Why should a video uploaded to Azure Media Service be encoded? - azure

I have recorded a video on my phone, I don't get why it needs to be encoded at all. Doesn't the format persist? Maybe I missing the point of encoding here. After the recording is it not already in format that is viewable to users?

It's a valid question if you wanted to just upload the existing MP4 file that was encoded on your phone and just stream it as a single bitrate HLS or DASH packaged file.
Most users of our service prefer that the uploaded MP4 file is first encoded to multiple bitrates and resolutions to allow for Adaptive Bitrate Streaming.
If you are not familiar with what Adapative Streaming is or how it works, I recommend watching a few of these - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Adaptive+bitrate+streaming+overview
Or read through this article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_bitrate_streaming
We have two types of encoding presets to enable this. One called Adaptive Streaming, which will generate a fixed "ladder" of bitrates and qualities, and one called Content Aware Encoding, which will look at your video, analyze it, and generate the best set of tracks and bitrates for the content type.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/media-services/latest/content-aware-encoding
Thanks,
John D.

Related

Is there any visualization tool for .flac audio file or .ts audio file?

I am pretty new with processing audio file. '
I want to build a web app that can take audio file and turn the into visualization for user like this https://github.com/CrowdCurio/audio-annotator
Right now I want to research on visualize audio datas. Original data that was stored in S3 come in two form .ts and .flac. That's why I want to ask if there's any visualization tool which can directly use .ts or .flac audio file.
Because right now the solution I think of will be first convert them into .wav or .mp3, so most visualization tool can process them, but .wav file is really storage-wasting as far as I know.
So if you know any approach or tool to do this. Please let me know!
Audio visualization requires audio data. Your compressed audio isn't audible until decoded. Therefore, you must decode them to PCM before visualizing.
This doesn't require that you store the files as WAV, but you'll at least have to decode them on-the-fly.

Manipulating audio to bypass content ID detection

I'm using YouTube's "auto-generated" captions feature to generate transcripts of mp3 files. I do this by first converting the mp3 to a blank mp4, uploading to YouTube, waiting for the auto generated captions to appear, then extracting the SRT file.
The issue I'm having though is that a few of the mp3 files I've uploaded have been flagged as having copyrighted content, and as such no auto-generated captions have been made for them.
I have no desire to publish the mp3s on YouTube, they're uploaded as unlisted videos and all I require are the SRT files. Is there a way to manipulate the audio to bypass YouTube's content ID system? I've tried altering the pitch in Audacity, but it doesn't matter how subtle or extreme the pitch change is, they're still flagged as having copyrighted content. Is there anything else I can do to the audio other than adjusting the pitch that might work?
I'm hoping this post doesn't breach any rules on here, and I can't stress enough that I'm not looking to publish these mp3s, I just want the auto-generated SRTs.
No one can know how to cheat on Content ID
Obviously, as Content ID is a private algorithm developed by Google, no one can know for sure how do they detect copyrighted audio in a video.
But, we can assume that one of the first things they did was to make their algorithm pitch-independent. Otherwise, everyone would change the pitch of their videos and cheat on Content ID easily.
How to use Youtube to get your subtitles anyway
If I am not mistaken, Content ID blocks you because of musical content, rather than vocal content. Thus, to address your original problem, one solution would be to detect musical content (based on spectral analysis) and cut it from the original audio. If the problem is with pure vocal content as well, you could try to filter it heavily and that might work.
Other solutions
Youtube being made by Google, why not using directly the Speech API that Google offers and which most likely perform audio transcription on Youtube? And if results are not satisfying, you could try other services (IBM, Microsoft, Amazon and others have theirs).

Difference between audio encoding/decoding and format conversion

Recently i have been trying to convert an audio file from one format to another through ffmpeg. i was trying to do some google but results made me a little confused about the difference between encoding and decoding an audio file and converting from one format to another.
Let me describe it this way: There are several different file formats for video files (sometimes also called "wrappers"). There are also several different codecs which can be used to encode (or compress) the audio and video. Audio and video use different codecs - and the encoded formats can be sorted in different file types/formats.
So when you talk about "encoding" vs. "converting" a couple of things come into play.
"Encoding" would be the act of taking audio/video and encoding them into a given codec(s). "Converting" implies having stuff in one format, but wanting it in another. There are two ways of looking at this:
Often called "repackaging" - this is when the video (for example) has been encoded correctly (let's say h264, with a bunch of parameters), but you want it in a different file-type - maybe it's an .AVI and you wanted it in an .MP4. This doesn't involve changing the actual video - just re-wraping the h264 stream in a new "wrapper", and is thus a fast operation.
Re-encoding. Let's say your audio was in a MP3 format, and you wanted it in an AAC format. This would require decoding the entire MP3 stream, and re-encoding it into AAC.
Obviously you can also do "1" and "2" together.
Refer Formats and Codecs for detailed information.
Hope it helps!

How do I create an mp4 file from a collection of H.264 frames and audio frames?

I have a program that captures and stores H.264 encoded video as well as audio into a proprietary format file. I need to be able to export that video and audio to an mp4 file. I prefer C# but will use C++ if necessary. Any suggestions?
To produce MPEG-4 Part 14 .MP4 file you need a multiplexer. There is a choice of multiplexers out there:
FFmpeg (libavformat)
DirectShow filters (free and open source from GDCL, commercial)
Windows 7+ Media Foundation file sink
API and complexity might vary because some of multiplexers are expected to be a part of pipeline, they are not completely standalone classes. You might want to check respective samples (and license agreements, perhaps, too) to see what is best for you.
Take a look at libmp4v2. Fairly straightforward to use..
http://code.google.com/p/mp4v2/

Direct show samples (AMCap) on Platform SDK with MP4 file

I want to generate .mp4 file using Direct show samples (AMCap). But i don't know how to implement this.
Can anyone please help me about this?
Thanks in advance,
Dhaval Kariya
AMCap Sample captures and displays video. No encoding and choices of multiplexing into files (only basic capture/recording through a basically obsolete helper interface).
Video capture application.
This sample application demonstrates the following tasks related to
audio and video capture:
Capture to a file
Live preview
Allocation of the capture file
Display of device property pages
Device enumeration
Stream control
The items above might be confusing as they mention capture and file allocation. This is a trail of 15 years old history when file capture was a big deal. The helper object to initialize capture targets AVI and ASF/WMV only, you neither can extend it to support other formats, nor you need to.
You need to check how to store video/audio into files (see below) and follow the same steps in building the pipeline with MPEG-4 encoders and multiplexer. You will need to use a third party MPEG-4 multiplexer for MP4 file format because Windows does not provide you with such out-of-the-box usable component.
See:
Capturing Video to a File
Free DirectShow Mpeg-4 Filters

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