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    FAF Website Main Video

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    • TheVVheelboyT Offline
      TheVVheelboy
      last edited by TheVVheelboy

      Well on a certain game we are using webm and manage to get 720p 30fps videos that are 1.30 minute long in a range of 10-30Mb depending on how much action there is in it. So honestly I can see 720p 30s video at 15fps doable in range of like 5Mb.

      Actually might as well try seeing what will the trailer end up after moving it through ffmpeg with said settings in webm container.

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      • JipJ Offline
        Jip @speed2
        last edited by

        @speed2 said in FAF Website Main Video:

        @jip said in FAF Website Main Video:

        @speed2 said in FAF Website Main Video:

        Having an auto playing video on the website doesnt sounds like a good idea

        It won't make sound - just an animation sequence like BAR has:

        • https://www.beyondallreason.info/news

        It still has 7,5MB
        So if you're browsing on a phone and eats that much data for news, in our case for a webpage. I'd rather have a simple image

        I get your concerns - we could detect the fact that you're on a phone and show a static image instead.

        A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

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        • K Offline
          Katharsas @Swkoll
          last edited by Katharsas

          First of all i think that pages that auto-play videos in the background suck in general, i would leave such a page as fast as possible. Kinda has this trashy "we are trying to be flashy at the cost of usability" vibe.

          @swkoll said in FAF Website Main Video:

          For context, the existing image is already 2.3mb.

          And that is why i have used my ad-blocker to block that image, because the image used to load really slowly for me and blocked other parts of the page from working fast. If it is a full HD picture then it should be possible to get it to be under 700KB in size, if you use a good format like JPG at reasonable quality

          As for video content, I generally think a better idea would be to embed a Youtube trailer in the page, so that people can decide if they want to pay the data cost. Then there is the simple fact that hosting a video yourself SUCKS. A Youtube video will be

          • encoded in the best way possible to be as small as possible
          • will auto-downscale the video so that multiple resolutions are available
          • will automatically select a good quality level depending on connection
          • allows people to easily share that video on social media if it is actually a good trailer

          I can tell you right now that you will not be able to get it working well by coding stuff yourself. Just use Youtube, please.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • furyritchieF Offline
            furyritchie @Rowey
            last edited by furyritchie

            @rowey The video should be no more than 3 to 8 MB. We will strip the audio track to save size.

            The 20 second C&C video shows the kind of content we want. Action shots transitioning into other action shots. A typical trailer or existing video likely will not be suitable.

            @RandomWheelchair Good point - we will use a static image for mobile devices.

            Also I wasn't aware the current image was 2MB. We can optimise that too.

            @Brutus5000 If you're worried about server bandwidth then it's yet another reason to use Cloudflare...

            @Eternal MP4 is fine for streaming content like this. If we included webp we would need to provide an mp4 failback anyway.

            @Katharsas Hosting a video of this size ourselves doesn't really suck.

            1. It will be cached by browsers.
            2. It is streamed not downloaded.

            YouTube is out of the question for a background video.

            You are also an edge case that blocks the existing background image. We cannot design a webpage for someone using an adblocker to block existing images.

            What we can do is keep this file super small and make it so that it falls back to an image for mobile phone users. We can optimize the current fallback image somewhat too.

            Former Board Member - March 2021 - March 2022

            K 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • TheVVheelboyT Offline
              TheVVheelboy
              last edited by TheVVheelboy

              Anyway, 2 minute video is a little bit too much now that I'm trying to do anything with it.
              The bar one is just 35s one mp4. that weights 7-8mb. Meanwhile I currently got something like 47Mb for this 2 minute trailer we have or 28mb but I think it's to much of quality drop already.

              https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mnitiFntXdrgvLNtuBU7FGN9lk22pVHk/view?usp=sharing
              https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nXHpkJYE8YEgR6VkZVnGOWidR6hvjFvj/view?usp=sharing

              Both are 720p one is still buffering.

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              • RoweyR Offline
                Rowey
                last edited by

                for the Video we were looking at ruffly 20-30 seconds as that a decent amount I fist thought off any more is a bit too long

                "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Spock

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                • RoweyR Offline
                  Rowey
                  last edited by

                  The C&C one was 8.7MB

                  "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Spock

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                  • furyritchieF Offline
                    furyritchie @Kazbek
                    last edited by

                    @kazbek Any chance you could make a version with no audio track and just 20 seconds worth of the best action scenes with a very short transition to and from black at the start and end so that it can loop without being jarring?

                    The scenes would need to be selected with consideration for the text that will sit on top of it.

                    Former Board Member - March 2021 - March 2022

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                    • K Offline
                      Katharsas @furyritchie
                      last edited by Katharsas

                      @furyritchie said in FAF Website Main Video:

                      @Katharsas Hosting a video of this size ourselves doesn't really suck.

                      1. It will be cached by browsers.
                      2. It is streamed not downloaded.

                      YouTube is out of the question for a background video.

                      You are also an edge case that blocks the existing background image. We cannot design a webpage for someone using an adblocker to block existing images.

                      What we can do is keep this file super small and make it so that it falls back to an image for mobile phone users. We can optimize the current fallback image somewhat too.

                      Our webpage i supposed to be our landing page right? This means, it is supposed to make the best possible impression the first time a user lands on it, when he has nothing in cache. And we are, unlike Youtube, not using a CDN for self-hosted.

                      Yes, it is streamed, and if you go down this route please make sure that an Australien user with 16 Mbit downstream shared by family can experience the page without problems (but i will assume that nobody will test that, because this is what usually happens). Most likely they will end up with a stuttering, buffering background, because a full HD video stream can easily require 5-10 Mbit.

                      Also the ad-blocker story was not supposed to be a "case", i just wanted to tell you that even a 2 MB image on a landing page has the potential to effectively break the page, and that we have already had problems with content being hosted by our servers being slow to download in the past.

                      If whatever end-result will work on 3G mobile phone in a country not close to Germany, as well as on a 3-5 Mbit desktop connection im gonna stop complaining, but this whole idea is in my mind still really bad from a technical standpoint, and likely to end up with people coding something that "works for them" an then being called "good enough".

                      And all of that just so that things move in the background. I really don't get it. A good web page is fast and lighweight, and does not include a auto-on video.

                      furyritchieF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • furyritchieF Offline
                        furyritchie @Katharsas
                        last edited by

                        @katharsas said:

                        Yes, it is streamed, and if you go down this route please make sure that an Australien user with 16 Mbit downstream shared by family can experience the page without problems (but i will assume that nobody will test that, because this is what usually happens). Most likely they will end up with a stuttering, buffering background, because a full HD video stream can easily require 5-10 Mbit.

                        The C&C demo we're testing with is 3.2mbps and Rowey has experimented with making it even lower than that.

                        Also the ad-blocker story was not supposed to be a "case", i just wanted to tell you that even a 2 MB image on a landing page has the potential to effectively break the page, and that we have already had problems with content being hosted by our servers being slow to download in the past.

                        Good call out. We're going to fix all the images because of your comment. The main image is 1.6MB when it can be 190KB. The footer image is also 1MB when it should be 100KB.

                        If whatever end-result will work on 3G mobile phone in a country not close to Germany, as well as on a 3-5 Mbit desktop connection im gonna stop complaining, but this whole idea is in my mind still really bad from a technical standpoint, and likely to end up with people coding something that "works for them" an then being called "good enough".

                        Yes it will default back to a static image for mobile phone users.

                        And all of that just so that things move in the background. I really don't get it. A good web page is fast and lighweight, and does not include a auto-on video.

                        The world has moved on from that. We want to showcase what the game is.

                        Former Board Member - March 2021 - March 2022

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                        • Eternal-E Offline
                          Eternal-
                          last edited by

                          1. People still trying to save some traffic.

                          Profile | Eternal MOD pack | Check new client

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                          • FtXCommandoF Offline
                            FtXCommando
                            last edited by

                            Not even about traffic, I have like 900 mb/s internet and it still takes me 30 minutes to download 10 mb patches from the server, if this website will also be hosted on the perpetually bottlenecked server I pretty much expect a third of the US to have a problem with the video.

                            furyritchieF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • furyritchieF Offline
                              furyritchie @FtXCommando
                              last edited by furyritchie

                              @ftxcommando It will actually be substantially faster than it currently is since it streams the video.

                              Though we're optimising images and taking 2.6MB out of the page load so the comparison evens out once that is sorted out.

                              We also need to look at a CDN for at least the main faforever domain. Some of the hold up here was the possible issues with Cloudflare and MSI files but we can just move them onto a separate subdomain (edit: the main page links to github, I can't recall where the client pulls them from but putting them on a separate domain away from the webpage/news would remove that as a problem).

                              Former Board Member - March 2021 - March 2022

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                              • AskaholicA Offline
                                Askaholic @Eternal-
                                last edited by

                                @eternal said in FAF Website Main Video:

                                1. People still trying to save some traffic.

                                Are you kidding me. Just because YOU have a decent internet connection at YOUR house in YOUR city does NOT mean that every other person in the world has the same experience. The internet is inherently flaky, and you must ALWAYS think about bandwidth requirements when creating something that will be served over a pipe which you have no control over.

                                Eternal-E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • K Offline
                                  Katharsas
                                  last edited by Katharsas

                                  @furyritchie

                                  Ok well im glad you are making sure that the bandwith for the video is small enough. Still depends our server being fast enough, but if the images are optimized a lot, then its not gonna be much more traffic than before i guess.

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                                  • Eternal-E Offline
                                    Eternal- @Askaholic
                                    last edited by Eternal-

                                    @askaholic Let's be honest, you've never been bothered by the current site before.
                                    The site loads quickly, the picture loads gradually.

                                    I tried to block the banner, and it won't be so easy, it will take some manipulation to get to the desired element. Therefore, I don't believe the guy who blocked it all: DDD

                                    Video will also sink gradually and it will work as it loads. But it depends on the scheme of installing it on the site.

                                    And yes, I use mobile internet for my laptop, it uses 3G connection, and it's about 1mb-2mb at the moment, out of town and i have no problem with site loading.

                                    As FTX said, it is not a problem with user connection. It is a slowly server work.

                                    If you want users to see the fully load site, then make loader that will show the site after load.

                                    as example: www.theseawebreathe.com

                                    Profile | Eternal MOD pack | Check new client

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                                    • furyritchieF Offline
                                      furyritchie @Eternal-
                                      last edited by

                                      @eternal said in FAF Website Main Video:

                                      It is a slowly server work.

                                      We should already be using a CDN and we will discuss that separately to this but it would completely remove that as a problem.

                                      Former Board Member - March 2021 - March 2022

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                                      • KazbekK Offline
                                        Kazbek
                                        last edited by

                                        I guess, if main idea to show gameplay to attract people, it must show also on mobiles, and best option then is just youtube player as was said before.
                                        Something like on this good game site: https://www.factorio.com/

                                        And for background some image which will not attract any attention, just organic background

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                                        • K Offline
                                          Katharsas @Eternal-
                                          last edited by

                                          @eternal said in FAF Website Main Video:

                                          I tried to block the banner, and it won't be so easy, it will take some manipulation to get to the desired element. Therefore, I don't believe the guy who blocked it all: DDD

                                          Are you are talking about me?
                                          Do you want me to make a short video about how laughably easy it is to use uBlock origin element picker on current background image (if we ignore that i am basically a web developer so i can block whatever i want)?

                                          Browsers priority implementation (which resources get loaded in what oder or in parallel) is btw. potentially quite different, so in case of slow server you can run into some problems with certain browsers only.

                                          Eternal-E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • Eternal-E Offline
                                            Eternal- @Katharsas
                                            last edited by

                                            @katharsas okay, I believe you 😀

                                            Profile | Eternal MOD pack | Check new client

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