What codec to use?

[Don Bazley]

I've searched the forums a bit and can't find the answer so I figured I'd go ahead and post...

I have Adobe Premier Pro (upgrading to 2.0 soon, but not yet). I'm looking to post a 20M file of "as high a quality as possible" on my website as a sample. The video will be about 2 minutes long and be 509x382. What is the best way for me to get the video out of PP? I've heard that the Adobe Media Encoder is not so great. I haven't been able to get what I want with it. What else can I try? Is the Adobe Media Encoder the only way for me to get my video out of PP? Would Cleaner or Quicktime help?

Perhaps I'm asking the wrong question. My bottom line is that I'm starting a wedding video business and I want to have a 2 minute clip on my website as a sample. I'm hoping to keep the file size under 20M. Any thoughts recommendations are appreciated.

[Emre Safak]

Use one of these codecs: Flash 8, Quicktime 7, Windows Media 9. I don't know which are supported by your application, so you will have to find out.

[Stick Tully]

i personally use quicktime

mpeg 4 is quick and leaves u with good quality and a small file size.. the latest quicktime comes with itunes and a lot of people have itunes on their comps so most people should be able to play it

quicktime can also encode using h.264 compression, its incredible. The quality and size is the best ive found but encoding takes a very, very long time

if you have the time maybe go for that, if not i'd use quicktime mpeg 4... ive only encoded using quicktime pro but maybe adobe prem can do it in its media encoder function

Good luck if you get stuck let me know and ill try and help out again, ive only been here a few weeks and i owe this board big already

[Don Bazley]

Thanks guys. Quicktime for MPEG4 and/or H.264 is exactly what I was thinking would be good. I think I'll get Quicktime Pro. I'll let you know how I make out.

-Don

[James Binder]

Windows media 9 with respect to its ubiquity is about as good as it gets at this point. For quick 'streaming' combined with great quality, go with a wmv file…

Yes h.264 is amazing, but the quicktime format still lags a bit behind Windows media 9 in terms of its ease of use (on the web) and again, ubiquity.

[Nick Weeks]

I recommend doing both Quicktime and WIndows Media.

I have both a mac and a PC, and viewing Quicktime on the mac is very fast, but Windows Media suffers. The reverse is true on Windows: Windows Media is very fast to start, while Quicktime is slow and choppy.

With that in mind, the Flash players seem to work excellent on both of my machines with no trouble. So that would be your best bet, but you'll lose some quality I believe.

I think the H264 codec and WMV 9 are very similar in quality and filesize. The downside here is I think you have to buy Quicktime Pro for Windows to encode, but I may be wrong.

[Ervin Farkas]

Last time I checked statistics, Flash was installed on 95+% of all computers. Second is Windows Media with over 90%, QT is way low. So it all depends on what your target audience is - if you know they all have QT, go for it; if you want to play it safe, go for Flash.

I will second James, I tested all of them... WinMedia is leaps ahead of QT at the same compression rate (same file size).

[Don Bazley]

Thanks for all the input. It does look like Flash is the way to go. Thanks again for everyone's comments.

-Don

[Vince Baker]

Although flash is present on most pc's it is always easier to use your editing suite and output as media player or quicktime format.

You should cover almost all options if you go for the option of two formats, let the visitor choose to view in either media player or quicktime.