Best compression for WEB

[Craig Seeman]

[Chris Blair] “Oh I agree with you…but if his web people have it in their head that flv files are the way to go….we’ve just found it’s often a tough battle to try to convince web designers and administrators that H264 is the better long-term choice. There’s a lot of resistance to it in this part of the country. “

If I hired an expert professional to do a job I wouldn’t then tell them that their methods are wrong. Your job as a professional is advise the client on what needs to be done to meet their needs. Clients certainly know their needs. They don’t necessarily know their technology. You have to be the communicator. You need to explain that making the wrong choice will not only cost them more money as the technology changes but quite possibly a loss of their own customers by not maintain compatibility

There is NO extra special effort to use H.264 in Flash. It just works assuming they’re using current software. If they’re not then they have to measure the cost of upgrade vs cost of re-encoding or otherwise re-doing all their material.

I was recently contacted by one would be client which is now facing a devastating financial decision. They had insisted on sticking with WMV long after Flash became dominant. They want to start using H.264 going forward because they finally got where the market is going. They wanted to continue using their WMV material. I told them they could use Silverlight which will handle both. They had already done the simple market research on Silverlight vs Flash market share. They are now backed in a financial decision which means re-encoding all their WMV sources (many of which are lost) or abandoning their library. The time to learn about wearing a seat belt is not after the head on collision.

BTW have a look at this article (sorry to point off site)
https://www.macworld.com/article/146820/2010/03/virgin_site.html
Virgin America is going to abandon Flash because the iPhone users are an important part of the market. I can’t say this loudly enough, HTML5 will happen reasonably quickly. At least H.264 files will be portable. Anybody who is still using WMV or FLV without mandated technical need (or knowing that the files have no longevity) is going to be for a really hard financial hit . . . in a current economy where such things can be major damage to a business.

A travel related business such as Virgin America is probably more sensitive to this than others because I’m sure a large portion of their customer base are access their resources and services while traveling (using their iPhone).

[Joseph W. bourke]

Harold –

I think your question got lost in the argument that has ensued from your original post. I am relatively new to the encoding world, but I am very experienced in the video and motion graphics world. While browsing through Borders looking for the latest Flash book to save my inexperienced butt, I ran across this:

Video with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional: Studio Techniques
by Robert Reinhardt

Even if you don’t own Flash CS4, this book will give you a whole lot of answers (objectively) on which codec is right for which use. It seems to boil down to what you “think” your website viewers own as far as OS, browser, and connection speed. There is a DVD with the book (at 60 bucks, it better have a DVD!) that includes a calculator in Excel format that helps you figure out how to optimize your video for the web. It’s the best 60 bucks (actually I had a 30% off coupon) I’ve spent in a long time. You can probably take a look at it on books.google.com as well, and see if it suits your needs. Good luck – encoding is almost a dark art.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Craig Seeman]

The problem with books is that between the time they are written, published, distributed, the world may have changed. Things are accelerating very quickly. I can’t speak to the specific book but the iPhone is growing and Google Android certainly is a major player. One of the advantages of e-books and even subscription based ever updating content in technology fields as that dissemination has a much better chance of keeping pace with technology . . . and it may be one of the big advantages to owning a “Flashless” iPad.

This is ALL about the original poster’s issue and it deserves the attention we’ve been giving it because the decisions needed in this market involve huge financial considerations on all sides. I can’t recall any other point in which there was this much “volatility” in media technology.

[Daniel Low]

I’ve historically (the last 20 years or so) found it the case that those who don’t have Mac’s in their businesses or indeed haven’t even used a Mac in anger, generally don’t take any notice of, or poo poo any Mac or Apple related news. (These are the same people who insist on using MAC rather than Mac). Those that for some reason would prefer if Apple didn’t exist and hide their head in the sand over it all.

The success of Final Cut has rocked the production community.
The success of the iPod rocked the PMP industry.
The success of iTunes has totally changed the music industry.
The success of iPhone totally kicked an entire industries’ arses, taking them totally by surprise and changing the landscape for good. Huge players in those industries will spend the rest of their existence’s trying to catch up and will never succeed.

__________________________________________________________________
Sent from my iPad Nano.

[Craig Seeman]

Interesting speculation on Wired/WebMonkey. If (when) IE9 supports HTML5 more thoroughly the deal is done IMHO.

Microsoft to Double Down on HTML5 With Internet Explorer 9
https://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Microsoft_to_Double_Down_on_HTML5_With_Internet_Explorer_9?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

[Daniel Low]

Forget a book for $60, it’s already out of date.

Robert Reinhardt’s website is here: https://blogs.flashsupport.com/robert/
And the Calculators are here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/20/862224
https://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/apps/flv_bitrate_calculator/video_sizes.html

More:
https://www.flashsupport.com/forum/

__________________________________________________________________
Sent from my iPad Nano.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Some of us like to work with material that has organizational and navigational content. Generally speaking, a website doesn’t lay down the teaching materials in any cohesive format. A book does, even if it’s 12 minutes out of date.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Daniel Low]

[Joseph W. Bourke] “Generally speaking, a website doesn’t lay down the teaching materials in any cohesive format. A book does, even if it’s 12 minutes out of date. “

Agreed, but it’s much easier to search a website. That book was first published in April 2009 and probably took at least 6 months to write, so more like 18 months out of date.

__________________________________________________________________
Sent from my iPad Nano.

[Craig Seeman]

[Joseph W. Bourke] “A book does, even if it’s 12 minutes out of date. “
Months out of date and while technical information may be accurate it may be incomplete and conclusions based on information at the time of publishing. Books are fine for learning things that don’t change rapidly such as a program that only gets update every 18months. Books are fine if one is learning about H.264 compression or Flash. Such books may not have information regarding the changing market though. Books that deal with time sensitive material are more likely to be accurate if the publishers update them as circumstances change.

[Joseph W. Bourke] “Some of us like to work with material that has organizational and navigational content.”
And this separates a well designed e-book, e-zine, website from poorly designed ones.

The left side of Jan Ozer’s site makes it very easy to find specific subjects and follow a linear progression if you like. The right side keeps you updated on current analysis. In many cases it includes video in addition to text. All of which can be changed as new information develops.
https://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/

[Harold Ek]

Again, thanks to all who have contributed!

At this point I will go to the flv format our web managers have suggested ( I seem to have solved the the flv encoding problem). Fortunately legacy files are not a problem for our application. Most files are replaced each month, with none having longer than 1 yr life. Therefor a subsequent change in encoding is not a big problem.

Today I was experimenting with various Squeeze 6 encoding presets for Flash. I was viewing them on our PC using the Adobe Media Player.

Is there any danger in making decisions based on the visual quality that way without actually uploading and viewing them on the web?

I was very surprised at the dramatic improvement in quality that moving from 1 pass cbr to 2 pass vbr made. With the 2 pass I was able to reduce at least 2 steps in data rate with about equivalent visual quality. Am I fooling myself somehow?