[Ben Waggoner]

Since it works well on one DVD player and badly on another, I’d guess there’s a problem with the second player’s NTSC conversion.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

1080p24 Windows Media is quite possible on a reasonably recent machine, especially if the graphics card supports DXVA for accelerated video decode. Vista, Core2Duo, and a “NV80” based NVidia graphics card are going to be your best bet.

My year-old Toshiba laptop can do 1080p24 without breaking a sweat.

15 Mbps CBR is a good starting point.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Do you have a link?

Maybe they’re talking about the forthcoming 2.1 version of CineVision PSE? It’s not a new codec, but the next wave of improved implementations of VC-1.

Neither CineVision PSE or VC-1 is HD DVD specific, FWIW – it’s also fully compatible with Blu-ray.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Yeah, a 60:1 ratio indicates something is seriously wrong there.

What settings are you using in Flip4Mac? You’ve got the current version installed?

There’s no chance you accidentally set something to run in PowerPC emulation mode, is there?

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Yes, using the source file will definitley offer the best quality.

Better yet, use somehing like AVISynth with MPEG-2 plugins that support postprocessing, which will clean up some of the MPEG-2 artifacts as well.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

SPHD? I don’t recognize that.

In the native Mac environment, your best encoding choices are Flip4Mac or Episode. If you don’t mind using BootCamp, you’ll get faster performance and higher quality using a native Windows encoder, particularly one incorporating the new VC-1 Encoder SDK.

https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/20613/Default.aspx

Nic from Doom9 has been working on a AVISynth to SDK encoder that looks promising for your application.

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=133173

In general, you’ll find that Complexity 3 is generally the sweet spot with VC-1 for reasonable quality and encoding times – more gets a lot slower without helping quality all that much, and lower winds up reducing quality a fair amount (while still getting a lot faster).

The SDK is 4-way threaded, so it’ll use as many cores as you have (2 in your iMac).

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Bear in mind that Macs don’t ship out of the box with MPEG-2 playback support. The MPEG-2 component is normally only installed along with Final Cut Pro Studio.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

I’d say go for .mp4 – that’ll work in the broadest variety of devices.

However, there really isn’t a good hybrid for streaming/podcasting, since podcasting should be VBR and streaming CBR. Also, a streaming .mov/.mp4 needs hint tracks, which increase the file size for downloads. So, better to do two different encodes for the two scenarios. Also, podcasts tend to be at too high a data rate for streaming.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

MSN video is typically WMV embedded in Flash for IE, but Flash video natively for other browsers.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Ben Waggoner]

You’ve got a problem there – Flash simply doesn’t offer good scaling quality to full screen. Even if your encode @ 640×480 is perfect, it won’t look good on larger screens.

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html