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channelflip: Volume and Codec issues

July 23 2008 | WilHarris

Hi guys,

ChannelFlip needs your help!

We are working very hard to try and sort out the various gremlins in our video and audio encoding processes here at ChannelFlip HQ. We know that a few viewers have been noticing problems with the audio on various episodes of the show and we are trying to isolate exactly what causes what problems! So:

Could you please let us know:

1. Which episodes you have found audio issues with
2. What the particular issue is (volume too loud, volume inconsistent, audio skipping etc)
3. What episodes of the shows you think are great and have no problems.

Secondly, we are in the process of trying out a new video host that we *hope* will bring a better viewing experience to ChannelFlip. We currently distribute our videos both as Flash and as a Quicktime file to iTunes users and we are experimenting with different ways of serving both.

Can you let us know:

1. Which Flash player you prefer - the latest black player or the old white player - both in terms of functionality and video quality?

2. Which episodes have been showing up dodgy in the iTunes podcast feed?

Many thanks for your help chaps! Please rest assured that we are seriously trying to sort these issues out :)

All the best,

Wil and Justin.

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comments

Norbit
July 23rd, 2008 - 5:13pm

I’ve noticed the mixing levels are sometimes a bit off such as in Katharine’s latest vid @ 1:32 where the last word of her sentence is almost inaudible and at the start the heartbeat is almost too quiet to hear while the scream is earsplitting lol

http://www.channelflip.com/2008/07/23/alone-in-the-dark/

I mess around a bit myself with editing and I always use decent headphones to check the audio before and after I export it.

I cant recall ever having any sound issues on Justins movie vids.

BTW I prefer the old player because the quality seems a little better.

Tony
July 23rd, 2008 - 5:44pm

I would have to agree with Norbit in saying the old white player was better quality wise, though it seems to have a freezing issue :/

Schmung
July 23rd, 2008 - 7:16pm

Player wise, the white one seems to offer better quality, but has a horrible, horrible volume control widget that mutes things when I move the mouse away. Black one doesn’t have this issue, but quality seems a little worse. Only had the freezing issue on the Dragonball ep. Switching to IE seemed to clear it though.

Volume issues wise, it seems most apparent with the games reviews. but only the Alone in the Dark review jumps instantly to mind, but I know there are others and I shall seek them out. After listening to a few selected at random though it does seem that the general volume between eps may vary slightly, which may be worth looking at. It’s much more apparent when sneakily watching in work with headphones than listening on the home PC with speakers though.

Anthony
July 23rd, 2008 - 8:22pm

I have been having the above issues, but also a horrible JGARR-ing sound which previously has been ‘random’ and short lived. Now though it has dominated both the latest Film and Game shows.

Kung Fu Panda. Where early on the video disjoints and the sound is a continuous noise going to absolute silence. This is similar to previous shows though less dramatic (on all but tech).

1:33 for Kung Fu Panda

Alone in the Dark is different at 0:17 the same JGARR sound happens, with the image going green for a second or two. Then back to normal until 0:21 and so on… Too anoying to keep testing it until the end.

Please sort this out guys. :’(

Richard
July 24th, 2008 - 9:18am

In the recent Alone in the dark review the video suffers horrendously when played in Miro. It looks very much like picture break-up on Freeview… waiting for an I-Frame to bring back the full detail. I’ve seen this in previous tech and game videos too.

Jim
August 4th, 2008 - 3:46pm

The quality of the voice recording in general would be an area I would look into. On most of the videos there seems to be a lot of room echo and the overall sound is a bit tinny.

I think that sorting this problem out would help a lot.

Stuart
August 5th, 2008 - 10:40am

I guess that this is a codec issue, and I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else on the site: the videos with the American chaps won’t play on the iPod Touch. Selecting any of them (or at least any of the last 4 — I haven’t tried any of the earlier ones) brings up a “This movie format is not supported” alert. Other videos in the Tech feed, and all the videos from Games, play just fine (problems with “Alone in the Dark” described above aside).

This is subscribing via iTunes. I’ve tried deleting - unsubscribing - re-subscribing - re-downloading and still no luck. The videos play on the Mac so I’m guessing that they’re okay in themselves. The problem seemed to start after the 2.0 upgrade, and 2.0.1 hasn’t changed anything.

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