Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
-
I wasn’t suggesting DR was faster…only that their solutions are easier for a non-technical person to setup and manage. Not to mention that their hardware helps speed encoding.
We own Carbon Coder and use it extensively, but in trying to setup some of it’s advanced features (such as watch folders and the like), as well as demo’ing the carbon server app, we found it to be quite challenging, especially in a multi-room post-production environment.
Conversely, I’ve seen the DR solutions in action, and their user interface and configuration is just simpler and more intuitive than Rhozet’s.
I’m not challenging what you’re saying I’m just trying to give the original poster some options. The right solution for them would likely depend on their workflow and technical know-how.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
An alternative to the transcoding farms, which can be daunting for a non-technical person to setup, are solutions from companies like Digital Rapids, which offer mostly real-time encoding via hardware/software combinations.
But the only way to speed processing is to assign more horsepower via the farms that Daniel recommends.
I have some colleagues that use Digital Rapids solutions and they rave about them for their quality, speed and ease of use.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Windows Media Encoder is free and capable, but it has a quirky interface. MediaCoder is also free and capable but also has a quirky interface. Of course they only work on Windows.
Windows media 9 uses an implementation of the VC1 codec, which is widely considered to be as good as H264 in terms of file size/quality. Many Blu-ray discs use VC1 for compression.
We’ve found that when using the correct settings, windows media files compare very favorably to H264 encoded files. Of course, just as Quicktime is designed for Mac, windows media is designed to playback on Windows, and the media player you use to play the files can make a huge difference in how the encoded file looks on-screen. Use VLC to play a wmv and it’ll look completely different than it does on Windows Media Play 11. For that matter, it’ll look completely different if you play it on Windows Media Player 9 compared to WMP 11.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Here are some past threads with great links to information about encoding:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/20/863282
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/20/863293#863294
If you do further google searches you can likely find even more info, although those two links provide pages of information from some of the most knowledgeable people in the insdustry. You could also do a search for onine articles by a guy named Jan Ozer, who conducts all sorts of tests on codecs and encoding software, and writes and lectures about it extensively.
But….even after reading all of that…(and I have several times over), you’ll still occasionally end up having to experiment with settings depending on your source material and it’s codec/format. There are literally thousands of format/codec combinations out there and each one has its own quirks, which makes it dicey to apply them globally to all video sources. Generally, the higher quality and resolution your source footage is, the better your compressed footage is going to look.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
One last hardware based solution I forgot to mention is Viewcast Niagra:
https://www.viewcast.com/products-overview
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Here’s a better link to Matrox solutions, which combined offer the I/O you’d need to encode from video decks, NLE, feeds etc.
https://shopmatrox.com/usa/products/categories.asp?CategoryID=83&Column=2
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
For hardware encoding, look at these:
Digital Rapids https://www.digital-rapids.com/Products/IndividualProducts.aspx
Envivo https://www.envivio.com/
Visionary Solutions, Inc. https://www.vsicam.com/
Telestream https://www.telestream.net/pipeline/overview.htm
Matrox https://www.matrox.com/video/en/solutions/encoding/
My brain gets foggy looking at all the various options and weird names for the various hardware solutions. I know some people that use Digital Rapids stuff and it just plain works, is easy to configure, comes with software, and is pretty affordable considering what it does.
Many on the list tout Telestream, and I know a lot of TV stations use it in various configurations. I’ve read good things about Visionary Solutions and they have a slew of products, but their pricing and configurations are confusing.
The Matrox solutions require 3rd party software from what I’ve read, so you’d need Telestream Episode or Apple Compressor or others to get the hardware accelerated benefits of it. I don’t believe it has direct input of video/audio either, but is an accelerator card.
There are probably other products too, but these are the ones that come up the most when in real-time encoding discussions.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Are you doing this in software I assume? If so, without more specific specs, it’s hard to say. Depends on what computer platform you’re on, what encoding software you’re using, what codecs you have available with it etc.
If you’re on Windows and have a mid-range encoding app like Procoder, they have lots of presets for compressing using H264 and using the MPEG2 container.
If you’re on a Mac, others on the list can give specifics depending on what you have software wise.
But it really depends on the end-use of your MPEG2 file. Is it for broadcast? Does it need to play for a presentation off a PC? What’s the audience for your file?
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
If you want to keep it at 640×480, it would be hard to get it smaller than 300MB and retain quality.
If you go down some in size, say to 448×332 or somewhere in there, you could probably cut the file size in half and still get very good quality. Not sure about readability of sub-titles at that size, depends on font, weight, color etc. All you can do it test and see. What we do is compress 1 minute then multiply the file size by 30 to see how big it will be….or even do just 30 seconds and multiply by 60…you get the idea.
You could also try things like reducing the frame-rate, reducing the audio sampling rate, converting to mono etc. to help cut the file size down a little more. Most people won’t notice the difference playing back from a PC anyway.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
And….your compressed video will look different on every single media player it’s played on. Play it with Quicktime and it will likely look soft and a bit washed out, play it on VLC and it will look completely different, same with KMPlayer or Zoom Player or MPlayer or Flash Player etc….you get the idea.
It’s sort of like watching your video on 5 different people’s home televisions…it’s going to look different on every single one of them. If a video needs to look a certain way, we always output 10 seconds or so from the encoder, then watch it on mutliple video players…then tweak whatever needs tweaking.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com