[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for the tip on checking stereo/mono: It still is stereo. I can preview the audio in the comp before export, and after export it’ll crack even if I import the new file into AE and preview it there! I’m baffled.

Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your suggestions!

Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

I have to deliver the exported audio as 48000 kHz.

Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your reply!

Are those audio settings your audio output settings, or are those the specs on the audio source file?

The answer is: Both.

If you are using an MP3 as your audio source, convert it to WAV outside of AE. MP3’s casue all sorts of problems in the audio, which you don’t hear until you render.

Nope, all audio source files are WAV/16/48

Also, make sure you don’t have more than one copy of the audio file in your comp, or that other source footage you have in there doesn’t have audio. If they do, and you are not using them, turn off their audio switch in the timeline.

Only the needed audio is switched on in the comp. And like I said, the confusing thing is that when I render it mixed into the avi movie, it sounds fine. Then if I export the audio only without changing a single thing in the comp, the sound cracks.
I don’t get it.

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, I’ve considered that, but dropping from 25 fps (It’s PAL) to 12.5 fps makes it too jumpy, so I really would like to try to make other changes. But it seems everything I try to do either doesn’t lower the filesize significantly, or makes the quality terrible. Someone mentioned that a piece this length should be 12-18 Mb at the most. What am I doing wrong?

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thank you for your reply!

I will try to change some of the settings in Sorensen Squeeze to try to get the filesize down. My first thought is to change the audio to 22KHz from 44.1Khz, but this video is very much dependant on good sound, so I’m a little apprehensive, plus I don’t know that this will reduce the file size very much. Which parameters in Sorenson Squeeze do you suggest I prioritize changing to bring the filesize down and maintain quality?

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Greetings!

Well, after many tests and discussions with the webmaster, I finally was able to deliver a file that looks good and works for them. I was able to convince them to learn how to utilize FLV, so that’s what we’re using now. Here’s what I did: I dragged my fullsize 720×576 PAL comp into a 320 x 240 comp, and rendered out a QT Animation codec non-interlaced. Then, in Squeeze, I compressed to FLV with no cropping, with a total data rate of just under 1000 kbps. Once the webmaster was able to publish the video using a skin that did not cause any scaling of size, the result looked great! Thanks again for everyone’s help! 🙂

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Sorry, I meant “waiting time before it starts playing”, not downloading to your harddrive. (I’m doing free translation from Norwegian here). Thanks for the link though! I’ll check it out and see if their web-guy can find it useful. I tried a couple of tests yesterday (AE > uncompressed avi > swf), and the quality sucks! 🙁 I guess I’ll keep trying, but this is not looking promising so far. It’s supposed to go on the web this week… I know other people get good results, so I’m obviously doing something wrong. But what..? The most obvious bad parts were extreme blockiness in a cyan/blue/black graphic “universe”.

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your reply!

The client has asked for a Flash video (even though they don’t seem to know much about it), for optimum compatibility since more people have Flash on their home computers (Mac or PC) than WMV or QT. I don’t know yet what my target file size is, do you have a suggestion? The clip is 3 minutes long, and of course the clients expectations are reasonable: “Well, the quality needs to be fantastic, and the file size needs to be really small, and people should be able to download it in a couple of seconds, and everybody should be able to play it. You can do that, right?”

(sigh)

Anyway, I appreciate any continued input anyone may have,

Kind regards,
Eric

[Eric Steinberg]

Thanks for your reply,

I basically am not very educated on web stuff, I just make media, and deliver it the way it is requested by the clients web-people. I actually did suggest using flv, and they said; “huh, what’s flv? No just give me a swf.” So I can try again, but if they don’t know how to implement flv, I sure am not the right person to explain it to them. Is there maybe a link you know of where it is explained how to put a flv on a website, then I could direct them to it…? I will not do 12.5 fps, I’ll keep the 25fps, thanks for that recommendation. Any thoughts on my motion blur question?

Kind regards,
Eric