What movie setting do you use?

[Jerry y.]

For those who do movies, curious on what foramts you have settled on at what size and compression, and why. thanks!

[jonnydoe]

I've used a bunch but lately have been running 756kbs wmv. I think it depends on what you are using it for. If it is in a member's area it needs to be higher quality...

[Jerry y.]

thanks:
if you or someone else can expand on that it would be great.

[jonnydoe]

Where do you want to use the vid Jerry?

[Jerry y.]

paysite web, maybe later DVDs

[Lana]

OK Jerry, here's what we do.
Capture from your camera as basic .avi.
Edit your video in .avi then render an output as mpg2.
This you can keep as an archive. It's a lot smaller file than .avi for storage and you can convert it later to DVD or .wmv for the net if you wish.
Now that you've got the mpg2 dump the .avi.
You've still got it on tape if you really need it.
Now that you've got edited mpg2 what do you want to do with it?
If you want it for the net, convert to .wmv or .mov or .rm your preferance using any generic video converter.
As Jonny says convert at 700 to 1000kbs for a members section, usually 640x480 and about 300 to 600kbs for teasers and FHG's, usually 340x280.
Don't watermark your mpg2's as these are now your masters. You can watermark your files as you convert.
We've also just got into flash (again an easy convert) as it gives really fast streaming with a reasonable file size.

Once you get your head around it, it's really quite straight forward.

[jonnydoe]

listen to Lana ;-)

[Jerry y.]

thanks Lana, I'll keep that and absorb it. I'm capturing to HD, not sure about the avi part

[Lana]

I'm capturing to HD, not sure about the avi part

If you're capturing to HD you're converting to mpg2 on the fly. Just edit and burn or edit and convert.

[RachiRach]

Good info, thanks Lana. Is the flash format proving a success?

[razor]

Lana - How do you convert wmv to flash?


Secondly is it better quality and smaller file size?

[RachiRach]

I could tell you how I have done it...

I imported the wmv into Flash MX and then messed around with the settings until I got something worthwhile.

It's hard to give you an example for the quality, the wmv was quite high quality at 720 x 480px with a bit rate of 1995kbps. The file size was 23 mb

The flash was exported at a very very small window about 5cm by 4 cm, with nice image quality and it is still 8mb. sorry can't be more techy with those specs.

I've only used it for trailers though, they start up automatically when someone hits the page, nice effect.

[Lana]

Good info, thanks Lana. Is the flash format proving a success?

Not really. We thought Flash would give a easier option for people that just want to stream in the same window but it seems most people want to download.
So it was a bit of a labour intensive add-on option that most members aren't using anyway. Having said that, the Flash files are about the same size as the .wmv files but buffer and stream faster, but the .wmv files are better quality. So I guess it's just preference.

[RachiRach]

That's interesting.

Hands up who prefers streaming over downloads?

[Jerry y.]

I would like to know this as well, stream vs download. isn't the standard for downloading?