Viddler continues to evolve and it certainly is exciting to be a part of it all: Big feature releases (AS3 Player, Subscriptions, Replaceable Video); additions to the Viddler family; you name it.
Sometimes the little things are just as exciting but don’t get the attention they deserve. That’s what this post is for — the little guy: MJPEG.
Motion JPEG [abbreviation MJPEG or MJPG] is a video codec used by mostly point-and-shoot and surveillance cameras. It has quite a few advantages over the more common H.264 and MPEG4 codecs:
- Higher image quality (including bit rates upwards of 70Mbps) thanks to the storage of each individual frame. For comparison, H.264 only stores a complete image roughly every 15th or 30th frame and uses motion prediction for the intermediate frames.
- Lower latency allows for better live viewing (such as a webcam or surveillance system).
- Image quality stays the same regardless of the complexity in the frame.
Of course, there are always disadvantages. MJPEG has them, but they’re very minor:
- High bandwidth usage and storage requirements due to the high-quality individual frames. This won’t really be an issue now and into the future as Internet bandwidth and online/local storage become faster and inexpensive, respectively.
- Only supports up to 30fps. Newer cameras support 60fps and higher, so MJPEG won’t apply in those situations.
- There are no support audio synchronization algorithms. This just means that it isn’t able to correct any synch errors that could creep up if a file doesn’t record properly.
So, yes, we now support video uploads that include the MJPEG codec. If you’ve had trouble uploading such files in the past, please try again and let us know if you have any issues or feedback.
We look forward to supporting the codecs and formats of the future (4K, H.265, anyone?), and thank you for joining us along the journey.
Further reading on the MJPEG codec:
