Equi vs .mov vs. cubes

[gus]

Hi all,

What are the differences in downloading speed between using a equirectangular image, a .mov movie, or cubefaces?
Any other differences worth considering?

I'm using a lot of .mov and want to know if its worth converting them into cubefaces....

gus

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

There is no difference as far as I know.

[cheathamlane]

What are the differences in downloading speed between using a equirectangular image, a .mov movie, or cubefaces?

My experience -- developing & testing on a Mac -- has been that MOV files can take noticeably longer to "parse" than sets of cube faces or image strips, and can be problematic. But, YMMV. Actual downloading time isn't any different AFAICT.

There is another post on this site (http://flashpanoramas.com/forum/showthread.php?t=787) with some general back and forth about MOVs usage in FPP.

HTH!

[zleifr]

There most certainly are difference. If you want the absolutely fastest download to display time, cube faces are the thing to use. equirectangulars and .mov have to be significantly processed after downloading and that can slow things down. I don't think the difference in time will be noticeable with an equi, but as Denis has said, you might get slightly better quality had you converted to cube faces offline. As for .mov files, I would definitely suggest considering disabling the preview (<movdecoder> disablePreview=1</movdecoder> ). Unpacking the preview is what kills performance, especially on a Mac. Everyone I know has been very happy with .mov performance after disabling the preview.

Finally the only place where the difference is going to be incredibly different is with a .mov on a mac, otherwise, there is a difference, but I don't think you'd need to worry about it.

Zephyr

[seeinside360]

so which one is safest? mov. or cubes.... Its realy easy to get mov files from browser...

[cheathamlane]

Without any encrypting or obfuscation (whether in Flash or via server-side shenanigans), any of your presentation files are equally accessible.

[360DegreeViews]

For me, the real difference between using .mov and cubes came down to my target audience. I was excited to use mov with FPP (they could serve dual purpose for both QT and FPP) and was heading in that direction until I got word from some customers that the panoramas were not loading, and in fact were hanging their machines. Of course, I was having no trouble at all--I'm using a fast machine with lots of memory, so I decided to give it a try with an old 750MHz laptop with 64MB memory....and sure enough, for a fair sized panorama (a size most would call full-screen, I'd guess) the browser locked up during the 'parsing' phase.

For smaller panoramas, the parsing still took a LONG time...and if autorotate was on, the machine was beating itself to death. Switching to cube faces mostly solved the problem for me, and now that's the only way I'm using FPP to avoid problems with underpowered machines, although with a large enough pano, even cube face panos run slowly on my old laptop. The same large mov file viewed with QT has no problems whatsoever on the old laptop. Pity that FPP can't match the QT performance, but I suspect the limitation is in Flash itself, not FPP.

YMMV,
Bob S.

[HansNyberg]

As long as you do not use any previews the movies are just as fast as the cubefaces.
I would not use any of the single image versions as it takes time to convert and I also seen some examples of bad display.
+ you have the size limit which means you just can not use larger than what corresponds to 1360x1360 cubefaces.

I just started a couple of tests at panoramas.dk.
I have an alternative version for the everest on the fullscreen and my current feature has both versions to choose.

http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen2/full22.html

The everest is no success, even if the link is very visible only very few choose to see the flash version.
First week 30.000 unique visits on the page and only 734 on the flash.
Unless Quicktime has increased with 25% since I tested it a couple of years ago there must be at least 4000 who just leaves the page seeing no panorama.
From the first day it looks like the one on the frontpage gets 50-50 but many of them seems to choose the flash by curiosity not because they do not have Quickime.

Hans

[joantna]

Hi all,
I have doing some tests too, and did not found great time differences between the cube faces and the movs. But if you use a mov with preview, the psicological effect is that the mov download faster (at least for me).

Look a this comparison:

This are individual cubefaces:
http://www.viajesvirtuales.es/2/79/1/hd.html

And this is a single mov:
http://www.viajesvirtuales.es/2/79/2/hd.html

What do you think?

[HansNyberg]

Looks like there is a limit for some really old processors. I also powered up an old PC I have for testing.
Its an 867 mHZ with 256mb ram.
The flash/QTVR version freezes the computer completelly. It seeems to download fine but can not complete the page.
Cubefaces works even if transitions are painfully slow.
I did test this for my first flash site.

However on my old powerbook 1hgz 4 years old the Flash version of the Queen Victoria works perfect, fast and smooth.

Hans
www.panoramas.dk

[HansNyberg]

I done some more tests on the old Windows machine.
It turned out that in Firefox the QTVR-flash page worked fine.

The problem may be the crappy Internet Explorer, not the movdecoder.

Hans