1-5 minutes of video?
by Aaron Porteous
on
May 5, 2008 at 3:10:00 pm
Hi, currently I am building flash websites for clients and each of them open with a video while the site loads. This method has been working okay using the FLV component. I just wonder why my video looks choppy and doesn't always load on everyone's browser? I'm new to this, but I have a couple questions (maybe you can point me in the right direction if another thread already addresses this, I just don't have time to browse)
What I do now:
I work in an all mac environment, using a quad G5. I edit my video in Final Cut, then use quicktime conversion to output to .mov (deinterlaced), then export to FLV using quicktime player. My FLV settings:
Video encoded for playback with Flash Player 8 or higher
Video: On2 VP6 at 700kbps
Video Options: Deinterlace
Audio: MPEG Layer III (MP3) at 96kbps (stereo)
Resize: Width=75%; Height=75% Respect aspect ratio
And I may crop the left and right sides if the dv footage created black lines.
Questions:
1. What is the best compression software (and process) for what I am doing?
2. Is flash the best way to display video online?
3. Why is my video choppy?
4. How do I get the best resolution, the best clarity, at the fastest loading time? (Currently I download from server, I don't know how to stream)
Re: 1-5 minutes of video? by Daniel Low on May 7, 2008 at 9:12:05 am
Answers:
1. Episode from Telestream.
2. More than likely, although you can get much better quality using either H.264 (Quicktime) or Windows Media.
3. Could be any one of a 100 reasons, but most likely because you haven't used an proper encoding application.
4. That's the $64,000 question. It all depends on the content of your footage, the quality of your source, the quality of your encoding application and what you are, and are not prepared to sacrifice.
Great quality compression is all about making compromises. You want a high quality picture at a low data rate, then you need to have a small frame size. You want a big frame size and high quality then you need a high data rate. etc.
__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Re: 1-5 minutes of video? by Daniel Low on May 8, 2008 at 4:35:32 pm
My observations:
The text overlay looks interlaced, I'm assuming you didn't deinterlace the clip?
The frame size is wrong. Rule of thumb is that the frame size needs to be equally divisable by 16.
Your frame size is not exactly 16:9 either (16:9 is 1.78:1, yours is at 1.88:1) so you're probably distorting the picture.
I'd suggest using 512x288
Let us know how you get on..
__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
Re: 1-5 minutes of video? by Daniel Low on May 9, 2008 at 8:43:50 am
Well the text looks much better but the footage doesn't look better at all.
Do you know if it was shot progressive, can you see interlacing in the source footage?
To make a great improvement with this footage you are really going to have a to get a dedicated transcoding application, FCP is a great NLE but it is not a great transcoder.
Ideally you should be exporting out of FCP straight to whatever is your FLV transcoder avoiding any intermediate steps, like going to H.264 for example.
Have a go with ffmpegx it's not the easiest to use but it's free. If you want anything better look at Episode.
http://homepage.mac.com/major4/
I'd recommend you export out of FCP as a reference movie, not self contained and take that into your transcoder.
__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying 'thanks' is free!
