Video Format Choice

[joeskopec]

I'm struggling to find the best settings when incoding video.
By that I mean that provide the best combination of quality
and smooth playability on most machines.

I make my avi's and convert with Tmpegenc.
Any templates best suited to autoplay out there?

[eric_darling]

Do a search for mpeg-1 in the forums to find my consistently strong opinion of MPEG-1 over AVI for the purposes of distribution with AMS.

MPEG-1 needs to have 16x16 block sizes - so in other words, both the horizontal and vertical resolutions need to be evenly divisible by 16. 320x240 is a good resolution with which to start.

Keep the TOTAL (audio+video) data rate under 1500 Kilobits/second.

Those are the golden rules.

[joeskopec]

Thanks. Having read that, I think I must have a different problem.
Here are the settings I used...
352x240
4:3 525 lines
29fps
(cbr)
1150

Should be no problem, but I'm getting jerky, stuttering
video after build and burn on Nero at 4x.
!
Any ideas?

[Corey]

Try checking out this "why am I getting flickering" paragraph here http://www.nwlink.com/~zachd/pss/pss.html#vdriver might help, might not...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[eric_darling]

The only thing that I see as odd in the specs you quoted is 525 lines of horizontal resolution. Remember, you're encoding at 352 X 240, so in reality, you only have 240 lines of horizontal resolution.

What are the specs on your computer - video card, RAM, processor, OS, etc?

[Corey]

Here's a little tidbit'o'fun for the apawsmeister. In lo these many years of producing and selling a wide variety of mutlimedia things to a wide variety of clients, I've never actually used MPEG for any video yet. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Guess I better get on board...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[eric_darling]

What are you/have you been using instead, Corey? If I had to bet, I'd say that until relatively recently you were stuck with AVI, and now you deliver Flash?

Well, you know what I (and for that matter, Microsoft, the inventor of AVI) think of AVI - Microsoft doesn't even support it anymore. There are better choices now.

As far as Flash goes, I say it's probably the second best choice, but still probably a distant second in terms of compatibility to MPEG-1. Quality-wise, I'd say it beats MPEG-1 any day if encoded through Squeeze.

Real is so out of the question. Someone else said it: Real isn't a program, it's a virus.

QuickTime rocks - by far the most robust and deepest computer video format with the best codec (Sorenson 3.1 Pro). But alas, far too many people don't have QT installed, and some corporate IT departments won't allow third-party software installs like QT requires.

[Corey]

I've always used uncompressed AVI for working format and then deployed as QT, Real, and sometimes WMV (ASF in the past) but my videos are usually shorter than 10 minutes, so...

I never use flash, but I should... It's cross platform and ubiquitous.

I'm working on making my new highly advanced Chi Chi Rodriguez inspired rhumba technology cross platform right now but it seems like you Mac users just don't get the rythym...

BTW Eric, for the record, I use real every single day of my life here and I like it just fine. My player is setup the way I like it, etc. I use it to watch CBC The National every night and very often stuff from CSPAN because they only archive Washington Journal in Real format. So flrrrrp!

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[eric_darling]

I never use flash, but I should... It's cross platform and ubiquitous.

[img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] What! And I thought you were like Flash Gordon or somesuch. For shame. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Corey]

Qt files are just so much smaller though. You know, I used to deploy QT from shockwave and I remember you could make standalone real and QT stuff that would play regardless of the host system, using XTRAs. I did it once...

Anyhow, yes I will start checking out Flash more often. Lately we stoppped doing video stuff, the Setup Factory promo video took too long. It was valiant of Colin to let me do that, I needed it artistically, but alas it just isn't cost effective against Flash. That video took weeks, the intro bit alone took many days. From now on our product demos will be all Flash anyhow, but I might look at inserting short vignettes as we say here in Canada.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[eric_darling]

Qt files are just so much smaller though.

You are the one controlling data rate with whatever program you're using to encode (if your program doesn't allow you to set data rate, it's not a true encoder). So, your statement is not accurate. QT files can be larger or smaller, depending on your settings. Same goes for Flash video encodes with Squeeze. Might be big, might be small. It all depends on you.

I do see the argument that Sorenson 3.1 Pro VBR QT will look better at the same data rates than Spark VBR encoded Flash video compressed through Squeeze. But, that's not what you said. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[Corey]

Oooooh, parsing words tonight, eh? OK let's put the big rubber stamp on it, "that's what I meant sir." Also, when I said Chi Chi Rodriguez, I actually meant Xavier Cugat...

Nope I didn't HA, got you there, I DID mean Chi Chi Rodriguez sir!

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[Bruce]

LOL!!!

[eric_darling]

BTW Eric, for the record, I use real every single day of my life here and I like it just fine. My player is setup the way I like it, etc. I use it to watch CBC The National every night and very often stuff from CSPAN because they only archive Washington Journal in Real format. So flrrrrp!

I hope you have a firewall that is set to prevent outgoing calls by Real Event. That little bugger pepper's my firewall's log - surreptitious outbound calls by software I didn't even know I installed (I guess I could have read all 18 pages of fine print in the license agreement) is more than a little bit unacceptable. Use Real at your own risk. My clients have been getting talked out of Real for a couple of years now.

[Corey]

Works great with my firewall sir. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Once I got it setup the way I like, it was great, and now all is thackeray.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software