Compression for Web Videos
 

Hi Gang,

I want to get some advice on what you use to put up sample videos on the web. Obviously, there is the whole file size/quality issue to take into account, and I generally use Quicktime to put my videos on the web, but have never really got a good file size/quality balance for my sample videos that I am happy with. The movie clips are either way to big (file size) - or way to crappy image wise.

For instance - I want to take a 3 minute highlight clip and put it on the web. I would like to keep the file size to a reasonable level so the person watching it doesn't have to wait hours for it to download (less than 20mb?). How would I do this and keep the image quality relitivly high?

Right now -when I post clips to the web, I do the following:
- Use AVID to export to quicktime
- Use Cleaner to reduce image size to 400X300 px.
- I usially reduce the frame rate as well to something like 15/20 fps to keep
file size down.
- Export back out to progressive quicktime file.

Any advice?

Ryan

Hi Ryan, I use flash player, you get a 30 day trial, more than enough time to get some clips together and see if you like using it, it's simple, just like me!

Ryan, try encoding in H.264. You should be a ble to get a 3-minute clip under 20MB easily at 400x300 resolution. Although it does require Quicktime 7, I don't think it's much of a problem these days (I believe all of Apple traliers and iTunes movie/tv downloads are H.264). But just to cover yourself so that you don't lose any potential clients, you should offer another version in Flash or WMV.

Don't forget to encode the audio as well (mp3, AAC, or some form of compression).

Quicktime 7 does not work with mac OS 10.2 You have to upgrade the OS from what I know.

Yep. QT7 requires at least OS 10.3.9 on the Mac platform. Apple says it has to do with 3d party software copyright issues.

Is that not ironic?

A mac that is a bit old can't use quicktime, yet winxp can...

I uses WinXP so I'll give it a try. Just downloaded the codecs, so we'll see if that makes a difference :)

Thanks