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How to get the best video for a Flash video
First of all I may be trying to do the wrong thing but I produce videos that need to be seen by a wide audience and I don’t want the users on macs or pcs to have to download particular drivers and since Flash encoded videos have been the dominant force for web videos for the past decade I decided to use the flash encoding to make the best, most compatible videos. If someone can correct me on this I have no problem changing my mind. I will not live long enough to test all possible combinations of video export settings and combinations of parameters so I can be easily persuaded.
Now, if my initial assumption was correct my dilemma is that I shoot in HD using a Canon XH A1 and import in HD to FCP and make minor edits to the clip and render out using compressor. At this time I render out to MP4 format in 480 x 240 format. Then i move the MP4 over to a pc with the Flash Encoder version 8 and render the video in FLV format. Drop it into a template page I have made and it is ready for the web.
For a process it is simple enough but I am really not happy with the overall appearance of the final video. My suspicion is that some of these steps are hurting the quality of the output and since there is about 60 different settings for importing the video and even more for outputting video it could take years to try all the possible matches and I was wondering if someone could sort of tell me what the best way is to import the video, output (is MP4 the best format) and whether or not flash is a good way to render it. While size is not really an issue that applies ass long as the final video – about 75-80 minutes long is no larger than 1GB file. The number of people who generally see these videos is between 1 and 5 so it does not warrant hours of work to make it super fantastic. Here is what a typical final product looks like
https://www.supermagnetman.net/Allpencilsdown/Science_Overview.htmlNothing great but I just use it for students when I am overbooked and don’t have time to schedule more students. So all they are interested in is the basic info but I would like the video to look better and would like any ideas. Thanks
George Mizzell
The SupermagnetMan -
6 Replies
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Transcode in Compressor to H264.
Change the extension to .flv.
Thats all.
rafael -
Do you mean I do not need to run it through the flash media encoder program? If so, boy that saves time too.
Thanks
GeorgeGeorge Mizzell
The SupermagnetMan -
Flash supports H264 what is much better than their own Flash codec.
Just change the extension and the clip will play in Flash.
Most of the people are doing this.
Whatever you do, you must avoid the MP4 step.
rafael -
Rafael is so right, and may I add that anytime you encode a video more than once it is going to start looking depleted no matter what. All codecs are lossy codecs. And H.264 plays wonderfully on Flash players in Windows or Macs.
Greg Ondera
http://www.Plexus.tv
http://www.SurgeonToday.org -
The H264 method is definitely the way to go. The only times I’ve found the Adobe Flash Encoder to work better is when I’ve needed to crop the video during the compression process.
Not sure about the life of Flash Video though, HTML5 is introducing a
Cinematographer, Steadicam Operator, Final Cut Pro Post Production.
https://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/ -
Thanks for the information. I ran a sample of one of my 5 minute videos and could not find out how to resize it in the compressor configuration. When I ran it the file came out at 853 x 480 which is a bit larger than I wanted. I selected H.264 for Apple Devices and then I selected the iPod/iPhone Anamorphic (?) as the device and it gave me these settings:
Name: h264 test
Description: No description
File Extension: m4v
Estimated size: 675.46 MB/hour of source
Device: iPod/iPhone VGA (Anamorphic)
Frame sync rate: 5 seconds
Video Encoder
Format: QT
Width and Height: Automatic
Pixel aspect ratio: Default
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Frame Controls: Automatically selected: Off
Codec Type: H.264
Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: Off
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 50
Min. Spatial quality: 50
Temporal quality: 50
Min. temporal quality: 50
Average data rate: 1.5 (Mbps)
Maximum data rate: 4 (Mbps)I did not get a chance to set it to the pixel settings of an iPhone. How do I get the file down to the correct size?
Thanks again. I really think this is making progress. Even though the file was quite large – 60 MB for 5 minutes it really looked great.
George Mizzell
The SupermagnetMan
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