Compressing HDV for internet streaming

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

Compressing HDV for internet streaming

Posted by John Cade on September 2, 2008 at 11:58 am

Does anybody have any tips on how to get high quality video to run smoothly online? I’m trying to upload my short onto a film hosting site:

https://shootingpeople.org/watch/film.php?film_id=53044

I’ve followed every instruction given by the site but no matter what I try the video doesn’t run smoothly.
I’ve compressed the video as follows:

VIDEO:
file type: h.264
quality: high
frame size: 710 x 400 (as recommended by the site)
fps: 25
data rate: 3000 kbits/s

AUDIO:
Integer (little endian)
48.000khz
16-bit

The file size is normally around 80MB no matter what variables I use and the video always plays fine on my mac, but when I get it on the site its always the same, I’m thinking it may be a keyframe or data rate issue.

I’d greatly appreciate some advice before I tear my hair out completely

Thanks

John Cade replied 17 years, 8 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

David Roth weiss
September 2, 2008 at 4:15 pm

[John cade] “Does anybody have any tips on how to get high quality video to run smoothly online?”

John,

What exactly do you mean by smoothly? I just played your video and it looked pretty good here.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
Ken Summerall
September 2, 2008 at 4:17 pm

John,

I watched part of this and it seemed to run just fine as long as I paused it and waited for it to buffer a little. I think that is to be expected with a file that large. You could try lowering the data rate or frame rate a little but that will cause a quality hit. You could probably cut the data rate in half or even more before it becomes too noticeable.

K
Nick Price
September 2, 2008 at 11:32 pm

Hi John,
it played fine on my machine. And it looked great. It is re-encoded as a flash movie for the shooting people website, but that doesnt seem to have affected the quality. It will all depend on the viewers internet connection spped

best
nick
John Cade
September 3, 2008 at 5:04 pm

Thanks for replying.

It wasn’t so much the way the video looked, I had reservations about the frame rate. The video doesn’t look to run at a smooth 25fps, whereas other video’s on the site run very smoothly. I’ve only just started encoding video for web streaming so I don’t know a great deal about it. How does the data rate affect how the video plays? Also, how often should I set keyframes for a 25fps video?

Many thanks
John

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