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Render settings for AE > Sorenson Squeeze > swf
Greetings!
Sorry there will be many questions here, but this is new territory for me and I have basically no time for experimentation.
I have made a 3 minute corporate presentation in a 720 X 576 PAL composition (25 fps). I need to output this several ways, and one of them is for making a flash movie for the web. So my thinking is to render a 360 x 288 uncompressed avi, and then bring it into Sorensen Squeeze for the swf encoding. Is 360 x 288 ok, or should I crop it to a better size? There is some fast moving animations, so one of my concerns is whether outputting 12.5 fps instead of 25 fps will make the playback very choppy? I know it will help with the file size, but of course I’m concerned with quality. Also, I am pretty sure I should not render this as an interlaced movie, but what about motion blur? Should I have motion blur enabled like I do normally, and if so, should I set a specific shutter angle that works best for my final Squeeze encoding to swf? Finally, since my AE comp is set for PAL DV pixel aspect of 1.07, what should my workflow be to ensure that the final swf doesn’t squeeze (pun intended) the image so that circles will look like ovals? There are many circle shapes (planets) in this piece.
Again, I apologize for the massive amounts of questions, but if someone can help me I would be very grateful!Kind regards,
Eric -
9 Replies
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good morning Eric…
there will be lots of debate on this topic since there are so many *right* ways to do this….
i export a QT mov file from AE using the animation codec (the codec — if you use one — will be dependent upon your content) and then use squeeze to get the final swf from there…. i’m not sure what version of squeeze you are using but there should be no issue with using non-standard video sizes and maintain your pixel aspect….
you could also export an uncompressed avi file from AE and then use squeeze on that…
and i dont know your content but 12.5 frames per second will look choppy…
and you said “flash movie for the web”… have you thought about using flv format instead of swf?
and unfortunately there are no “best” settings… experimentation IS needed on each product from my humble perspective…
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have you looked at just using one of the suitable WMV audience settings? I can get pretty good stuff at 320*240 at the 268Kbs setting at 15fps – what is your target file size?
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Thanks for your reply,
I basically am not very educated on web stuff, I just make media, and deliver it the way it is requested by the clients web-people. I actually did suggest using flv, and they said; “huh, what’s flv? No just give me a swf.” So I can try again, but if they don’t know how to implement flv, I sure am not the right person to explain it to them. Is there maybe a link you know of where it is explained how to put a flv on a website, then I could direct them to it…? I will not do 12.5 fps, I’ll keep the 25fps, thanks for that recommendation. Any thoughts on my motion blur question?
Kind regards,
Eric -
Thanks for your reply!
The client has asked for a Flash video (even though they don’t seem to know much about it), for optimum compatibility since more people have Flash on their home computers (Mac or PC) than WMV or QT. I don’t know yet what my target file size is, do you have a suggestion? The clip is 3 minutes long, and of course the clients expectations are reasonable: “Well, the quality needs to be fantastic, and the file size needs to be really small, and people should be able to download it in a couple of seconds, and everybody should be able to play it. You can do that, right?”
(sigh)
Anyway, I appreciate any continued input anyone may have,
Kind regards,
Eric -
I would seriously doubt that more of their audience has the flash player installed than do windows media.
bet that as it may – I tend to find that you will need about 7 megs of file with most of the codecs to get anything even remotely decent quality for a 3.5 minute 320*240 file.
This is do-able with wmv. I haven’t had the same success with sorensen getting that small but maybe someone who really knows what they are doing would be able to.
your milage may vary, of course.
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I thought an FLV had to reside within an SWF.
(Like I know what I’m talking about …)
Steve -
here is flash video and the web by macromedia…
https://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/flv_tutorial_03.html
and you said in one of your last posts that “people should be able to download it”…
okay… that means that the swf and flv format are OUT!!!
that leaves wmv and quicktime…
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Sorry, I meant “waiting time before it starts playing”, not downloading to your harddrive. (I’m doing free translation from Norwegian here). Thanks for the link though! I’ll check it out and see if their web-guy can find it useful. I tried a couple of tests yesterday (AE > uncompressed avi > swf), and the quality sucks! 🙁 I guess I’ll keep trying, but this is not looking promising so far. It’s supposed to go on the web this week… I know other people get good results, so I’m obviously doing something wrong. But what..? The most obvious bad parts were extreme blockiness in a cyan/blue/black graphic “universe”.
Kind regards,
Eric -
Greetings!
Well, after many tests and discussions with the webmaster, I finally was able to deliver a file that looks good and works for them. I was able to convince them to learn how to utilize FLV, so that’s what we’re using now. Here’s what I did: I dragged my fullsize 720×576 PAL comp into a 320 x 240 comp, and rendered out a QT Animation codec non-interlaced. Then, in Squeeze, I compressed to FLV with no cropping, with a total data rate of just under 1000 kbps. Once the webmaster was able to publish the video using a skin that did not cause any scaling of size, the result looked great! Thanks again for everyone’s help! 🙂
Kind regards,
Eric
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