codec for web

Krebs

Member
I am uploading video to the web typically 30 minute shows and would like to know what export settings will give me the most reasonable file size without quality making it hard to watch.
I shoot DV and edit on final cut pro 5.1.4

Sorenson squeeze, mpeg4, m2v... what works best for you?

Thanks,
MIKE
 

PHX Shooter

Well-known member
What are you planning on using for the player? My personal favorite is to use Flash video and the On2 VP6 codec. I like using an aspect ratio of 400x300 (sometimes 480x360). I also try to limit my bandwidth to 300-350 Kbs (including audio) to keep playback from stuttering (rebufferiing) across a wide variety of user connection speeds. I pretty much assume anyone wanting to view my videos will have some form of broadband connection.
 

Krebs

Member
I have been uploading it to google and embedding onto our website.
Internet video is new to me so I am open for suggestions.
 

Alaska cameradude

Well-known member
H 264 I think is great! If you have sorenson squeeze 4.5, go under MPEG-4 and double click on one of the presets. Under "Codec" use Sorenson AVC Pro or Apple AVC....it stands for Advanced Video Coding or something, but it is H 264. Then you can set your data rate and frame size.....you should get good quality stuff pretty small using H 264 or AVC or whatever you call it.
 

Dan R.

Well-known member
I use both Windows Media and Flash (flv) which all work pretty well. I usually encode WMVs at 700 kbps at 320x240 with 48khz audio (22kbps or higher for audio). File sizes are not too bad, and the quality is good enough that the 320x240 can be viewed decently at full screen.

With Flash it is a bit trickier to find the happy medium. I've found that I need to encode at 1mbps to get similar quality as the WMVs at 700k. The file sizes are slightly smaller than the WMVs, but tend to play better embedded in web pages than the WMVs.

I'm on the fence as to which is better for day-to-day use. Both Flash and Windows Media are virtually guaranteed to play on everyone's computer (including Macs). I think embedded flash is more professional-looking, but there are extra steps to get the full-screen capability that a WMV has.

File size, thankfully, is becoming less and less of an issue with the increasing use of broadband. Recently I've been posting 700x394 widescreen WMV files at 2mbps, and they will play flawlessly with little initial buffering needed on most broadband connections.
 

Alaska cameradude

Well-known member
Well, there are some windows media files that will not play on my (mac) computer, and I have the Flip4Mac plug in that is supposed allow macs to play windows media files. Anytime you use the WM video 9 Advanced codec (which is the best windows media codec in my opinion), it is going to give people on macs a problem. In fact when I use Sorenson 4.5 to encode windows media files it will actually give me a warning that the file will not play back on Macs if I use that codec....so that may be the problem I am running into with some windows media files. H 264 will play in quicktime 7 player which is a free download and will work on PCs or Macs. But the computer has to be a fairly new model to have the power to play back H 264....so those on older computers will not be able to play it back

Really when you are doing this, you have to kind of look at who your audience is and what kind of computers they are likely to have. People in the business field are likely to have PC's so I'd probably use the Windows media route. If I was sending it to people in the media/production/arts community you have to think about Macs a lot more as they have a pretty big share in those communities. No matter what you use, quicktime, windows media, flash, or real player media you are going to have someone who it doesn't work for. If I was you and I could swing it, I may do more than one version....one in windows media video V9 Advanced, one in H 264, and one in flash.....you can set up sorenson to encode all three of these on one job....of course that may be too much work in which case you just make your best choice and roll with it.
 
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