best compression for full screen video

[Craig Seeman]

What format was it shot on and were you given that source file or when that was further compressed?

What was your data rate?

What software are you using to compress it so we might make specific suggestions?

Was this shot with a pro mist filter or equivalent? It has that Barbara Walters look if you know what a mean.

[Ernie Geefay]

We shot on beta SP with a soft filter.
Edited in media 100
Exported into after effects 7
Exported out of AE 7 to an flv file using
Best settings 640×480

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Well for starters you’re using just about the worst program to compress your video.

Render out of AE uncompressed, and then use an advanced compression program like Sorenson Squeeze or On2 Flix Pro – it will improve your quality greatly.

AE, while able to compress is not designed to compress and has no tools for quality upkeep.

Watch this video for a basic understanding of the problem – it’s just an intro, but it makes the point:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/ITKVS/Compression_Pt_1_Fixed.mov

Without advanced compression software, your video will never look as good as it can.

But that said, if you don;t have the option of using/buying squeeze or flix, try increasing your data rate a bit. It can only go so far, but maybe it will help. It will also make your file a lot larger. Squeeze (for example) can keep the file size lower with drastic improvements in quality.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web

[Ben Waggoner]

You’ve got a problem there – Flash simply doesn’t offer good scaling quality to full screen. Even if your encode @ 640×480 is perfect, it won’t look good on larger screens.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Daniel Low]

Although I agree that you should be using a dedicated encoding application and that Flash does not scale well (up or down), it is possible however to achieve ‘great results’ at full screen.

See:
https://www.vividas.com/showcase.php

[Mike Cohen]

let me add that it depends what full screen is. Full screen at 800×600 will look better than full screen at 1024×768 and on up. My display is 1600×1200, anything short of Quicktime HD does not look great full screen.
I have seen some good full screen video using DIVX, however most people do not have DIVX player.
Quicktime MP4 or H.264 can give very good results, but fewer people have Quicktime than you might think.
The new Flash Player 9+ supposedly plays MP4, so we are eagerly waiting for that to equalize the playing field for online video, and allow us to use MP4.

Mike