Creating Multimedia Files

sean@oregonsound.com wrote on 12/4/2003, 4:56 PM
I captures some 8mm video from a music client's concert, from which they'd like to extract short sections for website use. I've experimented with rendering short sections as AVI and WMV files at various settings and am now confused. The WMV files looked horrid, and any AVI files that retained any useable quality was very large. I know very little about web streaming, but I'm pretty sure these fat AVI's are too big even for broadband. Is Vegas a good tool for multimedia file creation? Where can I find condensed information on what is and isn't useable for internet video? Thanks,

Sean McCoy
Oregon Sound Recording

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 12/4/2003, 5:36 PM
For streaming you have to choose the most appropriate bit-rate for your target audience. Vegas has the capability to allow you to create WMV files in very many different bit-rates (and using WMV version 7 through 9).

I would recommend you at least try encoding using the 250Kbps WM9 template or even higher if quality is of great concern.

How did you create your WMV files? Using what Template?

AVI is definitely going to be pointless for web streaming as the files will be too big.
Chienworks wrote on 12/4/2003, 5:40 PM
When rendering to WMV, go into the custom options for video and enable 2-pass encoding. This will make a remarkable improvement in quality.
kameronj wrote on 12/9/2003, 7:15 AM
ONe other thing to note....when you create the WMV files they may definately look horrid if you try and play them full screen.

Streaming a good looking file is better when it is windowed - not full screen. Trying to stream a full screen file that looks good will make a file that is very big.
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/9/2003, 8:15 AM
Excepting high motion video, 250k streams should look great at fullscreen.
Reduce colors
crop in to remove fringing from edges
Restore blacks
marginally increase luma
Crop out unnecessary picture information
Stream audio in mono, not stereo
Use Windows 9

This should give you a great stream
kameronj wrote on 12/9/2003, 9:34 AM
Yeah.......what Spot says!

:-)
Jsnkc wrote on 12/9/2003, 11:40 AM
Also for slightly better quality use the Windows Media Encoder that you can download free from the Micorsoft site. Render out as an uncompressed AVi from Vegas, then load it up in there and render out.
stormstereo wrote on 12/9/2003, 8:50 PM
Are we talking pan/crop-crop or Debugmode 3dLE-crop which gives the frame a black border around? Using the pan/crop tool would make the pixels bigger (although very very little). Is this good for an encoder?
Best/T