[Craig Seeman]

[derek woods] “i think this all goes the way of the dinosaur if i pay for the flash video converter:)”

ON2 VP6 Flash looks really good but keep some things in mind. So far, in my experience, it’s very slow to encode. Also users must have Flash Player 8 (or 9) and many still have the older player. You almost start to run into the same issue with H.264 which requires QT7 and encodes slow.

[Craig Seeman]

Flip4Mac is great for doing WMV on the Mac. It’ll work in QuicktimePro, FCP, iMovie, Compressor 2, Cleaner, Squeeze so you can use just about any “front end” you’d like. Studio is just presets which might be enough to start but if you want to “roll your own” settings Pro or even ProHD is good. The alternative is Compression Master which is great but might be overkill depending on your budget and time to learn the interface.

[Craig Seeman]

[Ed] “The slowest DSL these days is at least 384kbps (with some exceptions).”

And in some areas I don’t even see that. In my area DSL is either 1.5mbps or 3mbps with some rare folks with 768kbps but I’m in an urban area where people are near the “hubs.”

[Craig Seeman]

[GEMPIC] “A good download speed from a standard DSL is arround 256kbps”
Not in some areas. Typical DSL speeds in my neck of the woods is 1.5mbps or 3mbps. 256kbps is WAY TOO LOW a data rate. You might find some rare folks around here with 768kbps.

Again it depedsn on what and who your target is.

[GEMPIC] “Anybody with a ten year old computer doesn’t need to download anything, clients and pros.”
If you’re a community or public service organization reaching a very poor community then you need to take into account that there are folks probably with WMP7 and Quicktime 5 or so.

They may only be on dial up too. Many if not most news organizations still offer dial up. You’ll also find that people in some rural areas even with good incomes only have dial up available short of paying a very high price for satellite broadband.

[GEMPIC] “Videos vary in time from 2mins to 25mins”
Those longer duration are not a good idea for progressive download. If somebody only watches the first few minutes and has to end their session they have to go back and wait for the buffer all over again. I’d break things up after ten minutes and some do it after five.

[Craig Seeman]

[Brian Klein] “I was seeing blocky artifacts on slanty lines from the footage in the video”
It’s hard to tell what you’re actually seeing but if it’s what I think it is, using deinterlace blur in Compressor 2 might help. If what you’re seeing is on slanty lines you really should look at deinterlacing and other edge releated processing filters (blurring edges for example). It really depends on what you mean by artifact. It may depend on adjacent colors and luminance levels.

[Brian Klein] “I have actually re-installed an old copy of Cleaner 5.1.2”
I don’t remember 5.1.2 specifically (I started with 4 though) but 6 and 6.5 do very good adaptive deinterlacing.

[Brian Klein] “I did try Compressor, but got similar results as Squeeze.”
I actually think Compressor can do better deinterlacing than Squeeze.

[Brian Klein] “I don’t believe the poor results were from deinterlacing issues.”
[Brian Klein] “I was seeing blocky artifacts on slanty lines from the footage in the video.. not the combing issues you get with interlaced footage”
Again I can’t tell by your description but there are many ways and algorithms to deinterlacing and each have plusses and minuses depending on the content but you can get nasty things that go beyond combing.

Some, not I, have complained about compatibility issues with Cleaner’s MPEG1 encoding.

Good? The result should look good and the file should work as intended in the target application. MPEG1 has its issues. Different compression apps have processing filters to help, many sware by Compression Master (some sware at it though). Don’t underestimate the impact deinterlacing algorithms have. There’s no single way to do it and even a “best” way may be relative to the content in a given piece.

If you have several apps (Squeeze, Cleaner Compressor, you seem to have) then try them with common settings but take advantage of their unique processing and deinterlace filters to see which will give you the best results. You can just target the area(s) your seeing the “issues” with and you’ll have a good idea which can do what. Squeeze has the least flexible deinterlacing if that’s the issue (and it may be).

[Craig Seeman]

Let’s start at the beginning.
Quality and size are relative.

What is the typical internet connection speed you’re trying to reach?

What is your target market (media and ad agency professionals, people with 10 year old computers, people in very rural areas, videos for people’s iPods, businesses, etc)?

What is the running time of the video you want to encode?

If you can answer these the best you can I can give you something better than a sweeping statement (but maybe not much).

[Craig Seeman]

Have you tried using Compressor2?
I haven’t tested it recently but Frame Controls can do very good deinterlacing.
On another recent job I simply used Compressor2 deinterlace filter algorithm Blur and it got ride of stair steps I saw otherwise.
Compression Master might be another way to go. It has a good variety of deinterlace options including those related to motion.
Cleaner has good adaptive deinterlace and I’ve used Cleaner for MPEG1 but I’ve been “lucky” since many complain about Cleaner’s MPEG1 encodes. I have much to complain about Cleaner but MPEG1 has actually been one of the few things it’s done reliably (albeit infrequent use) for me.
Squeeze has somewhat limited deinterlace optons.

[Craig Seeman]

What’s your source and what are your MPEG1 settings. MPEG1 isn’t a pretty codec compared to others these days. Is it possible you can move to a better codec?

[Craig Seeman]

data spikes in 2 Pass VBR encoding (fix by encoding Constrained). Field order issue? Andy do FTP the files ASAP. Maybe I can test Flash encode for you too (although I don’t have VP6 codec).

[Craig Seeman]

The targeted bit rate was 396kbps and the actual bit rate showed as 406kbps in WMP10, ASFView and WMP9Mac. That’s very close to what it should be.