Help with Flash Video???

[Richard Sanchez]

I haven’t used Cleaner for the Mac, but I did use Cleaner XL 1.5 for the PC, and I know they were using the WildFlix codec for flv videos, and I seemed to get great results with that codec, especially at low bit rates. I recently purchased Sorenson Squeeze Power Pack, which encodes FLV videos with the VP6 codec, which is a newer codec and I get much better results. I know that anyway you look at it, that’s going to cost money which your C.O.O probably won’t be thrilled about, but I would highly recommend you encode your flash video with the VP6 codec. You can use Sorenson Squeeze (but you’ll need the Flash plugin, included with the power pack) or you can use Episode to encode Flash videos with VP6.

[Steve Cohen]

Thanks I’ll look into that.
Your right about him not being pleased about using a different software.

Thanks again;

Steve Cohen
Editor
O2 Media Inc.

[Erik Pontius]

You might also look into the Flix exporter from On2, it’s a Quicktime Exporter…so you should be able to export out of Quicktime Pro, Compressor, etc… It does a fine job of encoding.

https://on2.com/products/flix/exporter/

Erik

[Daniel Low]

I’d suggest using a correct 4:3 (or 16:9) frame size such as 480×360. Crop your source – getting rid of uneven lines around the edge of the frame and letterboxing, apply some colour correction (it’s too dark generally as well as washed out in the whites). As 90% of the clip was letterboxed 16:9 – why not just serve it as 16:9?

I’d also question the mashup of 4:3 & 16:9 where transitions are happening over the letterboxing, but that’s asthetics more than video compression quality.

DL

[Rich Rubasch]

I could not see the clip, but one I agree with croppiing from the sides. This basically crops off the action safe area getting more of the “meat” of the shots. I also agree that if you have letterbox material crop off all the top and bottom where the letterbox is. Again, didn’t see the clip, but if we have a letterbox show we crop off all the black top and bottom.

We also go with 15 fps on almost everything. Again, didn’t see your clip so am not sure if you were already doing that.

I am also not sure why it is taking so long…you didn’t specify what computer you are using to encode with. Nor what the source file is.

Let us know,

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Daniel Low]

Obviously cropping just the sides and not top or bottom will result in distorting the picture. Make sure any cropping maintains the correct frame aspect ratio. (Yours is already too wide)

[Steve Cohen]

Thanks;

My IT department removed the clip from the server.

I will keep the suggestions in mind.

As I said I’m using Cleaner 6.5 for Mac.
The quality, in my and most everyone else’s option is pretty good, but Cleaner takes forever to encode. 25 min for a 1 min clip and the majority of stuf we so it 30 min informercials. At that rate it will take 12-15 hours to encode the piece.

Can’t spend that much time on it.
i’m going to give Squeeze for Flash a try.

Thanks again.

Steve Cohen
Editor
O2 Media Inc.