Re: Best compression setting for Windows Media streaming over broadband and dialup?

The keyframes setting is basically saying 'Force a keyframe every 'x' seconds'. Codecs will insert 'natural' keyframes when they see fit, at scene changes or when the difference between frames exceed a defined threshold. Forcing too many keyframes can have a bad effect on picture quality.

With the quality slider, if you choose a setting towards the 'smoother' end the encoder will drop picture quality in order to maintain a smooth frame rate, towards the 'sharper end it will maintain picture quality at the expense of possibly dropping a frame or two. If you're after high quality pictures then you'll want to be in the range I suggested. At this kind of data rate you have to compromise.

The cropping I was suggesting was just a mild crop into the picture, to get closer to the 'active' picture not to change the aspect ratio.
Most cameramen still allow for an 'action safe' frame and the edges of the frame are sometimes 'content redundant' and as such can be discarded.





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