I will not argue on the cause of the faulty QT installs, you are probably right... I'll just tell you that on all of the PCs I own and/or work on, the embedded QT player is a hit and miss, works with some websites, does not work with others.

This is not the "I hate xyz operating system" argument; it's the cold math: I would like to reach as many potential viewers as possible.

It's up to you to decide what gives you a larger viewer base: 98.8% Flash player or 66.8% QT (that may or may not take into consideration how many of those installed players actually work as desired).

Statistics from Adobe:

Just for clarification. I will be using an XL2 Standard Definition.
Based on what I plan to do, do you guy's recomend this path?

I cut on Adobe Premiere. The deinterlacer is simple, low-quality, and allows no customization. The resize algorithm is suboptimal and cannot be tuned. The freely-available x264 runs circles around the Adobe Media Encoder when it comes to quality and file size. And there are no allowances made for queuing render batches. On the plus side, Adobe is very easy to use.

So while Premiere may be a nice editor, I use and recommend avisynth for the highest quality output.

For the highest quality video for the web I was able to produce so far (512 Kbps, 640x480 pixels):

- I edited in the NLE (it really doesn't matter which one), output same format as original
- Deinterlaced and resized (Lanczos 3 algorith) in Virtualdub
- Encoded to mp4/H264 in MPEG Streamclip, multipass
- Playback in embedded Flash player constrained to 480x360 pixels.

Second best has been encoding to WMV straight from the Edius timeline, 512 Kbps (448 video and 64 audio), 640x480 pixels, two pass. Playback in embedded WMV player constrained to 480x360 pixels.

With a little extra work the same result can be achieved with free tools for those not on Edius:

- Edit as above
- In addition to the deinterlace/resize in VDub, increase contrast and reduce brightness a little
- Encode in free WM Encoder - the additional step in VDub is mandatory as WME lifts the blacks a little and looses some contrast.

Ervin,
I would like to try this step listed above. Is the Lanczos 3 algorith a filter?
or how does it work?

Can I down load and try it?

It seems that I may be able to settle some of my problems with VirtualDub. Which I have been trying to about 4 weeks now and not really gaining any ground. Everything I try gives me errors or something?

Virtualdub is a free download from virtualdub.org. Unzip and place in a folder on your PC, no need to install, simply run it from where you saved it. Do not use the latest beta version, use the stable version instead.

Resize is a filter within VDub, and Lanczos3 is one of the algorithms (filter mode) used for resizing, see attached image.

Ervin,
Ok you are talking about native 4:3 footage correct?
Mine if 720x480? I assume I just leave it alone?

also I could not figure out how or why yours was set at 200% for the relative % did you increase your size?

Last question.
This is just for resize correct? Should this be before of after deinterlace? and what filter do you use to deinterlace?

Thanks

This program does not allow me to save the file as an MPEG-4. Or does it?
Do I select the save as AVI and then just change the extention to .MPEG4 or -4? or MP4

also where does it give the choice of multi pass and stream clip? I never noticed these setting's?