Format Options

Golfer wrote on 8/7/2009, 1:01 AM
Hi All.
This a 2 part question in which i could use your knowledge.
I just got done filming A 1 min 30 second clip in HDV. I need to convert this to be no larger than 40 mb's for upload to the internet. It's a contest kinda thing. Any who
i tried rendering 720x480 DVD ARCHITECT TEMPLATE. It's 70MB'S. Requirements regarding formats are AVI, MOV, MPEG, a few others that i don't recall. I need to keep it 16x9. Also, i will burn this to disk to give to the person who will upload it. part 2 is..what I'm rendering in order for the individual who will take the disk then upload it?
I'm not sure this makes much sense, But if you can make sense of it please chime in.
Thanks in advance.( I've uploaded to vimeo and other sites from my computer, Just not sure what to burn on the disk when offering this for someone else to do.)

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 8/7/2009, 4:05 AM
The size is determined by the duration and the bitrate.

40MB / 90 seconds = 0.444444MB/sec
0.444444 x 8 bits/byte = 3.55555Mb/sec

Therefore you need to use a combined audio + video bitrate of about 3.5Mb/sec or less. If you use an audio bitrate of 192kbps then that leaves about 3.3mbps for the video.

The DVD architect templates don't include sound by default. They'll probably be ok, but under Custom go to the Audio tab and enable the sound before rendering. The Video tab is where you can specify the bitrate.

Also you should probably use the DVD Architect widescreen template to get a 16x9 file. If you don't pick widescreen then you'll get a 4:3 output with your video letterboxed inside it.

On the other hand, DVDs are MPEG2 and that may not be acceptable for the upload. One of the other codec choices may be more appropriate.
Golfer wrote on 8/7/2009, 10:16 PM
Thanks Cheinworks! Still not feeling the love on this one, But will continue rendering in all formats till we get the right size.
Chienworks wrote on 8/8/2009, 4:21 AM
The format makes no difference for the output file size. It's the bitrate that matters. No matter what format you choose, you have to pick an appropriate bitrate.

90 seconds of MPEG2 @ 3.5mbps = 40MB
90 seconds of MPEG @ 3.5mbps = 40MB
90 seconds of WMV @ 3.5mbps = 40MB
90 seconds of MOV @ 3.5mbps = 40MB
90 seconds of DivX @ 3.5mbps = 40MB
90 seconds of h.264 @ 3.5mbps = 40MB
90 seconds of AVI @ 3.5mbps = 40MB
etc.

See the pattern? The format doesn't matter.
farss wrote on 8/8/2009, 5:10 AM
Maybe where the lack of love comes from is wanting to know which format is going to give the best results.
If so then in some respects the question is badly worded, rather than format the question should be which codec, "format" is kind of vague, I hear it used in relation to film and aspect ratio, not compression.
To further confound matters AVI and MOV are containers with quite a few options to the codecs they can contain.

My suggestion would be h.264 / AVC.

Bob.
Golfer wrote on 8/8/2009, 5:50 AM
Got it Chienworks. Thanks Bob. And yes, Badly worded. I guess my main concern now is when i choose my codec and render, and i want to put this on DVD and give this to said customer....I'm i changing it to mpeg2? if that's the case will customer be able to change the required codec for upload? The problem for me is I'm not entirely sure what to hand off to customer so that he can upload it without any issues.
Chienworks wrote on 8/8/2009, 6:36 AM
If the customer is doing the encoding for upload then give him the largest, most uncompressed version you can. A 300MB HDV will fit even on a CD-R with no trouble. What you need to avoid is giving the customer a highly compressed video that will be re-encoded and recompressed again.

If you are producing the version to be uploaded then you need to give the customer a file that they don't have to fiddle with. Bob's suggestion of h.264/AVC is probably going to result in the best possible quality at 3.5mbps. This is not MPEG2 or DVD format. It's just a file that you can burn to a data DVD-R or CD-R, or even a flash card or USB memory stick. Don't get hung up on trying to make a video DVD that can be played in a DVD player.