easiest way to stream my film

[Ong Wan Shu]

hi all,

I have made my short film and really really want the whole world to see it.

I am using premiere pro in XP Pro, dreamweaver UltraDev4,photoshop 7, to do my website so far. Whats the best way (low download time, no special hardware needed) to stream my short films in my website? My short films are about 11 mins long.

Sorry if this sounds newbish, i tried a search and seems that everyone's question is at a level I cant understand.

Thanks in advance!!!

[Rob Lohman]

With stream I assume you basically mean that other people can
watch it. I would not go with an actual streaming server, that
is way too complicated for you at this point in time.

Basically you need to compress/export your movie into a special
file format, put that on your webserver and link to that in your
HTML page(s).

The most common file formats used for web are:

1. QuickTime (apple), .MOV files with Sorenson encoding usually

2. Windows Media (microsoft), usually .WMV sometimes .AVI or .ASF

3. MPEG1

4. Realvideo (I would not use this personally)

There are other possabilities, but these are the most used
ones.

What is the best way for you depends on what system you
have and which software. Do you have Mac or PC? What
editing software and which version are you using?

[Ong Wan Shu]

hi Rob,

I am using a PC, my software is Premiere Pro.

Which method would you recommend?

Thanks in advance!

[Ed Smith]

Ong,

In Premiere Pro open your project you wish to export for web. From the file menu choose Export and select Adobe Media Encoder. That will give you all the choices Rob has mentioned and a few more.

You then will need to do a few tests to find out which one best suits your needs.

For Web you need to make the video size (resolution) as big as possible in as small a file size as possible with the best quality. This can be a tricky juggling act, and only you can work this out.

hope this helps,

Ed

[David Hurdon]

To add to Ed's suggestion, when you do your tests, use the work area bar to cover a minute or less and tell the encoder to encode the work area, not the project. You won't wait so long to see if the selection you made gives the results you want. Remember too that, unless disk space on your web server is quite limited, once you select templates beyond dial up, you are offering your files to broadband users, and they can watch videos up through 500-700 kbps, although individual experience varies. Certainly between 250-500 most such users will get a relatively uninterrupted viewing experience most of the time, so go for better quality if you have the storage space.

David Hurdon

[Mark Jefferson]

I have created a video tutorial on how to encode video for the web using Windows Media Encoder 9.

It is available at www.slakrboy.com/videos/videos.html