Transition friendly - compression quality vs file size

Transitions and camera pan/zooms are the bane of video compression for the web.
2 pass VBR (variable bit rate) encoding can help a lot. For full resolution SD, try a minimum rate of about 800 kbps, target rate of 1200 kbps and maximum rate of 1700 kbps.
Windows Media Video 9, Flash VP6 Pro or H264 are your best bets in that order.

Wow!!

You guys are the best . . . I got the results I was after with a your tips and advice. I reduced a 650MB file (720x576) to 17MB and 15MB respectively (480x360 wmv 17MB / mp4 15MB)

I found CBR worked better for my WMV compression. (I probably missed an option or two and made an error with VBR).

In the H.264 Video options

Hello Mike,

I'm so grateful for your time!! I am doing my homework on the last post and will create a wmv file shortly. I have another question.

What sort of windows computer system should I recommend my 'target' audience, to be running eg. Minimum requirements (processor speed/version of software)??

I ask this question because my Mac at home runs everything as I intended and the transitions look very good to me. When I had a look on the windows machine at the office (at my day job). I was bitterly disappointed!

There was no sound at all and the file was buffering and streaming. This killed the impact of the video and I wouldn't want my clients to think it was the way I intended it to look.

Can you please help me with this. At least if there computer is not up to the task, they will understand that it's not from my end of production.

PS if you'd like a look at the files the address at the moment is:

http://www.passingreflections.com.au/video/BHiggins.wmv

or

http://www.passingreflections.com.au/video/BHiggins.mp4

Thanks again,

Joe

Mac OS 10.4.9
PowerBook G4 1.67GHz 17"
FCStudio, Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark