Rendering video for the web

[Ben Mahoney]

Hi guys,

I apologize if this is in the wrong thread as it might be for delivery to web. I was wondering if anyone knew render settings in Vegas to possibly render out a 45 minute video for the web. Or is that even possible to do? My client has 6 seminars that I recorded most ranging from 45 min to an hour. He wants to post them on the web, not sure if thats possible as I do not do a ton of web stuff. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Ben

[Rick Diaz]

Ben, just render to WMV as it has the highest user compatibility. If you need Mac aND Windows compatibility then use QuickTime.

[Hugh Mobley]

I would venture to say for any quality it would have to be in segments, or it will too large and it won't load, or take too long, flash might be one way because it will play faster, a 5-8 minute clip at 50 mb might take a few minutes to load depending on viewers computer, may not load for some. If the data rate down it will worse than a bad utube. On my pet sharing site i can set the max clip size to anything I want, but keep it at 100 mbs so the clip will play, and not keep rendering every few seconds which is annoying. I were to allow larger clips the bandwidth would be used up. I have 9-10 minute clips on one site but they do take quite a few minutes to load, alot of viewers run short on patience

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

I have an FX7. When I need to render videos for the web I use these presets:

[ Stream ]

1280x720
1280kb/s (video bitrate)
128kb/s 44khz audio
___

[ Download ]

1280x720
3072kb/s (video bitrate)
192kb/s 48khz audio
___

I find the quality quite acceptable.
Someone with a 2mb connection could watch the stream version in real time and download the download version quite fast.

[Stuart Campbell]

FLASH. Get yourself Squeeze. Long films, no problem.

A progressive 'stream' flash file is what you what.

OK it's not really streaming but allows us to put lengthy files on the web at good quality without buffering for the viewer. Long and short of it is, any buffering, they click away and you've lost them!

The longest clips we have it at are 15 minutes, so I can't speak for an hour. As long as your image size does not exceed 512 x 288 (if you are 16:9) then I don't see what difference an additional 30 minutes will make, it'll just be downloading while they are watching.

Obvious considerations are storage capacity on your server. Several 45 minute films at 512 x 288 will be pretty large even in FLV. The other thing is time. Rendering out of Vegas and then converting to FLV will take lots and lots of time! Several 45 minutes, well, that could take weeks! Hope your client has a deep wallet!

Things to watch out for are areas of high detail in the frame. This shows up poorly in the FLV and movement is also worth avoiding where possible. The link below was I think one of our first for web so it's good to see where we had to improve. Detail in the trees and movement during the opening exteriors should have been changed. But I think you get the idea you can have that length of film on web for your client without too many issues. It's just going to take you a long time and eat storage!

Good luck.


http://www.salixcricketbats.com

click on the 'View Film' link at top of page.

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

I've done a test with Flash Compressor some time ago.
What I noted was this:

1) Sorenson codec has really poor quality when there's motion.

2) On2 VP6 is leaps and bounds better and If I remember correctly achieves nicer results with lower bitrate.

You must be talking about Sorenson, right?

[Stuart Campbell]

Yep, that absolutely right. We found that anything with movement or high detail shows Sorenson to be poor. Keep it with still shots and it perfectly acceptable. VP6 is excellent and the one you want!

[Dale Guthormsen]

Question,

If you down load the free version of vp6 How do you actually use it? do you use it within your editing system or is it independent???

Have a great evening!!