H.624 HD Web Delivery using Vimeo
 

I'm having problems viewing movies exported as Quicktime h.264 @ 1280x720 on my dual 1.8 G5 power mac.
When the output size is larger than 740x360 there are so many drop frames it looks like a photo slide show instead of a video. I can only watch it once it has been uploaded to Vimeo. I'm having a hard time getting it to look good on Vimeo.

Is my system too old or am I exporting it wrong?

Where does it look bad, in Quicktime or in Vimeo?

1. My mac G5 can't play HD sized movies encoded in H.264, it seems to be a very cpu intensive codec

2. The other issue, was when my movie was uploaded to Vimeo the quality went down significantly. I think this is because 1) Vimeo recompress the movie you upload and 2) My video has fast motion and constant change, which doesn't react well to their compression. Notice how bad they look full screen.

I'm going to try hosting smaller dimensioned movies on my site instead of Vimeo and might use VP6 codec instead of H.264.

Here are links to the movie posted on Vimeo and I'll repost when I upload my own flash version on my site.

2008 West Indies Parade (SD widescreen) on Vimeo
2008 West Indies Parade (High Def) on Vimeo

Check your bitrates. You can also allow the download of the original file as a different higher quality means of delivery.

If you use the new FCS 2 just use the Apple TV codec for 720p even with 1080i footage. It looks great on vimeo. This is assuming it's not a computer issue.

Here's the same video uploaded to my site instead of Vimeo. I'm using 5mbs (half of what I used on Vimeo and it looks much better).

http://creationdream.com/samples_video.php

One of the down sides of not posting on Vimeo is that movies don't stream. You need a special steaming server for that feature.