[Mike Lacher]

Thanks, Ty!

I’m now trying to educate myself about boundary mics. Would there be any advantage if I used a PCC and pointed it out away from the television and speakers? Just wondering if the cardioid pattern would reduce noise and get any less pickup from the speakers.

Also, just so my brain has this straight, a shotgun in this situation would probably yield too much reverberation and noise, hence the boundary mic being more advantageous?

Thanks again,
Mike

[Mike Lacher]

Hi Dave,

Yeah, Vince is right. The preview can be deceiving.

Also, you’ll want to check how Camtasia is compressing the video. I’ve found rendering out of Camtasia as an uncompressed AVI is generally easiest for Premiere to swallow (although it yields massive files). The proprietary Tech Smith codec Camtasia uses by default in rendering AVIs tends to cause problems working inside a DV project.

-Mike

[Mike Lacher]

Hi Ben,

Do you mean you want to delete empty tracks? Just right click on any track title and click “Delete Tracks…” Then you’ll have an option to delete the target track or delete all empty tracks.

As far as I know, having empty tracks shouldn’t be a drain on performance, unless you have an outrageously staggering amount.

-Mike

[Mike Lacher]

Just for the benefit of anybody reading this at a later junction, it turns out resizing the videos to standard aspect ratios worked. I made all the videos 4:3 or 16:9 and they’re now working great for the client.

I’m still not sure why exactly they had performance issues. They were running it on a dual-core centrino with 2gb ram, which seems beefy enough for low-datarate FLVs. It also turned out that no one in the user test reported problems (which of course the client decided not to tell us for some time).

Anyway, much thanks to Daniel. I would have never thought to change the aspect ratio to improve performance. I really really really appreciate it. You’ve saved me and my coworkers from added weeks of drama.

Thanks again,

Mike

[Mike Lacher]

The videos are fully preloaded before they start, so I can’t do much in terms of buffer. I just ran tests and they’re definitely loading all the way before playing.

And sadly I don’t have much wiggle room with frame size at this point. They like how it looks and I’d have to redo interactivity and backgrounds and everything. It’s certainly something I’ll keep in mind for the future though so hopefully i can avoid this happening again.

The good news is, changing the frame size to 16:9 instead of the non-standard size i had seems to be making a difference. They haven’t been having any playback issues. This could also be a fluke, since this problem doesn’t happen consistently for the client. I’ll have to wait and see if further problems arise. I finally got specs from them any they’re running it on a machine with a centrino duo processor and 2gb RAM, which seems more than enough to handle low-datarate FLVs. Maybe it’s some bizarre glitch with frame dimensions.

Thanks again to everyone for their help,

Mike

[Mike Lacher]

Hi Chris,

What other info do you have on the video (video and audio datarates, codecs, length, framerate, alpha channel etc.). If it’s a large file, Flash might be choking. What version of Flash are you publishing to? What’s the framerate of your Flash project? Also, what are the specs on your computer (processor, RAM, and OS mainly).

If your concern is syncing the video, you might be better of pulling the video in, not embedding it. It can be a bit more work, but will yield better results. Embedded video tends to play inconsistently and will lose AV sync pretty easily. It also bogs down your FLA and causes long publishing times and can crash slower computers depending on the length of the video. You can sync bullet points by figuring out the corresponding time in the video or by putting in cue points in the metadata that can cue actions in Flash.

-Mike

[Mike Lacher]

PC.

I changed some videos from their strange dimensions to 16:9, and they actually look better. Thanks for the advice. I would have never thought of it. Still waiting to hear if it has any effect on the client’s end.

Also starting to play around with a trial of Episode. I have a lot to learn…

[Mike Lacher]

Thank you. That’s really interesting about frame size. I’m going to try changing that and see what happens. Also going to look into getting my office to buy compression software. The more I read, it seems like an obvious advantage over AE.

Do you mind me asking (and I realize you’ve already given me plenty of your time) what free programs you’re talking about that encode better than AE?

Continued continued thanks,

Mike

[Mike Lacher]

The frame size is big so the characters fit the background and the data rate is so low because I had to bring it down for slower connections. Quite a bit of compromise, as I’m all too painfully aware. It’s not 4:3 or 16:9 because it’s keyed DVCPRO HD footage cropped to the minimum size needed.

I admit a large amount of ignorance when it comes to compression software. I’ve always just used AE because it’s what I have. Is there stuff you recommend or somewhere good to look to learn more? I doubt it’ll be an option for this project at this stage in the game, but I’d be interested to learn more. Would using better software help with performance, or would it mainly help with appearance?

Continued thanks,

Mike

[Mike Lacher]

Here’s the info. Thanks for helping with my rather ambiguous and hopeless quest.

Frame size: 776×504 (this varies somewhat. this size is for one of the more problematic videos)
Duration: 65s
Audio codec: MP3
Audio codec ID: 2
Audio datarate: 32kbps
Video codec: On2 VP6
Video codec ID: 4
Video datarate: 224kbps
Framerate: 15fps
Keframes: I had this set to auto when exporting from AE. It looks like AE made them every 2-4sec

And it has problems with or without alpha channel.

It should be completely done loading by the time the video plays. In all the tests I’ve done, the preloading has worked. I’m building a test now for the client to definitively make sure that it’s preloading for them.

Thanks again,

Mike