Space is dark. Really dark. And when you try to share the beauty of EVE Frontier's void with the world, YouTube's compression algorithms turn those subtle gradient transitions into blocky, banded artifacts. The shadows that made your cinematic feel immersive become distracting stair-step patterns.
We built Awakened Cinema to solve this problem—a curated video gallery inside EF-Map that delivers preservation-grade playback without the compression artifacts that plague social media uploads. Today we're announcing its launch with three cinematics from community creator BadpixelP45, all streaming at up to 4K resolution.
The Problem: YouTube Compression Destroys Dark Gradients
EVE Frontier is visually stunning, but its aesthetic—deep space blacks, subtle nebula gradients, the gentle glow of distant stars—is precisely what modern video compression handles worst. YouTube and other platforms use aggressive encoding that prioritizes small file sizes over gradient fidelity.
The result? Banding. Those smooth color transitions become visible bands of discrete colors. Dark scenes that looked cinematic in your editor become unwatchable artifacts when viewed online.
This isn't YouTube being malicious—they're serving billions of videos and need to optimize for bandwidth. But it means EVE Frontier content creators face a choice: accept degraded quality or find another way.
First Attempt: Cloudflare Stream (Fast, But Capped)
Our first approach was Cloudflare Stream—a managed video hosting service that handles encoding, storage, and delivery. Upload a video, get an embed code, done.
Why We Moved Away
Cloudflare Stream caps output at 1080p maximum, regardless of source resolution. For 4K cinematics, this was a non-starter. Stream remains a solid choice for quick embeds where resolution isn't critical, but we needed full quality control.
Stream worked well for initial testing, but the 1080p limitation meant we were still compromising on the very thing we set out to fix: visual fidelity.
The Solution: DIY HLS on Cloudflare R2
We built our own streaming pipeline using HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) hosted on Cloudflare R2 object storage. This gives us complete control over encoding parameters, resolution ladders, and quality settings.
How It Works
The architecture is straightforward:
- Encode locally: We use FFmpeg to generate an HLS "ladder"—multiple quality levels (4K, 1440p, 1080p, 720p) with fMP4 segments
- Upload to R2: The encoded segments and playlists go into a Cloudflare R2 bucket
- Serve via Worker: Our Cloudflare Worker handles
/api/media/*requests, serving content with correct MIME types and range request support - Play with hls.js: The browser uses hls.js to adaptively stream the content
Key Advantage: CRF 14 Encoding
We encode at CRF 14—a quality level that preserves gradients while remaining practical for storage. This is significantly higher quality than YouTube's re-encoding, which prioritizes bandwidth over fidelity. The difference in dark scenes is immediately visible.
Quality Selector
Unlike YouTube, we expose the quality selection to users. Chrome and Firefox's native video controls don't show HLS quality options, so we built a custom selector that appears in the top-right corner of the player. Choose Auto to let the adaptive bitrate algorithm decide, or lock to a specific resolution.
For viewers with the bandwidth, this means genuine 4K playback—not 4K upscaled from a 1080p source.
Player Polish Inside EF-Map
Awakened Cinema isn't just a video host—it's a curated experience integrated into EF-Map. Here's what we focused on:
Compact Card Layout
Each video appears as a card with a 16:9 thumbnail on the right and minimal metadata on the left. One-line descriptions give context without overwhelming the interface.
Auto-Fullscreen Playback
Click ▶ Play and the video automatically enters fullscreen mode. No extra clicks, no fumbling with controls. Press ESC to exit—it's that simple.
Unobtrusive Music Credits
Music attribution matters, but it shouldn't clutter the browsing experience. Credits appear in the player view—visible when you're watching, hidden when you're browsing the catalog.
Default Window Size
The Awakened Cinema panel opens at 740×585 pixels by default—large enough to show thumbnails clearly, compact enough to not dominate your screen. Resize as you prefer; your choice is remembered.
For Creators: Contributing Content
We're inviting EVE Frontier content creators to contribute cinematics for Awakened Cinema. If you have footage you'd like preserved at full quality, here's what we need:
Creator Handoff Checklist
- Color space: SDR Rec.709 (not HDR or wide-gamut)
- Levels: Video (Limited range), not Full/PC
- Reference: Grade so it looks correct in Chrome/Edge—the browser is the primary target
- Audio: 48 kHz AAC stereo
- No crushed blacks: Check your scopes before delivery
Why these requirements? Browsers expect limited-range SDR video. Full-range masters often appear with lifted blacks or brightness mismatches in web playback. VLC may look different than browsers—browser wins for our purposes.
Launch Content: BadpixelP45 Collaboration
Awakened Cinema launches with three cinematics from BadpixelP45, a community creator who's been capturing EVE Frontier's visual beauty since early access:
| Title | Description | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Through the Frontier — Act 2 | High-energy continuation of the Frontier journey at full cinematic scale | 4K |
| Through the Frontier — Act 1 | Energetic introduction to exploration, combat, and scale | 1080p |
| Lost Signal | A quiet cinematic encounter with an anomaly at the edge of known space | 1080p |
This collaboration demonstrates what's possible when creators don't have to compromise on quality. The 4K version of Act 2 shows gradient transitions that would be destroyed by YouTube's encoding.
Costs and Sustainability
Cloudflare R2 charges for storage (~$0.015/GB/month) and egress (~$0.36/million Class B reads). At current scale—low view counts, modest catalog size—this is negligible. If Awakened Cinema grows significantly, we'll revisit, but for now the infrastructure cost is essentially a rounding error.
Try It Now
Awakened Cinema is available now in EF-Map:
- Open EF-Map
- Find Awakened Cinema in the feature bar (below EF Helper, above Map Toggles)
- Click any video to watch in fullscreen at up to 4K quality
Ready to see EVE Frontier cinematics without the banding? Open Awakened Cinema and experience preservation-grade playback.
Related Posts
- Cinematic Mode: Immersive Map Exploration — The other side of our visual experience work
- Vibe Coding: Large-Scale LLM Development — How we build features like this with AI assistance
- Transparency Report: Client-Side Architecture — The technical philosophy behind EF-Map
Feedback Welcome
Have footage you'd like to see in Awakened Cinema? Found a playback issue? Reach out on GitHub or our Discord.
The frontier's beauty deserves better than compression artifacts. Now it has a home.