[Craig Seeman]

I think you can drop the Quality to Zero doing 2 pass VBR. Give it a test on 30 seconds and see if you see any difference.

I’m curious what kind of internet connections the coaches will have. 1000kbps actually is ok in NYC metro but it could be an issue in areas where they only have slower DSL, satellite or equivalent. You might have to think about cutting the frame size a bit and you can cut the data rate with that.

Are you looking to keep these as complete 30minute duration files? If so buffer time can certainly be a factor on progressive download.

Going to a streaming server might be worth it but that does mean expense and it does mean mms or rtsp, etc rather than http. You’d then need to use CBR rather than VBR and that can have impact on quality especially with motion. You might want to try a 2 Pass CBR encode and see how you feel about the look. Streaming can give the viewer the ability to “skip” around but the file isn’t downloaded into the user’s cache.

There’s also the Quicktime Player vs the Windows Media Player interface. With progressive download I find it easier to “skip” back and forth (review a play again) and jog frame by frame in Quicktime Player.

[ryanservant] “My settings were: WMV 9 standard, 2 pass vbr, quality 100%, 1000 bit rate, lower field first for input, 480X270 size, progressive output….and it looks good to me. It is 3.8 MB for 30 seconds…which means my 500 mb file est was off. So what is going to happen to a 300 mb file that plays from the web….will it take long to load….does it matter if my web site devoloper does something to the file to make it stream or something? ( i have no clue about streaming )”

[Craig Seeman]

Very intersting points Charles.

H.264 is great when it comes to quality vs data rate and file size but needs QT7 (just restating since I think we’re in agreement here).
I’m a little less convinced regarding WMV9 AP though. Do you really find a significant difference between WMV9 “standard” (main) and WMV9 AP in quality vs data rate and file size? If so can you subjectively quantify as you’ve done with the above codec?

“Intelligent Encoder” capable of variable frame rate. Haven’t seen that in software on the Mac side? Anybody doing this in software at all? This could resolve many issues regarding frame rate used.

File size is a major factor as you point out in progressive download. I would think one would break it up into smaller chuncks though. For football it could be Quarters (might still be large) or down series which would really give the user flexibility and smaller file sizes.

I also don’t think cutting the frame rate in half cuts the file size in half. The encoder may have to do “more work” since the change in movement from frame to frame is now greater (especially for sports). Actually this is why the “intelligent encoder” could be significant. In sports like football there are moments where there is actually little motion (huddles, time at line of scrimmage for example).

[Craig Seeman]

Hi Curt,

Is this a Windows only tool? Certainly all the screen shots look that way.

[Craig Seeman]

It’s an aesthetic choice but I’m not a fan of cutting the frame rate. Ryan is doing sports and shooting on HDV. I’m not sure I’d want to show an action sport like footbal at 15fps unless he suspects people will have PCs that will be “stressed” on the decode side. I also think H.264 (needs QT7) and WMV 9 Advanced Profile (does not work with WMP9 on Macs I believe nor with Flip4Mac yet) may hurt broad reach if that’s his intent (although they do look very nice).

[Craig Seeman]

If one is “showcasing” work, MPEG1 is the wrong format to use. “Quality is not the best” is an understatement. You will either have to use a much higher data rate to match the quality of the codecs below or the quality may be poor enough so that your target audience may not appreciate your work.

Windows Media Video 9 works on nearly all computer except may some folks still running Windows 95 and I doubt they’d be a target for “showcasing” work.

Quicktime (MPEG4 or Sorenson Pro) works on nearly all computers too although I do think there are still far too many Windows users who don’t have/want Quicktime on their computers. They are in part the corporate market and in part home users who shy away from the risk of updating/installing software.

Flash is pervasive too and works on nearly all computers since this is something most people have downloaded. The On2 “codec” looks great but encodes very slowly. I do think some may find the time and effort to implement well on a web page to be a bit of pain though. This too will look much better even at much lower data rate than needed for a decent MPEG1.

These days I don’t even get requests for MPEG1 in PowerPoint presentations anymore.

[Craig Seeman]

HDV to WMV with Flip4Mac works fine. Key to remember is that HDV is already heavily compressed compared to HDCAM so I’d test a section with dissolves for example to see how the transitions hold up. If you’re editing in HDV, those dissolves are more or less like rendering a “fast action” sequence in HDV and we know how HDV loves fast action.

[Craig Seeman]

If you’ve updated to 2.0.x. go to Advanced and use the “Complexity” setting which goes from “Offline Slow” (slowest) to “Live Fast” which is fastest rendering. I’ve heard they’re going to really speed up the rendering in the next Exporter update. Also using Flip4Mac in Compressor will probably be faster than using it directly in FCP.

[Craig Seeman]

Cleaner 6 or 6.5? 6 is a few years old and predates HDV. 6.5 might work but I haven’t tried it with HDV.
Have you tried using Compressor 2? Since FCP can handle HDV I would suspect Compressor 2 can also. Compressor doesn’t do 2 pass VBR Sorenson Pro though (I wouldn’t use Sorenson standard at all . . . yuch!). Compressor does very nice H.264 which might do your HDV source justice. The alternative might be to use Sorenson Squeeze 4.3 since it includes Sorenson Pro and does good MPEG4 (better than Compressor IMHO).

[Craig Seeman]

AVI is a wrapper. I recently recieved an AVI which contained a DV file from a Pinnacle edit system. I had no problem importing and using in FCP5. Didn’t need to do anything.

Understand that AVI is a wrapper and contain any number of codecs (as MOV can).

What’s IN the AVI?

Open in Quicktime and do Window/Show Movie Info.

[Craig Seeman]

Hmm, Andrew, isn’t actually SAFER to have your Mac connected to the Interent?