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• How To Play Hardware Accelerated Video on A Mac

  28 mai 2013, par Multimedia Mike — General

  I have a friend who was considering purchasing a Mac Mini recently. At the time of this writing, there are 3 desktop models (and 2 more “server” models).

  
  
  

  The cheapest one is a Core i5 2.5 GHz. Then there are 2 Core i7 models : 2.3 GHz and 2.6 GHz. The difference between the latter 2 is US$100. The only appreciable technical difference is the extra 0.3 GHz and the choice came down to those 2.

  He asked me which one would be able to play HD video at full frame rate. I found this query puzzling. But then, I have been “in the biz” for a bit too long. Whether or not a computer or device can play a video well depends on a lot of factors.

  Hardware Support
  First of all, looking at the raw speed of the general-purpose CPU inside of a computer as a gauge of video playback performance is generally misguided in this day and age. In general, we have a video standard (H.264, which I’ll focus on for this post) and many bits of hardware are able to accelerate decoding. So, the question is not whether the CPU can decode the data in real time, but can any other hardware in the device (likely the graphics hardware) handle it ? These machines have Intel HD 4000 graphics and, per my reading of the literature, they are capable of accelerating H.264 video decoding.

  Great, so the hardware supports accelerated decoding. So it’s a done deal, right ? Not quite…

  Operating System Support
  An application can’t do anything pertaining to hardware without permission from the operating system. So the next question is : Does Mac OS X allow an application to access accelerated video decoding hardware if it’s available ? This used to be a contentious matter (notably, Adobe Flash Player was unable to accelerate H.264 playback on Mac in the absence of such an API) but then Apple released an official API detailed in Technical Note TN2267.

  So, does this mean that video is magically accelerated ? Nope, we’re still not there yet…

  Application Support
  It’s great that all of these underlying pieces are in place, but if an individual application chooses to decode the video directly on the CPU, it’s all for naught. An application needs to query the facilities and direct data through the API if it wants to leverage the acceleration. Obviously, at this point it becomes a matter of “which application ?”

  My friend eventually opted to get the pricier of the desktop Mac Mini models and we ran some ad-hoc tests since I was curious how widespread the acceleration support is among Mac multimedia players. Here are some programs I wanted to test, playing 1080p H.264 :

  • Apple QuickTime Player
  • VLC
  • YouTube with Flash Player (any browser)
  • YouTube with Safari/HTML5
  • YouTube with Chrome/HTML5
  • YouTube with Firefox/HTML5
  • Netflix

  I didn’t take exhaustive notes but my impromptu tests revealed QuickTime Player was, far and away, the most performant player, occupying only around 5% of the CPU according to the Mac OS X System Profiler graph (which is likely largely spent on audio decoding).

  VLC consistently required 20-30% CPU, so it’s probably leveraging some acceleration facilities. I think that Flash Player and the various HTML5 elements performed similarly (their multi-process architectures can make such a trivial profiling test difficult).

  The outlier was Netflix running in Firefox via Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin. Of course, the inner workings of Netflix’s technology are opaque to outsiders and we don’t even know if it uses H.264. It may very well use Microsoft’s VC-1 which is not a capability provided by the Mac OS X acceleration API (it doesn’t look like the Intel HD 4000 chip can handle it either). I have never seen any data one way or another about how Netflix encodes video. However, I was able to see that Netflix required an enormous amount of CPU muscle on the Mac platform.

  Conclusion
  The foregoing is a slight simplification of the video playback pipeline. There are some other considerations, most notably how the video is displayed afterwards. To circle back around to the original question : Can the Mac Mini handle full HD video playback ? As my friend found, the meager Mac Mini can do an admirable job at playing full HD video without loading down the CPU.

• FFmpeg Integration in .NET MAUI for Android [closed]

  15 juin 2024, par Billy Vanegas

  I'm facing a challenge with integrating FFmpeg into my .NET MAUI project for Android. While everything works smoothly on Windows with Visual Studio 2022, I'm having a hard time replicating this on the Android platform. Despite exploring various NuGet packages like FFMpegCore, which appear to be wrappers around FFmpeg but don't include FFmpeg itself, I'm still at a loss.

  


  I've tried following the instructions for integrating ffmpeg-kit for Android, but I keep running into issues, resulting in repeated failures and growing confusion. It feels like there is no straightforward way to seamlessly incorporate FFmpeg into a .NET MAUI project that works consistently across both iOS and Android.

  


  The Problem :

  


  I need to convert MP3 files to WAV format using FFmpeg on the Android platform within a .NET MAUI project. I’m using the FFMpegCore library and have downloaded the FFmpeg binaries from the official FFmpeg website.

  


  However, when attempting to use these binaries on an Android emulator, I encounter a permission denied error in the working directory : /data/user/0/com.companyname.projectname/files/ffmpeg

  


  Here’s the code snippet where the issue occurs :

  


  await FFMpegArguments
      .FromFileInput(mp3Path)
      .OutputToFile(wavPath, true, options => options
          .WithAudioCodec("pcm_s16le")
          .WithAudioSamplingRate(44100)
          .WithAudioBitrate(320000)
          )
      .ProcessAsynchronously();
    


  


  I've updated AndroidManifest.xml with permissions, but the issue persists.

  


  I've created a method ConvertMp3ToWav to handle the conversion.
I also have a method ExtractFFmpegBinaries to manage FFmpeg binaries extraction, but it seems the permission issue might be tied to how these binaries are accessed or executed.

  


  AndroidManifest.xml :

  


  &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>&#xA;<manifest>&#xA;    <application></application>&#xA;    &#xA;    &#xA;    &#xA;    &#xA;</manifest>&#xA;

  


  Method ConvertMp3ToWav :

  


  private async Task ConvertMp3ToWav(string mp3Path, string wavPath)
{
    try
    {
        // Check directory and create if not exists
        var directory = Path.GetDirectoryName(wavPath);
        if (!Directory.Exists(directory))
            Directory.CreateDirectory(directory!);

        // Check if WAV file exists
        if (!File.Exists(wavPath))
            Console.WriteLine($"File not found {wavPath}, creating empty file.");
            using var fs = new FileStream(wavPath, FileMode.CreateNew);

        // Check if MP3 file exists
        if (!File.Exists(mp3Path))
            Console.WriteLine($"File not found {mp3Path}");

        // Extract FFmpeg binaries
        string? ffmpegBinaryPath = await ExtractFFmpegBinaries(Platform.AppContext);

        // Configure FFmpeg options
        FFMpegCore.GlobalFFOptions.Configure(new FFOptions { BinaryFolder = Path.GetDirectoryName(ffmpegBinaryPath!)! });

        // Convert MP3 to WAV
        await FFMpegArguments
              .FromFileInput(mp3Path)
              .OutputToFile(wavPath, true, options => options
                  .WithAudioCodec("pcm_s16le")
                  .WithAudioSamplingRate(44100)
                  .WithAudioBitrate(320000)
                  )
              .ProcessAsynchronously();
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"An error occurred during the conversion process: {ex.Message}");
        throw;
    }
}


  


  Method ExtractFFmpegBinaries :

  


  private async Task<string> ExtractFFmpegBinaries(Context context)&#xA;{&#xA;    var architectureFolder = "x86"; // Adjust according to device architecture&#xA;    var ffmpegBinaryName = "ffmpeg"; &#xA;    var ffmpegBinaryPath = Path.Combine(context.FilesDir!.AbsolutePath, ffmpegBinaryName);&#xA;    var tempFFMpegFileName = Path.Combine(FileSystem.AppDataDirectory, ffmpegBinaryName);&#xA;&#xA;    if (!File.Exists(ffmpegBinaryPath))&#xA;    {&#xA;        try&#xA;        {&#xA;            var assetPath = $"Libs/{architectureFolder}/{ffmpegBinaryName}";&#xA;            using var assetStream = context.Assets!.Open(assetPath);&#xA;           &#xA;            await using var tempFFMpegFile = File.OpenWrite(tempFFMpegFileName);&#xA;            await assetStream.CopyToAsync(tempFFMpegFile);&#xA;&#xA;            // Adjust permissions for FFmpeg binary&#xA;            Java.Lang.Runtime.GetRuntime()!.Exec($"chmod 755 {tempFFMpegFileName}");&#xA;        }&#xA;        catch (Exception ex)&#xA;        {&#xA;            Console.WriteLine($"An error occurred while extracting FFmpeg binaries: {ex.Message}");&#xA;            throw;&#xA;        }&#xA;    }&#xA;    else&#xA;    {&#xA;        Console.WriteLine($"FFmpeg binaries already extracted to: {ffmpegBinaryPath}");&#xA;    }&#xA;&#xA;    return tempFFMpegFileName!;&#xA;}&#xA;</string>

  


  What I Need :

  


  How to correctly integrate and use FFmpeg in my .NET MAUI project for Android ? Specifically :

  


  

  • How to properly set up and configure FFmpeg binaries for use on Android within a .NET MAUI project.

  


  • How to resolve the permission denied issue when attempting to execute FFmpeg binaries.

  


  


• Measuring success for your SEO content

  20 mars 2020, par Jake Thornton — Uncategorized
  With over a billion searches every day in search engines, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of having your business present on page one (ideally in positions 1 – 3) ranking for the keywords that impact your sales and conversions.

  "In 2019, Google received nearly 2.3 trillion searches and on page one alone, the first five organic results accounted for 67.60% of all the clicks."

  So how is your business performing when it comes to ranking in the crucial top three spots of search for your most important keywords ?

  Accurately measuring the success of your content

  Once you’ve done your keyword research, created compelling content, optimised it to be search-friendly, and hit ‘publish’, you then need to accurately measure the success of your efforts.

  4 tips for measuring the success of your SEO content

  1. Create a custom segment for "Visitors from Search Engines only"

  By creating this custom segment, you’ll be able to analyse the behavioural patterns of the visitors who found your website through a search engine. 

  This way you can use many of Matomo’s powerful features (Visitors, Behaviour, Acquisition, Ecommerce, Goals etc.) focused entirely on search engine visitors only.

  

  Once you’ve created this segment, you can begin to see key metrics like which entry pages are responsible for referring visitors to your website. For example : Visit Behaviour – Entry Pages, this is a great way to analyse your most effective SEO pages.You may be surprised at what pages currently bring in the most traffic.

  As well as discovering which content resonates with your search audience, you will also be able to create more content focused on your targeted audience. Do this by learning which locations your search visitors are from, which device they use, what time of the day they visited your website and much more.

  >> Learn more about creating custom segments

  2. Website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate.

  “The top four ranking factors are website visits, time on site, pages per session, and bounce rate.”

  These four metrics set the benchmark for your SEO success.

  First, you need to get as many of the ‘right’ users to see your content. If you feel you’ve exhausted channels such as social media, email and possibly paid posts ; think about who your ideal audience is. Where are they likely to hang out online ? Are there community groups or forum sites that are interested in what you’re writing about ? 

  Whatever the case, putting yourself out there and getting more traffic to your website will help show search engines that people are interested in your website. As a result, they’ll likely rank you higher for that.

  When we say getting more of the ‘right’ users, we mean users who are generally interested in the topic/subject you’re writing about and interested in the work you do. 

  

  This is important for the next three metrics – increasing users time on your website, increasing the amount of pages your users explore on your website, and reducing the overall bounce rate for users who leave your website in a matter of seconds.

  To evaluate these metrics, go to Behaviour – Pages in your Matomo and see how these metrics vary on previous posts or pages you’ve created. Which pages are already showing you the best results ? Why do they get the results ? Can you focus on creating more content like this ?

  Understanding what content is resonating with your users through these metrics is easy and is the starting point for measuring the success of your SEO content strategy.

  >> Learn more about the Behaviour feature

  3. Row Evolution

  The Row Evolution feature embedded within the Search Engine Keywords Performance plugin lets you see how your ranking positions have changed over time for your important keywords. It also lets you see how the incoming traffic, related to your keywords, has changed over time.

  

  This is valuable when measuring the changes you’ve made to your landing pages to see if it has a positive or negative effect on your ranking efforts. 

  This also lets you see how search engine algorithm changes affect your search rankings over time, and to see if the effects of these algorithm updates are temporary or long lasting.

  Row evolution allows you to report on keyword performance with ease. If you only check your insights once a week or once a fortnight, you’ll see how ranking positions for your important keywords have changed daily (or even weekly, monthly or yearly however you prefer.)

  >> Learn more about Row Evolution

  4. What results are you getting from the lesser known search engines ?

  "In 2019 (to date), Google accounted for just over 75% of all global desktop search traffic, followed by Bing at 9.97%, Baidu at 9.34%, and Yahoo at 2.77%."

  For most of us, we want to be ranking in the top three spots in Google Search because that’s where the majority of search users are. However, don’t shy away from opportunities you could be missing with lesser known search engines.

  If you sell a product aimed at 55-65 year olds who use a PC computer, chances are they are using Bing. If you have customers in China the majority will be using Baidu, or in our case at Matomo, many of our loyal users use a privacy-friendly search engine like DuckDuckGo or Qwant.

  Some of your ideal customers might be finding you through these alternative search engines, so be sure to measure the impact that these referrals may have on your conversions.

  

  Strategically including important keywords that impact your business

  While search is an important acquisition channel for most businesses, it’s also one of the most competitive.

  We recommend analysing your keyword and content performance regularly and alter content that isn’t performing as well as you’d like. You need to continually learn from the content that is successful, and focus on creating more content like this. 

  The final thing to remember with search keyword performance is to be patient. If you have had little success in the past with attracting customers through search, it can take time to build this reputation with search engines.