you happen to be using. Ditto for your friends. Example from my friends in Dallas hard at work on Duke Nukem.
• Embed HD videos in your blog, website, or wherever else you like online. And you can do so at DVD quality resolution - 640×480 - more than 4X the pixels and quality of YouTube.
• Download any and all the different sized versions of your videos so you can do whatever else you’d like with them, like add them to YouTube or burn them to a DVD.
• Wide playback device compatibility across a wide variety of computers and devices, including iPods, AppleTV, Playstation 3, and more.
• Auto-generation of complete podcast RSS feed for your account that you and your friends can subscribe to with a single click in iTunes.
• Affordable. The HD Video uploading and video sharing facility from Smugmug costs $149.95/year.

More info about Smugmug new HD video sharing service.

High definition video encoded in Flash / H.264 - play it in full screen to appreciate the quality of this - broadband connection required

Some Info About the H.264 Codec

H.264 is a video codec which delivers stunning quality at remarkably low data rates. Whether your need is in high definition video publishing for marketing and training, or you want to distribute high-quality video clips for the mobile phone market, for iChat, Internet, broadcast or satellite delivery, H.264 provides unmatched video quality and superb performance at really unheard-of low data rates.

Ratified as part of the MPEG-4 standard (MPEG-4 Part 10), and the ITU-T’s latest video-conferencing standard, H.264 is now mandatory for the HD-DVD and Blu-ray specifications (the two formats for high-definition DVDs) and ratified in the latest versions of the DVB (Digital Video Broadcasters) and 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) standards.

H.264 technology gives you excellent results no matter what type of Internet connection you have, from 3G (UMTS-HSDPA-HSDMA) for mobile devices to iChat AV for video conferencing to HD for broadcast and DVD.

H.264 utilizes the latest advances in video compression technology to offer stunning video quality while creating very small video data files. This means you see crisp, clear video in much smaller files, saving you bandwidth and storage costs over previous generations of video codecs.

H.264 delivers the same quality as MPEG-2 at a third to half the data rate and up to four times the frame size of MPEG-4 Part 2 at the same data rate.

(Source: Apple)

High definition video encoded in Flash / H.264 - play it in full screen to appreciate the quality of this - you do need a broadband connection

Other HD Video Sharing Sites

• Vuze

  
  
  http://www.vuze.com/app






• Vimeo HD

  
  
  http://vimeo.com/hd
  http://www.vimeo.com/highdef






• DailyMotion HD

  
  
  http://dailymotion.com/hd






• Viddyou

  
  
  http://www.viddyou.com/






• Sony Eyevio

  
  
  http://eyevio.jp/

Originally written by Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on April 29th 2008 as "High Definition Video Sharing: Flash and H264 Make HD Video A Reality"