Capture, Edit and Compress HDV
 

Please help?

Okay, so first, my apologies being a "newbie." Have an XH-A1 and can capture the video now by Firewire using Pinnacle Studio 10. Video looks really good capturing it as an AVI file, DV.

My question is this: My website consists of mostly nature photography and now I'm wanting to put some video clips on there as well. Obviously, many of you know how to do this with getting great video quality, yet small file size and that will play back. So what settings should I use? The problem when capturing as DV (an AVI file), the file is HUGE! Then when editing, I can save as an MPEG, AVI, etc. - what do you recommend, and at what settings to get the kind of quality you guys are getting, yet not at 900MB?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Billy Griffin
www.billygriffin.com

If you are on a PC, download the free Windows Media Encoder and the latest templates for it from Micro$oft, and try making some wmv files .... they can look real good at modest bitrates.

Should I be making WMV files as HD, High-Quality NTSC, ??? Pinnacle Studio 10 allows several options for saving the edited project. I'm so new to this, I would just like (for now) some advice on what settings I should capture to and what I should save the project as (settings).

And yes, I'm on a PC.

It depends on who your audience is, what internet connection they have, and how you want them to access the file (streaming? downloading?).

A typical DSL connection probably wont let someone stream your file if its actually still in HD dimensions.

Just as a starting point, here's a "recipe" for a very small file, suitable for a website. Not HD, but still widescreen.

Image size 480x360
16:9 screen aspect
4:3 pixel aspect
512kbps WMV9 codec
29.97 fps
Constrained VBR 2pass
Non-interlaced
44Khz 16 bit stereo CBR WMA9.2 audio

Hope that helps get you started. Search this forum for "wmv" for more threads with advice.

I've got some posted on my site now...

www.billygriffin.com

What do you think? Are you able to view them, and if so, how's the video quality?

Thanks.

Pretty good quality but I had to wait until the whole file downloaded - maybe you missed a setting when starting the encoder. You should choose "web server - progressive download".

I would increase the data rate. The quality of the encode is not that good. Lower the frame size, increase the data rate, and maybe it comes out a bit better.

What frame size would you recommend?

As Graham said, it depends on your audience. I would say that 1280X720 still gets the huge point across. But most people use 400X224 to put HD they shot on to a web site.

The highest I would go with is 960 x 540 x 29.97 fps. The reason is that that is what the native resolution of the sensors on most of the current hdv cameras and the highest you can go without interpolation. If I'm encoding any of the mpeg4 variations (like DivX), I'll go 960x544 so that both dimensions are multiples of 16 (which makes for a better encode).