Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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I like either Motion-JPEG QT for Interlaced, Photo-JPEG QT for Progressive, or PNG for Alpha channel content. On the PC, there is also the Huffyuv codec which does an excellent job.
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As far as converting from 3gp to another format, Quicktime does seem to be the best choice. Though, I probably wouldn’t use Quicktime Pro, as a batch exporter with image controls would likely be more useful. I would recommend Compression Master 3 from Popwire because of its highly effective imaging and preprocessing filters.
As far as phones, the best images I have seen from a phone outside of Asia comes from the Nokia N90. It takes truly brilliant pictures, and I imagine the Carl Zeiss optics may help a bit with shooting video as well. I believe the N90 includes a USB2.0 option, therefore making transfers pretty quick. There is also Bluetooth 2.0, and using a point-to-point phone-to-computer connection is quite speedy.
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I’ll second VLC or MPlayer to try and play the stream you currently have. If VLC will not play your MPEG-2 file, then its hard to imagine what will. I have worked with some very odd formats, and while VLC doesn’t always do a bang up job with the audio playback, the video is usually well handled.
Per encoding streams to match the spec, I would suggest taking a look at the MainConcept encoder for the video. The specs you listed do not seem that odd to achieve, and the Rhozet encoder will also be able to generate those as Ben suggested. For the audio, while the Rhozet and the MainConcept encoders will not do AC-3 encoding, there are plenty of affordable small apps for encoding AC-3. And you should be able to mux the two streams into a transport packet with the apps from Womble on the PC or maybe even MPEGStreamClip for the mac.
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Here is a good bitrate calculator that I like:
https://www.3ivx.com/support/calculator/
It what built for a different format, but the numbers still work for MPEG-2 compression. -
I’ve experienced streams in the past that didn’t work well with MAC3dec. In those cases, ffmpegX or MPEG StreamClip seemed to do the trick.
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At this time, VC-1 is only really suitable for delivery and off-line post work where color isn’t a priority. While additional support for 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 are not on the immediate roadmap for VC-1, they are there and I suspect they will be implented eventually.
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If you are asking if the Sorenson Video Encoder included with Squeeze 4 is any better than the encoder included with Squeeze 3, the answer is mostly no. I say mostly, becuase while the encoder is the same in each version, I think that Squeeze 4’s UI improvements over v.3’s makes it much easier to generate quality encodes. If you are looking into other formats, 30 minutes can easily fit onto a DVD in most compressed formats. MPEG-2, WMV-9, Real10, and MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC) can all accomplish this output while giving you excellent quality. Good apps for the formats are Canopus ProCoder 2 on the PC and Compression Master 3 on the mac.
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I believe that the VP6 codec in Flash requires Flash Player 8 for client playback and Flash 8 for authoring with. Once you buy the codec, you can use it in Squeeze 4.2 to encode and use as an asset in Flash 8. As far as client’s being able to update, the installation for upgrading to Player 8 is very quick and rather painless. Although, I do not recall whether or not the browser must be restarted after installation for the player to work in a webpage.
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Most software will recognize the 4:3 flags and display the 352×240 MPEG-1 at 320×240. I am not 100% positive that Powerpoint will, but if it didn’t, then yes, encode to a square pixel size format.
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As I said previously, the MainConcept Encoder will do this for you. ProCoder 2 is also capable of encoding MPEG-2 at higher bitrates. Both will accept QuickTimes. And, it should be noted that the content you are encoding will be broadcast at a much lower bitrate than what you provide to them. I would expect a 8mbps encode with Apple Compressor 2 to look pretty decent, but if all you have is Compressor 1 or Cleaner, then you may be trouble. A cheap app to try out on the mac is ffmpegX, although there are some caveats to its use.