The workflow for creating your website sample clips...
 

Hi Steven,

Great Work! I have a few questions regarding the process (workflow) that you are using to creating your Web site sample videos:

How are you getting the wider than 16:9 aspect ratio for your Quicktime sample clips? Is this wider ratio also possible for the Windows Media format?

Are you using any special settings when rendering your videos? The download (streaming) time is very good and the quality is excellent. I have found it difficult to creating web videos that have both a fast streaming speed and good picture quality.

I am using Sony Vegas for my NLE and would like to improve the quality of my Web clips. Any advice or suggestions that you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your time and consideration.

Best Regards,

Jerry Neal

Wow.

That was nice. Almost made me cry. Seriously.

Also makes me want to move to Seattle.

yeah Steven, you got it now.

Hi, I didn't realize this thread was being revived....let me try to answer your questions here...

My final output is done in Sorenson Squeeze although I just got Vegas 8 and I will now bypass Sorenson and just render mp4 files...Vegas does a great job.

The aspect ratio is set to a 2.35:1 size, also known as Cinemascope. Basically you just crop top and bottom 12.5% each. In Sorenson, you can add crop marks and then just define the final absolute size of the frame and it does the rest for you. Not sure about WMV, haven't tried it.

My ISP uses superfast servers so I have had good luck with data download speed. Other than that, I would urge you to look at the settings I used by opening up Quicktime and from the top menu go to WINDOW->SHOW MOVIE INSPECTOR

If you are just using the regular 16x9 aspect, the settings that I find to be best in Vegas 8 using the mp4 setting is to make the size 640x360 and the bitrate at 2mbps

Steven,

Great stuff!! I'm on the fence of buying the LEX (+ rods) but am wondering if I can use it without an external monitor. What is your experience?

Best regards,

Robert

Robert, it takes some getting used to but I would say I shoot about 80% of my stuff without an external monitor.

Everything in this piece was just using the LCD

Hi Steven

Thanks alot for your quick answer, that is really promising! I just started with the A1 so I want to learn a little bit more about the basics of the camera, but I miss the lower DoF in the A1!

Best regards, Robert