FLV's
 

Hey guys wonder if you can help me out, im going crazy here. Im trying to compress some short video to clips (5 minutes) to put up on the web as FLV’s. ive tried everything now but still the file size is massive. For any decent sort a quality the file size is around 30 mb?? I need to get that down to around 5mb.

What im doing is ripping the clips from my demo DVD and resizing them (320 x 240) using handbrake, quality at this stage is perfect. And file size is about 200-300mb. Then im bringing into FFMPEGX or Visual Hub, which compresses them and converts it into FLV’s. Ive tried every setting on both but still the quality is dire when I try to push it to below 10mb.

Anyone anywhere have any ideas? I’ll try anything? Please!?

Not sure of the reasoning behind needing your clips to be 5-10MB but no matter what compression you use, it's going to look and sound like junk at that size.

If you download other's clips, you will see they average from 20-80MB depending on dimensions and bitrate quality.

With broadband now being the norm, being stingy with your bitrates only hurts you.

Flash might be the most wide-spread format for delivering video on the web, but unfortunately it is extremely difficult and expensive to compress to high quality. "Regular" flash in itself is (according to my own tests) far behind Windows Media and QT as far as visual quality goes for the same file size. And when I say regular, I mean the type of encoding done with free or inexpensive encoders.

What you see on the internet from big companies and get thrilled with, is higher end flash, more than likely the ON2 variety.

I keep my bit rate to an average of 750 kbps, but my short videos usually range from 20-35MBs. I tried a very low bit rate once to get it down in file size but it wasn't even worth watching after the quality to a hit. using Progressive load with flash makes it possible to watch a flash video that is above 30MBs without too much problem.

When streaming flv's, give you self a window for the video to load prior to progressively streaming the video. I render my demo video with the first frame saying something like this " Please allow 20 seconds for the video to load" then when it starts it goes into your demo. If you need assistance with the code, let me know and I will post it. The Please allow X time to load is up to you. I have found that it works best at 20secs.

If file size is an issue, you can lower the frame rate to 15fps and space apart keyframes to a higher number.

And even with ON2 encoding I am still not happy with the quality with, for example, H.264 at the same bitrate. I am using the video encoder that came with Flash Professional - the CS2 version, maybe the newer CS3 encoder improved things.

Is there a third party encoder that is significantly better than Adobe's? or should I just give the CS3 version a try?

- Martin

Dennis,

DO NOT cross post to different forums. DVINFO does not allow that. I have merged the two responses from the other thread into this one.

Pick the forum which you feel is best suited to your questions. We want all responses to a given subject to be in a single thread so that future searches will be more productive.

Thanks for your understanding,

-gb-

On that note, this thread is better suited for Web Delivery than Event Videography, so I've moved it accordingly.

I think the problem is your compressing compressed files, thus lower quality. So biterate is a moot point, you can make a 100mb flv and it still won't "look" good.
I've had some good results using the On2 codex, but I'm starting with an un-compressed file. My work flow is 720p in PPro using cineform codex. I export a full res HD file, import into After Effects where I resize the footage then export as a On2 flv. Here is an expample of the quality I'm getting. I'm using the Flash 8 encoder.

Hope this helps,
Jon

Example #1: http://www.fotgfilms.com/video/holidays.html = 11.5 Mb
Example #2: http://www.fotgfilms.com/video/tango.html = 17.6 Mb

http://www.sorensonmedia.com/ Sorenson Squeeze, I highly recommend it if you are interested in FLV format. In my opinion both MOV and WMV are better at web delivery but if you need flash with on2.

Guys, look at 4min (48,6MB) 720p h264 sample at 1,5Mbps
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/f...in_HD_H264.mp4

Video is always a speed vs quality issue. What is the bitrate you're encoding at?

750 kb is REALLY pushing it for most broadband users. Most users will not be able to watch that smoothly without waiting for substantial buffering to occur.

Unless maybe you're located down the street from your server ;)

I noticed a few people were adding frames at the begining of their players to compensate for load times. I do quite a bit of flash work so if anyone needs any "proper" preloaders building that actually guage the time left until a complete play can begin then just gimme a shout.

There's a few ways you can do it depending on whether or not the flash is streaming off the site or is embedded within the flash itself.

Either way its not a lot of work. Just shout if you want anything.

Also with regards to .mov .wmv formats, flash has one major benefit, it's not platform restrictive in anyway. So aslong as the user has a relatively modern browser they can watch the video. Bear in mind that BSD and the *Nix operating systems are really starting to take off for home users now. With DesktopBSD and god knows how many Linux distros being the main runners. WMV and MOV are awkward on these platforms as the encoding etc is closed source (boo hiss) so FLV files rule the roost as far as compatibility is concerned.

Martin, I jumped into Flash video by buying Wildpresenter Pro at a good deal, but still over $200 USD. Recently, after running trial versions, I bought Flash CS3 (about $850 CDN) and yesterday began testing the output of its encoder versus WPP. I'm surprised at how slow the Adobe version is but I haven't reached a firm conclusion re quality of output yet. I'll post when I do. I'm using 32-bit QT files (originally green screen DV AVI) as input and the VP6 Flash codec as output, making FLV's with alpha channel. But I've made plenty of 4:3 embedded player files in swf as well and the VP6 codec is not up to wmv standards. It is however good enough given what goodies come with its use, like cross platform compatibility.

David Hurdon