Whats the best CURRENT option for web delivery
 

My head is ready to explode trying to figure out which method of delivery is most suited to my needs.

I want quick start streaming playback, and highquality with small file size.

Do I go with flash, quicktime, wmv or real.

I think I am correct in saying Vegas can do all of these bar flash.

Then I start hearing about H264, Sorenson Squeeze and On2.......ARGH!!!!!!!

Would somebody please give me a nudge in the correct direction.

or

Some guys seem to be able to get REALLY nice looking compressed footage which I'm struggling to replicate even if I use the same frame sizes, frame rates and any combination of settings.

At the moment, I'm encoding using wmv and Quick Time.

Thanks In Advance!

There's a lot of info regarding this on this board, I would try a search of 'web delivery'. That being said, you almost have to provide online video which will target your audience. For instance, I have a target audience that doesn't have quicktime, why the hell not, who knows. But it's a large audience, so I decided to go with wmv on my site. I can provide a quicktime alternative if needed, infact I typically post the wmv and have the quicktime for download.

You'll find a lot of opinions on software, I would try out some trials and ask those software developers how you can get thier software to match what you've seen. Take that link you have that has nice video and say 'software developer, I want to do this, tell me how and what settings'. They want you to buy thier software, and you may find what works best for you this way.

Hope it helps.

I'm sure other folks have vaild opinions, but IMHO (as a web professional, if that makes any difference) nothing is better than On2 VP6 flv (flash 8 video) when it comes to instant playback, great quality, and reasonable filesize.

Flash player 8 has a 96% install base: http://www.adobe.com/products/player...netration.html

so more than likely your users won't have to install anything to view your content.

Flash video is also the overwhelming choice for most major players in the online video movement; all the network websites (nbc, abc, cbs), youtube, aol video, etc.

I would agree with Michael on this. I have a preference for h264 but unless your viewers have QT installed they won't be able to see it. On2VP6 looks good at reasonable data rates. The penetration of Flash across platforms really seals the deal. For maximum compatibility there's nothing out there at this time to challenge Flash.

well seeing as this is the Vegas forum, how do I get to flash 8 for web delivery from my Vegas timeline?

Unfortunaltey, I don't know of a 1-step process to output an FLV straight from vegas. I usually render out an mpg2 from vegas and then encode that to FLV using the flash 8 video encoder (it came with flash 8; I'm not sure what the encoder is called in CS3).

Sorenson Squeeze is another popular way to make FLV files:
http://www.sorensonmedia.com/pages/?pageID=95

If you don't have extra funds, you can use the free Riva FLV encoder: http://www.rivavx.com/?encoder
(but I'm pretty sure it won't do the on2 vp6 codec)

Just wondering what On2 VP6 is (well, obviously a compression scheme), but is it for flash files only?

My preference is for Flash. But in Sony Vegas, I've found Windows Media files using 2-Pass CBR to be decent for web delivery.

Yes. This is the flash codec that finally made flash video acceptable for most of us. Beware of the previous flash codec, Sorenson Spark. It isn't very good for most purposes.

Best quality for the bitrate - windows media 9.
Best scaling on playback/blow up to full screen - windows media.
Best player penetration - flash/windows media.
Best cross-platform penetration across windows/mac/linux - flash.
Most often used for downloadable video - Quicktime.
Most robust digital rights management - windows media.

It's all about knowing your audience. Flash certainly has come a long way with the VP2 codec after years of relatively poor quality.

Although there are claims of 98% flash penetration, video-capable flash is closer to 94%, which means about the same as windows media. However, there is a big hole in windows media penetration for mac users.

Current windows media codecs will be usable, with automatic codec download, down to windows 98 machines (WMP7).

I have on2's FlixPro8. It's $249. www.on2.com/consumer I'm still tweaking settings but from Vegas I set my project properties for progressive HDV 1440 x 1080 (progressive scan, blend fields), and render as an AVI. Then convert via FlixPro. It's an extra step but the results are decent.

Check out a sample at www.cutlassfilm.com. Just click the play button on the home page, and it should stream pretty well.

I sympathise! I think flash is great, especially the ON2 codec (think that's what it's called). However, flash can be tricky to implement on some sites - explorer has recently changed its policy on embedded flash so it's not quite as straightforward as it used to be. But I'd still recommend it as the current choice (which is what you wanted to know!).

My 2 cents: although I can't get it to export directly from Vegas, I'm a convert to Divx - see a hd harp video at http://stage6.divx.com/user/Mark_the...p---HD-version - but again, Flash is probably the most common one.

I'd say Real Media is definitely not worth using, and although quicktime looks good but I think both RM and QT lose goodwill by getting people to install other stuff they don't really want just to get the players.

Windows media video is really great - but in my experience you really have to play hard with the encoder to get it looking really good - the usual trick being to try a few seconds of video and see what it looks like.

The DivX codecs make really lovely looking video for quite small file sizes - one to watch for the future, I think!

Great piece, Mark. Nicely done, indeed.

I am looking closer at divx for a better way to deliver higher quality online... and there's no doubt that divx can deliver it.

Great post Mark...

I too have found similiar findings to yourself. Nice to see I'm not the only guy who's played with Windows Media for HOURS exporting 2 seconds of video to try and nail down what looks best with reasonable file sizes. :)

Ratio problems
 

My biggest beef with WMA format is the problems it has in accurately makign a widescreen formated image at anything other than full size. It just cannot do it. I ended up needing to import the 16:9 project into a 4:3 project in order to properly add the black bars on top & bottom...... THEN I could render a 320x240 clip to WMA and get the proper pixel aspect ratio and proper screen proportions.

What a pain in the butt.

Quicktime seems to do a better job of providing render options at less than full screen for ratios other than 4:3.

This is a Vegas issue, not a Windows Media issue. To correctly flag widescreen, try the freeware Windows Media Encoder from Microsoft, which exposes more controls than Vegas does.

You'll get no templates, but a lot more control. Quality is the same, as Vegas' WM encoding is built upon the Windows Media SDK.

Hi Doug and Jon - thanks for your comments on my piece on Stage6. It was originally something I did to test out my set of Dedolights, but in the end I decided to post it in both SD and HD formats. Slowly getting better at Vegas...!

I have had similar issues with WMV but I was just about to suggest the Windows Media Encoder too - only Seth snuck in first!!!

That might have been true at some point but doesn't appear to be the case now. Flash seems to rule lately, and someone from Flip4Mac said a while back that WMV has passed Quicktime in terms of new video uploads. Personally I find WMV to be easiest to use until I get the hang of Flash.

Flash is by far the front runner with WMV trailing.
www.streamingmedia.com has fairly up to date info that they post regularly.
YouTube alone, seriously skews any results for streaming media, however.

Data with out YouTube
 

It would be good to see what the "non-user generated content" web sites use for video as that should more accurately represent content creators. YouTube users don't have a choice (and generally have no clue) regarding what video codec is being used for their cell phone lip sync video.

jason

I am using WMV.

Settings are:

--------------------
Video rendering quality: Good
--------------------

--------------------
Audio = CBR with attributes of 22 kbps, 22 khz, stereo (A/V) CBR
--------------------

--------------------
Video Settings =

Mode: Quality VBR
Image size: Animation (320x240)
Pixel aspect ratio: 1.333 (HD 1080)
Frame rate (fps): 30.000 seconds per keyfram: 3
Quality: 90%

The VBR setting means I don't have to fiddle with the bit rate settings.
--------------------

Even though the pixel aspect ratio is 1.333 (HD 1080) I can use this setting with SD wide screen with no problems. If I set the attributes of the video events so as not to maintain aspect ratio there will be no black bars on the top and bottom of the videos. Since I don't embed the videos I don't really need this. Render times with no filters is a little faster than real time on most files. Depends on the video itself.

If you want to see examples of my videos simply go to www.vidmus.com/scolvs and view them.

One thing I like about wmv is that it is easy to download the videos and view them off-line. With flash it may be possible but I can't seem to find a way to do so. Maybe the sites I visit don't want this? Saves repeat bandwidth use when one wants to view the files again later on.

So far I get great quality, reasonable file sizes and I can do it all from the Vegas time-line and not have to do the extra steps that flash would require.

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

Agreed, I've used DivX since I first heard of it last year... how many people will install the player? I'd love for a Stage6 type platform to replace youtube.

I do use it to compress .avi before sending them to youtube. The results are pretty good, though it means an extra step.

I actually was able to do this right from Vegas, but I needed to set the pixel size to 1.212 and then set the image size to 360x240 to match the screen size. It actually turned out rather nice.
OK, thinking back , I am not sure if those are the absolute correct numbers, but I made it work by setting up a 'custom' render setting for WMV and changed the pixel size and image size settings. That machine is currently rendering so I can't check the numbers... ;)

Andrew

Digital Juice has tons of great "how-to" videos available for download and one of them talks specifically about how they get such killer quality for their web videos. If you haven't watched these before, you are in for a treat. Go back through their archives and check out some of their videos. Then look at this one to see how they do it:
http://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/seg...searchid=16522

Enjoy!

Andrew

Anybody care to share the "magic ingrediants" that go into making a flash movie that will stream smoothly.

Interested in what playback rate you are using and what frame size.

I use 15fps and 320x240 - seems to work great...

Halving the frame rate helps immeasurably. Jerky motion is preferable to blocky frames.

We use the iPod template with a couple alterations, but at 30fps, it goes nicely to YouTube. We've deeply compared 1Mbps iPod template with 1Mbps WMV template, and the MP4 gives a better conversion to Flash, but it's mostly noticeable in gradients, not hard contrasts.

Oh...now thats raised another question. I was going on the basis that I should try and work from the original source file which in this case was a widescreen avi, which I then converted to 480 x 270 flv file.
Am I picking you up right that you convert to ipod mp4 first, then convert this to flv?
Obviously there is a reason for this, I'm just thinking that you are compressing an already compressed file rather than a higher quality original.

Am I missing something?

112, 256, 384, 512, 756, 1Mb....so many streaming rates to choose from! In a non scaleable 480 x 270 window, 256 is looking pretty good in my book, and, with the lousy download speeds over here (supposed 8Mb connection giving downstream off 300k) , I have more chance of it streaming.

What would you say was the most common streaming rate to use?

Would rate my uploaded clips?
 

Hi, I am a DP on a super-8 film.
Very short clips can be found on www.dalidalidali.com
Or you can skip and go directly to the longest of the clips

http://www.turpasilhouette.com/trailer.html

I'd like feedback on how it plays back, loading time, clarity, ect.

Thanks in advance!

-----------------------------------------------------

I have to apologize, I did a topic search and this topic seemed the perfect one to post my question on and Now I realize it is under the vegas video forum and not the web delivery forum.

sorry about that, however, how does the image hold up, sync, do you see dropped any dropped frames?

At ColonelCrush we use Sorenson Squeeze at 480x272 to make Flash flv files. Music is important to us, so we go with 128 kbps stereo audio and 360 kbps video. For episodes with muzzle flashes and fast action, we render at 30 fps. (We shoot 30p.) Otherwise we would sometimes miss critical frames. For slower stuff, we go with 15 fps.

One thing to be aware of is that lots of compressors crush the blacks to lower noise, so they can allocate the bits to the bright areas. We often shoot dark scenes, and this kills everything in the shadows. I'd much rather have noise in the blacks than no dark content at all!

Our fix is to render out an AVI with the brightness pushed up by 11% and the contrast reduced by 11%. The flv rendered by Sorenson then matches the original edit reasonably well.

Here's our latest example, including dark content, muzzle flashes and stereo music: http://colonelcrush.com/movie/index/00220501 We're pleased with the quality vs. bandwidth that we've been able to achieve - even with this challenging content.

BTW, if you choose Windows Media, Mac people will give you (well deserved) hell. Many film, video, music and advertising people use Macs, so Macs should be respected.

Nobody has ever complained to us about using Flash. If they don't have the plugin, then they have made the limiting choice, not us.

I've noticed that when I encode with the H.264 or On2 VP6 codecs, the audio stream lags behind the video...

It could be my settings - I'm not an expert, but any help on figuring out this problem would be greatly appreciated.

All the contenders are neck and neck: Flash 8, Quicktime 7, Windows Media 9.

What do you create them with? Are there any samples online?

Emre,

Here's an example: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...01912991&hl=en

You'll notice the sync problems with the gun shots and punching scenes and midway there's a shot with 2 kids. I synced up a "BAM" when the kid on the right hits the cap of the kid on the left.

I've tried Sorenson Squeeze and Super to render flv's, mp4's, or avi's with H.264 codec so I can upload the best quality video to youtube.

I assume it's a setting that's causing the sync problem, but I haven't figured it out yet.

- Carlos

I don't know. They looked pretty synchronized to me. How are you doing the synchronization, by ear? Are you using ASIO drivers? Besides, it is normal to see something slightly before you hear it as light travels faster than sound.

Flash player will soon support h.264
 

I'm a little worried about progressive playback (fake streaming), but we'll see how it plays out...

http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/wh...on-web_20.html

Need step by step help
 

I checked out every reply to web delivery and not one gives me step by step settings for Vegas 7 to render video for the web. Can anybody help please?

Did you miss this one?
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=101475

So, what is it you were trying to do?

***How to make your first web video***
From the timeline of a completed project, select file | render as.
Select Windows Media Video 9, perhaps the 300Kbps template. Render it.
Open up the result and see how you like it in windows media player.
Load it on a web server and link to it from a web page - done!

***Advanced lessons***
Optimizing video for the web.
Encoding to various sizes and bitrates.
Encoding to various codecs.
Coding of embedded players for web pages.
Download, progressive download, streaming.
Custom players.

There is no one answer for web delivery - there are no standards.

Windows Media provides best quality for a given bitrate for streaming or progressive download, but isn't for all situations.

Most QT downloads then plays, and tends to be capturable by the user.

Real has decent quality and a free server but many ads, and a dwindling user base.

Flash is most fashionable, most compatible across mac/pc/linux/unix but costs more money to create, and also more to stream (vs. progressive download). And you'll need some code to make a player.

Some users have 56Kbps modems, some have 1.5Mbps access.

Note also the web delivery and dvd forum on dvinfo.

Web delivery options
 

Thanks for the help. I will try it out.