Video Internet Compression at DVinfo.net

Jonathan Ames · April 20th, 2006, 12:00 PM

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?

Tim Dashwood · April 20th, 2006, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan Ames

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 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?

Paolo Ciccone · April 20th, 2006, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan Ames

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.

Warren Shultz · April 20th, 2006, 02:29 PM

Quicktime for Windows is currently available with version 7.0.3

Paolo Ciccone · April 20th, 2006, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warren Shultz

Quicktime for Windows is currently available with version 7.0.3

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

Warren Shultz · April 20th, 2006, 03:56 PM

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.

Jonathan Ames · April 20th, 2006, 04:05 PM

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 Ciccone · April 20th, 2006, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan Ames

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!

Paolo Ciccone · April 20th, 2006, 04:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warren Shultz

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.

Stephen L. Noe · April 20th, 2006, 04:45 PM

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.

Paolo Ciccone · April 20th, 2006, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen L. Noe

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"?

Warren Shultz · April 20th, 2006, 05:41 PM

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

Stephen L. Noe · April 20th, 2006, 05:55 PM

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

Jiri Bakala · April 20th, 2006, 07:03 PM

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...

Paolo Ciccone · April 20th, 2006, 07:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jiri Bakala

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.

April 20th, 2006, 12:00 PM	#1
Jonathan Ames 2nd Unit TV Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 509	Video Internet Compression 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?

April 20th, 2006, 07:03 PM	#14
Jiri Bakala Major Player Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Kelowna BC Canada Posts: 706	iSquint 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... __________________ www.ascentfilms.com

April 20th, 2006, 02:29 PM	#4
Warren Shultz Major Player Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 248	Quicktime for Windows is currently available with version 7.0.3

April 20th, 2006, 03:56 PM	#6
Warren Shultz Major Player Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 248	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.

April 20th, 2006, 04:05 PM	#7
Jonathan Ames 2nd Unit TV Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 509	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.

April 20th, 2006, 04:45 PM	#10
Stephen L. Noe Trustee Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Chicago Posts: 1,214	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.

April 20th, 2006, 05:41 PM	#12
Warren Shultz Major Player Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 248	I thought DivX was a proprietary codec. Will it work in QT as well as WMV player?

April 20th, 2006, 05:55 PM	#13
Stephen L. Noe Trustee Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Chicago Posts: 1,214	DivX will work on anything that has the DivX codec loaded. Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux etc...