Long Presentation Encoding for Flash

[Dana Salsbury]

I filmed a 1 1/2 hour presentation that the client wanted to be posted online. It took over 12hrs to export for QT from FCP, and over 12hrs again to convert the .mov to flv. Is there a faster way? I looked at Vimeo, which would negate my need to convert to flash, but they only allow 500mb per week. My .mov file is 3.5gb.

I'm thinking that if I cut it into part one and part two it would be conceivable, but I have to reduce the file size. Currently I Export to QT Conv. using QT Movie. Would AVI be smaller? I use high quality H.264 so viewers can read the type. Thoughts?

[Chris Davis]

I recently had to provide a video presentation on the web complete with live video and text (PowerPoint slides.) It was 1.5 hours. I broke it up into three half-hour segments and encoded as 1.5 Mbps WMV (Windows media.) The total size was about 900MB.

[Josh Chesarek]

Did you film in HDV or DV? (Or something else)

That is a very long export time.

I got an one hour and six minute graduation down to 426MB using H.264 mp4. with the resolution @ 480*270. Generally speaking that is enough to look good and play well on most computers and it still can full screen nicely.

Simple Thought Productions Blog Archive Crummer Summer 2008 Graduation


That took about 2 hours or so on my Quad Core PC. from an HDV source (h.264 has great ability to use multiple cores/CPUs)

[Dana Salsbury]

Thanks Josh,

HDV rendering on a quad.

I'm confused. H.264 and MP4 are two different compression types, and 480x270 is the aspect ratio and not the resolution. For quality I have a sliding scale from least to best, with no number values. I always have it set on high.

[Josh Chesarek]

Originally Posted by Dana Salsbury

Thanks Josh,

HDV rendering on a quad.

I'm confused. H.264 and MP4 are two different compression types, and 480x270 is the aspect ratio and not the resolution. For quality I have a sliding scale from least to best, with no number values. I always have it set on high.

.mp4 is a container specification. It can hold a few codecs such as H.264 or MPEG4 ASP Video

Think of a container as a way of holding all the streams of data together. That would be the Video and Audio mainly. It also keeps the info about the streams such as the way the video is encoded (the video codec (in this case h.264)) and the audio which might be mp3 or aac.

Actually 480*270 is the resolution of my video.

The aspect Ratio of 480*270 is 16:9. (Multiple first number by 9 and then devide by 16) this will return the proper height to make it 16*9. Aspect is used for the overall shape of the video before the pixel aspect ratio is applied.

The pixel aspect ratio discribes the shape of each pixel allowing them to not be square but a rectangle. 1440 becomes 1920 because it is 1.333 pixel aspect ratio. (1440* 1.333=1919.52)

Also, I have never really used the "High" "Low" settings on compressors but used actual bitrates. If your compressor allows it I would give 800 kilo bits a second at a resolution of 480*270 (widescreen 16*9) using the .h264 video codec.

I am guessing high is probably 1500Kbs or higher which is nice for the full resolution HDV but is overkill if you are scalling it down for the web.

[Josh Mellicker]

Perhaps it took so long to export from FCP because you had to render it? Did the format of the footage and sequence match?

Try exporting a reference movie, that should be way faster.

Also, I would upload an H.264 format movie for quality, and if you want compatibility for folks who don't have the latest plugin, and have control over the player used, use FlowPlayer with the FLV fallback option.

[Dana Salsbury]

I'm looking into it. Thank you so much.