Exporting For Web

[Ed Dooley]

I’m guessing you downloaded the trial version of Flip4Mac. If so, my suggestion would be…..
buy it.

This from F4M:

Trial download limitations:
In trial mode you can export 1/2 the duration of your source file up to 30 seconds

Ed

[GEMPIC] “Hi Ed

Whenever I export using WMV9 it only does 30 Seconds of the video.

What do I do?”

[Derek Woods]

i use flip for mac for client preview and it works great. however, imho, quality is based on length of project. typical example, i have a two minute piece my client wants to preview for content. Not being a compression master or anything, through trial and error, the best looking preset made a very nice wmv file 9 mb long. most mailboxes seem to reject files over this size so thats my target. sent the file, he loved it, on to the next project:)
approach for my website clips is obviously a little different, but i will pretty much approach it the same way.

i think this all goes the way of the dinosaur if i pay for the flash video converter:)

[Gempic]

Thanks for the help

Cheers

[Craig Seeman]

[GEMPIC] “A good download speed from a standard DSL is arround 256kbps”
Not in some areas. Typical DSL speeds in my neck of the woods is 1.5mbps or 3mbps. 256kbps is WAY TOO LOW a data rate. You might find some rare folks around here with 768kbps.

Again it depedsn on what and who your target is.

[GEMPIC] “Anybody with a ten year old computer doesn’t need to download anything, clients and pros.”
If you’re a community or public service organization reaching a very poor community then you need to take into account that there are folks probably with WMP7 and Quicktime 5 or so.

They may only be on dial up too. Many if not most news organizations still offer dial up. You’ll also find that people in some rural areas even with good incomes only have dial up available short of paying a very high price for satellite broadband.

[GEMPIC] “Videos vary in time from 2mins to 25mins”
Those longer duration are not a good idea for progressive download. If somebody only watches the first few minutes and has to end their session they have to go back and wait for the buffer all over again. I’d break things up after ten minutes and some do it after five.

[Craig Seeman]

[Ed] “The slowest DSL these days is at least 384kbps (with some exceptions).”

And in some areas I don’t even see that. In my area DSL is either 1.5mbps or 3mbps with some rare folks with 768kbps but I’m in an urban area where people are near the “hubs.”

[Craig Seeman]

Flip4Mac is great for doing WMV on the Mac. It’ll work in QuicktimePro, FCP, iMovie, Compressor 2, Cleaner, Squeeze so you can use just about any “front end” you’d like. Studio is just presets which might be enough to start but if you want to “roll your own” settings Pro or even ProHD is good. The alternative is Compression Master which is great but might be overkill depending on your budget and time to learn the interface.

[Craig Seeman]

[derek woods] “i think this all goes the way of the dinosaur if i pay for the flash video converter:)”

ON2 VP6 Flash looks really good but keep some things in mind. So far, in my experience, it’s very slow to encode. Also users must have Flash Player 8 (or 9) and many still have the older player. You almost start to run into the same issue with H.264 which requires QT7 and encodes slow.

[Craig Seeman]

[Ed] “For the highest compatibility with the most people, WM9 is the way to go”

I’ll “third” your second. Many business and IT folk won’t allow Quicktime at all on their computers. WM9 is backward compatible to WMP7.1 (with the free codec update). And these days Macs with the free Flip4Mac component can play WM9 in Quicktime.

[Ed Dooley]

I live in rural Vermont and 768 is the minimum here. We have a locally owned Telephone/Cable company. In other
parts of Vermont, Verizon and the former Adelphia, now Comcast, have much faster bandwidth. The stuff we do is
usually seen by people in many countries and/or parts of the U.S., so we use the 384 minimum. Soemtimes we do a
high and low bandwidth version, 300kbs and 700kbps-1.2mbps.
Ed

[Craig Seeman] “[Ed] “The slowest DSL these days is at least 384kbps (with some exceptions).”

And in some areas I don’t even see that. In my area DSL is either 1.5mbps or 3mbps with some rare folks with 768kbps but I’m in an urban area where people are near the “hubs.””

[Joe Murray]

One thing that can really decrease the size of the compressed file is using some audio compression (I like Alaw 2:1 at 32 or 44.1 khz) as well as making the audio mono unless you really need stereo. This decreases the overall bandwidth and leaves more room for better quality video. I can get good quality out of mpeg-4 or Windows Media with a file size of less than 3 megs for a 30 second spot if I treat the audio this way.

Joe Murray