Compression for streaming , does Vegas make good Quicktime ?

[Chris Young]

Joe ~

Yes Vegas will make good QT movies but it would be best if you use one of the ‘fast start’ options under the ‘custom’ tab. This will enable them to start playing while still streaming down. They are still pretty big though. To have even more of these sorts of encoding options you need to use something like Procoder from Canopus. Procoder will give you a vast choice of advanced options which you won’t get in the basic QT settings in Vegas. The other option for fast web streaming is to use a program like ‘Swish Video’.

One of the methods we use is to encode to QT at maximum quality using the ‘multimedia’ 320×240 setting. This will produce a file around twice the size of the DV file, but don’t worry about that. We then import that file into Swish Video and encode that at maximum quality or less depending on content movement etc. You can drop the audio encode rate to a lower setting in Swish Video which will help reduce file size. This will give you a file size of approx 7% of the original DV file with pretty good quality. The QT 320×240 multimedia size is only a starting point, you can of course go larger or smaller depending on your requirements. To give you an idea look at:

https://www.diamondsmajestic.com

On that home page you will see a small Flash video which we did for one of our clients. It was edited in V6 and then went through the process outlined above. Mind you I love the way our client has put their credit under it!

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Michael Legel]

Important to note that that Procoder also comes in an express package. Many of the features at a fraction of the price. I use it for MOV and windows encoding, quick, easy with good results.

[Joseph Dezordi]

thanks I have looked at the swish & downloaded but it but it produced a very blocky poor rendition fron am AVI file

For some reason, I can not get Flash Player to install on my PC, I have spent all morning on this

I have done everything that the macromedia web site suggests, even as far as looking at the registry!!!

Aaah

[Donatello]

“The problem with the WMV is that, they wont play on MACs”

they’ll play on Mac’s if they download a windows player (provide the link) .. just like QT will not play on a PC unless you download a QT player !!!

IMO if you are making something for a hospital then consider your viewing market.
if 96% of computers are PC’s ??? …. unless this hospital only has Mac owners as customers then that would change things ..

i have found that WMV 9 files are better then a equal size QT file ..

[Joseph Dezordi]

good point its just a few academics in Universities who are inisting on the MAC capability, …..

I didnt know that MACs can run windows player

I am experimenting with this swish video thing & am finding the result not too encouraging [ blocky images, with a strange ghosting effect ]

So if I use wmv can any one tell me how to make them so that they ‘start’ immediately without having to wait ages for bufferring?

[Donatello]

i don’t know how to make them play without buffering ?? but i can say that it seems it all comes down to streaming bandwidth on the server ( clip host) ? if your server can only provide a 256K downstream, your clips are 256K and the person has a DSL 1mgs connection then the buffering should be less then 3 sec but if you have 512K clips and the server can only handle 100K and the person has a 950K connection well buffering is going to take a several seconds BUT QT would not play instantly either under same conditions

i have some 512K clip up on yahoo .. depending on hour of the day they sometimes stream with 1-2 seconds buffering and they play the whole 4 min begin to end , other times 20 sec buffering and they have to re-buffer 3-4 times over the 4 min – seems to depend on yahoo traffic .. i have a 1.39Mgs downstream DSL connection pretty much 24hrs a day …

[Joseph Dezordi]

Is there an option to set a rapid start for streaming in WMV9,? I cant find such an option, ( but there is in quick time…)

the server where this will run from is WebHost 4life,

I guess the downstream bad width is highly variable any thing fronm 256 k to 1.5 MB/s
( Australia is behind USA in this respect!)
its all a bit technical for me compounded by the lack of explanation when an amateur uses vegas
for example
CBR, CBR 2 pass,
Over ride default .. buffer
different audio options from mono to professional

is it worth purchasing Sony Support??
Cant I just one of my videos to one of you experts & show me what you can do with them.. hahaha just joking/…

[Donatello]

IMO keep it simple ..

try the web streaming forum here on the COW for info on how to tweak your project using what you have access to at this time …

[Chris Young]

Joe ~

I notice you said that you were getting very blocky flash files going from the avi file. I experienced the the same problems when going straight from avi’s. Hence going through the step of using an uncompressed QT of the dimensions you require before encoding in Swish. Comparing the results from the two different methods it like comparing chalk and cheese. Believe me if you get it right they are much smaller than QT and WMV files and can play and stream on both Mac and PC, assuming they have the Flash player installed.

Chris Young
Sydney

[Joseph Dezordi]

thanks
so you say , make QT movies first then put them through Swish??

in Vegas you make a Quick time movie it asks you for all kind sof options, like MP4 etc, whic is best to choose ?

I now have been experimenting with Sorenson Squeeze

Regarding Flash… for some reason, my file associations cant find flash in my PC, even though I have downloaded it many times

But it seems I can open the flash movie with Explorer, but this is not the way it should work am I right??

I notice that the latest version of Quick time on my PC does not play the flash movies properly

only the sound plays