Delivery for PC Laptop

[Chip Curry]

I have a client that wants a product demo video. They will be showing it on some computer most of the time, mostly PC, I am all Mac. My question: How are you all delivering this kind of footage?
1. Is there some format that will play in Quicktime and Windows media, like H264?
2. I see a lot of good video footage on this forum, are you putting generic H264 footage on the web, and both WM and QT can read it, like an Mp3 file?
3. I could make them a DVD with DVSP, but am seeing really blocky lines when moving from high to low res. Could someone point me to the thread that discusses down-converting XDCAM formats for DVD authoring, my search is turning up too many threads.

Thanks in advance.

[Chris Leong]

Chip
Quicktime H264 files if you're not concerned about duplication. Use Flash if you want to protect your originals online. MP4, usually, goes on the web.

EX1 to SD workflow:
FCP in XDcam > QT reference file (i.e. 'standalone clip' and 'recompress video' both unchecked), then on the desktop, open the QT reference file in compressor and choose web qt7 or whatever settings you'd like. No blocking issues for me this way.

Other flows have included a downsized QT from the QT reference file above in MPEG Streamclip, quick streaming checked, direct out to either a smaller QT file or an MP4 file. All have worked well for me.

HTH
Cheers
Chris

[Andrew Hollister]

Windows Media 9 works well for the corporate types that aren't allowed to install Quicktime on their IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads -- Flip4Mac does a good job converting, so does FFMpeg and Visual Hub

What is their primary playback wish? DVD, standalone, embedded in PowerPoint? each may garner a different format...

If you are just concerned with downconverting, Compressor does a bang-up job going down to DV.

[Chip Curry]

Thanks guys, I am going take some to test and learn this workflow, may have more q and a. But...
Your comment: about differences between DVD, Power Point or Stand Alone... Yes I would like to know how you would approach these differently. They definitely are going to want Power Point.
A funny aside here, they are all PC, middle of the road corporate people, and I asked them about the look they wanted on the piece. and the woman said "Oh, Apple, Apple, Apple, we want that clean white look."

[Andrew Hollister]

Its really depending on their hardware. But for DVD, as I am sure you know, you are set to 720x480... And with PPT and standalone players you can go higher res... 800x600 or even 1024x768 if they have a decent spec machine for playing it back.

For PPT you'll definitely want to deliver Windows Media 9. Like I mentioned earlier, you can encode a few different ways Flip4Mac, FFmpeg, Visual Hub or even Windows Media Encode on the PC (freebie) And if you get your compression set right, you can have a nice crisp file at a reasonably small file size.

Oh and its quite nice to not have to interlace your pretty progressive footage.

*Tip: remind them Unlike Keynote, when they embed video into PowerPoint, the video is just linked, not actually embedded like a photo, so if they video isn't with the presso file, it won't play.

Hope this helps