OK. My turn to ask a question. For HD, what has the Board found to be the best method of exporting for web viewing, acknowledging the tradeoff between file size/frame size/frame rate/resolution. There are alot of differing opinions around here but we're all television experience-based and we don't really do internet video. For specific purposes we're using Adobe Premiere. And yes, we're working with them and they've given us their opinions but I'm very interested in what you all on the Board use coming out of Cineform Aspect?

For HD, what has the Board found to be the best method of exporting for web viewing, acknowledging the tradeoff between file size/frame size/frame rate/resolution.

I absolutely love H.264 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264) because of the amazing image quality in such a small bit-rate. If you want to see what I mean, Apple has a whole bunch of HD movie trailers encoded with H.264 in 480P, 720P and 1080P. http://www.apple.com/trailers/
The only problem is that you need some real processing horsepower to encode at a fair rate or playback these clips smoothly. Also, I'm not sure if Quicktime 7 is available for Windows yet? Anyone?

OK. My turn to ask a question. For HD, what has the Board found to be the best method of exporting for web viewing...

What is your target size/frame rate for that?
I exported a 15minute Vodcast at 640x360 (half resolution), 24fps and it turned out to be around 80Mb. Heavy to download even with a DSL line but still smaller than PhotoshopTV (between 90MB and 140MB per episode at 29.97fps) and they release a new episode every week and that is one of the most popular Vodcasts. I used H.264 from Apple's Compressor with QT wrapper. Both compression quality and temporal quality were 1/3 above "Medium". Sound was converted to mono at 44.1kHz.
If you stay on Medium quality you can save another 10%. Image degradation is visible but not horrible. Al lot depends on the content you have.

Hope this helps.

Quicktime for Windows is currently available with version 7.0.3

Quicktime for Windows is currently available with version 7.0.3

Right. As long as you have iTunes installed, that's all you need.

I'm not sure how basic info you need, Jonanthan, but the most common choices are:

QuickTime (mov)
Windows Media (wmv)
Real Media
and increasingly common Flash Video

Most Mac guys and some Windows guys much prefer QuickTime
If you go to Nate Weavers site you can see his is all Flash (www.nateweaver.com)

The most up-to-date codecs all handle 30 fps just fine if you have a relatively recent computer.

I've found it most helpful to download trailers, demos and movies I really like that play well and I load them into QuickTime or in your case you'd take them into Premiere. I'm not up on Premiere but you used to be able to use the file menu to get info on the clip and it will tell you what codec was used, what the framerate is, and what datarate was used. That way you can emulate what you like and see if it works for you.

I still like using Media Cleaner Pro to make several versions at once or you can export directly from Premiere.

Thaanks all. We're getting the clips of the Tunica shoot ready for the 2nd Unit site and I realized we know nothing about video on the web. Tomorrow's a travel day and we'll be spending the weekend in Vegas in the coach trying out several of your suggestions. So keep 'em coming. I really appreciate the help. I was talking to Joyce and she aptly put it when discussing the issue of not knowing video on the intetrnet. I said I was up a creek without a paddle. She said I dodn't even have a creek!

Paolo, I hope to see you at our JVC party. I'll be posting our space number at Circus Circus Friday aftetrnoon when I get in and we're shooting for 5:30-7:00 for our party and then we'll head over to Jared's.

Paolo, I hope to see you at our JVC party. I'll be posting our space number at Circus Circus Friday aftetrnoon when I get in and we're shooting for 5:30-7:00 for our party and then we'll head over to Jared's.

Hey Jonathan, than you for the invitation. I almost decided to come but I'll have to travel to LA, from Santa Cruz it's a day of driving, for a whole week of work from the 30th and I had to decide otherwise.
Sorry to miss this occasion to meet you and all the fine people of this forum, enjoy the show!

the most common choices are:

QuickTime (mov)
Windows Media (wmv)
Real Media
and increasingly common Flash Video


Good suggestions. I usually try to be as platform-independent as possible so I restrict the choice to QT + any standard, non proprietary, codec. Support of QuickTime on Windows is vastly superior than support of WMV on Mac OS. There is this small plugin for QT but Microsoft has no official port of WM on the Mac and that makes it a Windows-only format.
Also, in general, QT playback is smoother than WMV, at least for Web-distributed files.
Real Media was a possibility for some time but I don't think that today its quality can really compare to the others. Also, it requires additional software to encode.
Flash Video is very well supported on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux but it requires additional software to encode while, again, QuickTime is pretty much supported by any NLE.
H.264 has the benefit, as MPEG4, to be standardized and not vendor-specific so I strongly suggest to use it as a way of keeping the Net neutral.
In addition it's supported by the new Video iPods.

The only truly agnostic codec will be DivX using the HD profile. Otherwise WMV-HD or H.264 are the choices. It's good to accomodate everyone but on a PC it takes DAYS to encode H.264 using QTPro.

The only truly agnostic codec will be DivX using the HD profile. Otherwise WMV-HD or H.264 are the choices. It's good to accomodate everyone but on a PC it takes DAYS to encode H.264 using QTPro.

I'm not familiar with DivX, I'll give it a try. I agree with the speed of encoding in H.264, although I was able to encode my video in a little less than an hour on a single processor G4 1.67. On a Core Duo it should go substantially faster. In fact I did at least 10 different tries before settling for a given configuration. I used Apple Compressor, I bet there are similar products for Windows that implement the encoder in a more optimized form than QT Pro.
On another note, why H.264 is not "truly agnostic"?

I thought DivX was a proprietary codec. Will it work in QT as well as WMV player?

DivX will work on anything that has the DivX codec loaded. Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux etc...

This is an amazing compression program that is almost REAL TIME and makes very clear and small files in mpeg4 (QT). Mac only, sorry PC people...

This is an amazing compression program that is almost REAL TIME and makes very clear and small files in mpeg4 (QT). Mac only, sorry PC people...

Thank you Jiri, I'm downloading right now, I'll give it a try and compare the result with what I get from Compressor.

What is your target size/frame rate for that?
I exported a 15minute Vodcast at 640x360 (half resolution), 24fps and it turned out to be around 80Mb. Heavy to download even with a DSL line but still smaller than PhotoshopTV (between 90MB and 140MB per episode at 29.97fps) and they release a new episode every week and that is one of the most popular Vodcasts. I used H.264 from Apple's Compressor with QT wrapper. Both compression quality and temporal quality were 1/3 above "Medium". Sound was converted to mono at 44.1kHz.
If you stay on Medium quality you can save another 10%. Image degradation is visible but not horrible. Al lot depends on the content you have.

Hope this helps.
Is this Apple performance Paolo? The clips we're going to be doing are only 3 min in length and talking head and half at that.

Hey, that's a cool little program! And the author is frackin' hilarious! I dragged Stephen's m2t file over and it even does those.

As far as compatibility goes, there's a trend towards Flash video that I'm not totally against.

As far as compatibility goes, there's a trend towards Flash video that I'm not totally against.

Nate, although I agree Flash is a great one stop player (meaning you can design an entire full motion site with video rich content, and do far more than any "single install option, video only codec" can do), it is however far worse in file size to quality ratio compared to both WMV and MOV formats. I speak from personal experience as an owner/developer of a video rich web content provider. Mostly, we found customers wanted only one update for an intire web experience on a new site, so going through the process of installing Flash AND an additional codec is almost never an option, so Flash it is. However, the funny thing... although every site we develop is strictly Flash 8 (never quicktime or Windows media), yet for showing off my personal video clips I prefer the windows media format (rarley Flash) for both SD & HD, even far more so over Quicktime due to quality to file size ratios. Believe me, I wish Flash did a better job at HD streaming. Divx however rocks. =)

And I don't agree Paolo, that "QT playback is smoother than WMV", when we tested WMV against MOV we had just as smooth of playback, smaller files and better qaulity using WMV. I think it's all in compression settings and how you tweak it. But then again, we are rare in that we use 95% PC's for development, one mac for testing cross-platform only. So it's not such a surprise that WMV might play better for us on XP Pro. This is just our experience, it's not about Mac vs. PC for us, it's about the market share that we develop for and knowing your tools.

Peace!

Is this Apple performance Paolo? The clips we're going to be doing are only 3 min in length and talking head and half at that.

Yes, all my measurements are done on a G4 1.67 Powerbook. I don't use QT Pro for compression, I use Compressor. I don't know what's available on PC but I bet that there is a good compression tool for it. 3 minute long should not present any problem.

Flash video has some wonderful interactive possibilities and looks great these days.

What I like about QuickTime is how controllable it is. I can scrub through it, stop on a frame of my choice, etc.

Windows Media looks great but I find it frustrating when I can't scrub through it or study the frame I want. I guess if they all didn't have advantages and disadvantages we wouldn't have so much competition between them.

And I don't agree Paolo, that "QT playback is smoother than WMV", when we tested WMV against MOV we had just as smooth of playback, smaller files and better qaulity using WMV. I think it's all in compression settings and how you tweak it.

I didn't mean that observation as a confrontation, believe me I've been through too many "religious wars" to be wanting to start another one :)
I base my observations on tons of material that I see on the web and my experience is that the WM player always miscalculates the ratio between speed of buffering and speed of playback. There is also the frustrating, from my point of view, decision of WM to keep playing audio while the video freezes. I use both Mac and Windows machines so I'm testing this natively on XP and that's what happens whenever I watch a WM video.

While QT has its own "quirks", the playback is usually smoother, meaning that it buffers at the beginning and then plays the video at normal speed with very few, if any, interruptions. Video and audio stay in sync. I didn't compare file size, it could be that WM files are smaller but my main concern is to distribute videos that are viewable by the majority of people and QT works. Keep in mind also, that the popularity of iTunes as a distribution vehicle for network TV is likely to make this even more a reality as people have iTunes for their iPod and to watch TV shows like Lost, Desp.Wives, TikibarTv etc.
And that means that they have a great MPEG4 and H264 player.

Cheers!

I have Quicktime 7 for windows installed but I've notice a number of clips on this site that I cannot view with the message about codec not being available on the Quicktime server. I'm wondering if these were H264 encoded clips and if so why?

I have Quicktime 7 for windows installed but I've notice a number of clips on this site that I cannot view with the message about codec not being available on the Quicktime server. I'm wondering if these were H264 encoded clips and if so why?

I doubt it, H.264 is *the* new feature of QT 7. If you can give me a link to one of the files that you cannot play I can find out what codec you're missing. If they are m2t files then you need another player like VLC as .m2t are not yet supported by QT.

And I don't agree Paolo, that "QT playback is smoother than WMV", when we tested WMV against MOV we had just as smooth of playback, smaller files and better qaulity using WMV.

Also not trying to start a religious war, but I think the idea was that QT tends to play back fine on PCs but WMV can have quite a bear on macs. So if you want one or the other and want to be most compatible with both macs and PCs, then QT might be a better bet. Flash is even better still.

h.264 looks great but takes a while to compress.

Also not trying to start a religious war, but I think the idea was that QT tends to play back fine on PCs but WMV can have quite a bear on macs. So if you want one or the other and want to be most compatible with both macs and PCs, then QT might be a better bet. Flash is even better still.

h.264 looks great but takes a while to compress.


All good points and well taken, can't argue with that. :)

And yes we can all agree to our prefrences in codecs / players without the "wars".

No confrontation or offense was ever taken Paolo, none at all. And I hope that my observations did not sound as such either.

No confrontation or offense was ever taken Paolo, none at all. And I hope that my observations did not sound as such either.

Absolutely not :)

I have Quicktime 7 for windows installed but I've notice a number of clips on this site that I cannot view with the message about codec not being available on the Quicktime server. I'm wondering if these were H264 encoded clips and if so why?

I have also had the same issues recently, I get audio only and no video even with the most recent install from the QuickTime site. I'll try and find some clips when I have a few extra minutes, and maybe Paolo can figure out whats going on for the both of us.

Going back to Flash for a minute... I think Adobe did a good job with the Flash encoder directly out of PRo2 native, it saves us an extra step with SWF and FLV encoding. Very cool for web development, anyone using PPro2 tried it yet?

I do a lot of web videos mainly for approvals of TV spots or to be played back on websites for public consumption.

The most successful/compatible and least problematic format, is a 320x240x15fps quicktime with sorensen 3 codec and IMA 4:1 audio. The spatial quality slider for sorenson is around 50-60, the IMA 4:1 setting is at 16.000 or possibly 22.000 (most web approval spots are needed to be emailed and thus kept under 5mb each) This has the added benefit of not taking forever to start loading for folks still on dial up. I always have the "fast start" header option checked as well so that the video starts playing the moment enough content has been loaded (psuedo-streaming)

H.264 and these other codecs are fine and they work quite well, but the fact is MANY other folks out there don't run the latest greatest software for whatever reason dictated by their I.T. departments or themselves.

What would you rather have? that it works with no problems? Or getting a bunch of phone calls with "I see a white screen but I hear sound" or "Its a white screen and says I need an update but I'm computer illiterate"

You get the picture. :)

Mark has pointed out one of the more important issues, try rendering out at 15fps, no matter which codec you use. You might be surprised at the quality.
Most people don't have the bandwidth to play 24 to 30fps video, sd or hd.
full fps+full resoluton would be great for download only video.

What would you rather have? that it works with no problems? Or getting a bunch of phone calls with "I see a white screen but I hear sound" or "Its a white screen and says I need an update but I'm computer illiterate"

You get the picture. :)

HA! We more than get it, been there done that. I could not agree more.

Unlike creating video strictly for the TV/DVD/CD market where image quality is key, It's a different world when you have to create and deliver content for the masses over the internet. Like you said, unless you want to get a lot of ugly calls, or lose viewers in the first two clicks, you have to create as compelling content as you can while maintaining sight of the lowest common denominator. That's our reason behind the use of Flash, it has the single largest install base over any codec/viewer. It may not look as good or handle video playback as well as another codec install, but it works every time. Less important on a $5k - $10k site, but when they spend $50k - $100k on video and that again for a web site you have no room for error. [/soapbox]

Hence, the same reason you use an older Quicktime essentially.

Yep exactly Daniel.

And I must say I'm VERY impressed with the flash videos I've seen running on web sites. They look great, start rather instantly (on broadband at least) and they sound good too.

Who can write the syntax to embed a flash video (flv) in a web page? Can you please tell me what the syntax is so I can try and embed an flv in a web page?

I've always wanted to do it but never took the time to look it up.

Also,

For the video quality to compression to compatability, DivX is an incredible solution. Their group has come up with a great codec for HD web video.

We use Flash MX 2004 and embed it into SWF as a shell and then reference it that way. I might be able to generate a SWF shell for your FLV files if you tell me:

- the size (res) of the video you have encoded to FLV
- The exact name of the FLV file so it looks for it proper

Our Flash developer is at a movie right now but he is due back to the office in a few minutes (ugly project deadline Sunday, we are all working late). It would only take him a second. I mostly shoot and edit... he Flash's (as bad as that sounds).

Stephen, look at my website. Dreamweaver generated the code for my Flash video, but it's clean and easily picked apart.

Flash video clips are based on Quicktime, and use either Sorenson 3 codec (Flash 7 viewable) or On2 VP4 (only viewable with Flash 8 plug)

Nate, are you able to host your own .flv files or are they hosted remotely? They start very quickly.

I finally took the time to figured it out (http://stephenlnoe.salatar.com/Flash/flvplayer.html).

Liquid exports the flv files but I never took the time to figure out how to embed them. Now I know.

Still the quality is no where near DivX, WMV or H.264 but for web delivery I can see the benefit. Too bad Real Media had to sell out to the advertisers back in '98. They would have owned the internet delivery format.

h.264 codec on QT

Still TOO BIG. h.264 codec on QT
What bitrate had you chosen?

Encoding really can be an artform - and many of the advanced functions in Compressor are undocumented (I can't tell what they do because I don't know.)
You should decide how big you want the final file to be, then calculate what bitrate (bits per second) would be required for the program length.

We know that there are 8 bits (b) in a byte (B), 1024 Bits (b) in a KiloBit (kb), 1024 Bytes (B) in a KiloByte (KB) and 1024 KiloBytes (KB) in a MegaByte (MB.)

Therefore divide the target kb by the amount of seconds to come up with kb/s.

Program length in minutes = P
Target File size in MB = T

So (T x 1024 x 8) / (P x 60) = Target bitrate in kilobits per second (kb/s)

Divide the result by 1024 to get Megabits per second. (Mb/s)


For example, if your program is 10 minutes long and we want the final file size for the internet to be 100MB, then plug the following into the equation:

(100 x 1024 x 8) / (10 x 6) = 1365 kb/s or 1.3 Mb/s

h.264 codec on QT

Joyce, what are your settings. Medium Quality h.264 will lead excellent reasults while making the file substantially smaller than what you get with 'High Quality'.
Also, what resolution are you trying?

I doubt it, H.264 is *the* new feature of QT 7. If you can give me a link to one of the files that you cannot play I can find out what codec you're missing. If they are m2t files then you need another player like VLC as .m2t are not yet supported by QT.

They were commercials that Marc Higa shot...

http://modernartpictures.com/commercialLaguna.html

Plays fine on my machine at work...

What bitrate had you chosen?

For example, if your program is 10 minutes long and we want the final file size for the internet to be 100MB, then plug the following into the equation:

(100 x 1024 x 8) / (10 x 6) = 1365 kb/s or 1.3 Mb/s

Tim -there are about at least 3 good bitrate calculators (free) on the PC - perhaps you can recommend one for all your fellow Mac users?

This is the one I use on the PC

http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=VideoHelp_Bitrate_calculator

Great for DVD compression, but you can enter custom target sizes.

It seems like I've tried everything. I'll go into Premiere, select Video Settings, reduce the quality to 50%, set fps to 15 and codec to H.264 and I'm coming up with 100MB+ files for 3 minute .mov. Something has to be amis!

It seems like I've tried everything. I'll go into Premiere, select Video Settings, reduce the quality to 50%, set fps to 15 and codec to H.264 and I'm coming up with 100MB+ files for 3 minute .mov. Something has to be amis!
Is there a selection for "Quarter Size"?

If it's any consolataion, Joyce, I'm having the same issues. I downloaded QT 7, installed it, pulled up the Premiere file and went to export it to miovie using the same settings and I'm getting the same results. Mine's about 4 minutes and I'm getting 114MB results.

My window size is 640 X 360 which gives me a 16 X 9 result.

That's where I am too 640 X 360. BTW, where are you. I saw you today at the Jim Cameron deal but you disappeared.

SUT and guys, thanks for your help on the compression deal. Any other suggestions would be really great because 3 min videos shouldn't be 80+ MB or am i wrong???

Hi Joyce & Jonathan,

As per the dvinfo policy (http://www.dvinfo.net/network/policy.php) and code of conduct, I deleted your off-topic posts. (classified at meta-discussion.)
It isn't a good idea to let the millions of people on the internet know where you are staying while in Vegas. In the future please use private email for private discussions.

thanks,
Tim

P.S.: I've moved this to "DVD and Web Video Delivery" so you can get more advice.

It seems like I've tried everything. I'll go into Premiere, select Video Settings, reduce the quality to 50%, set fps to 15 and codec to H.264 and I'm coming up with 100MB+ files for 3 minute .mov. Something has to be amis!

Have you set Quicktime to "Pro?" When you go into the quicktime options you can punch in exactly how many kbps you would like to target. This allows you to control your encode.

If you would like your 3 minute video to come in at around 20MB, then use a bitrate of 1000kb/s. This is irregardless of codec used.