I suck....questions?

frostg1ant wrote on 12/2/2001, 11:35 AM

Hi,

Please forgive the newbie questions. I am new to DV editing and need some advice. My wife and I are trying to make some videos of our kids for our website...Here are our questions:

1. Looking at the options when I go to render my VF project I see the sizes and the download times for the various formats. They seem HUGE (from 50MB to 5GB). Is there a way to reduce the size of the files so that they are more easily downloadable? I think it may have something to do with the default transfer quality from tape? I believe it is NTSC DV or something like that. Is that the best to use for web-based content? My video clips are not much longer than 2 minutes long at the most so I think I may be doing something wrong. Again, maybe this is par for the course...I don't know. That's why I am here asking. :-) Any input on how I can convert my existing clips to a more web-friendly size or format would be ideal. If I need to re-capture please let me know. Thanks!

2. There are many different formats of video (.mov, .wmv, .avi, .mpeg, .rm). This is going to be a debatable question, but if you only choose one (or two) formats what is best to use? What is compatible with most players? From a cursory exploration it looks like Quicktime is the least compatible, but I *think* they all support MPEG???

3. Finally, I am using WinXP. I had created and captured several .MWV files with MS Movie Maker prior to buying VF. I am now trying to import these .MWV files into VF. It won't let me complaining of an unsupported file format. Why won't it do this?

Thanks very much for any input!

frosty

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/2/2001, 1:27 PM

In reverse order ...

Video Factory won't read .wmv files. Sorry. There's not much you can do
about it except to go back to your original tapes and recapture them as
.avi format.

For posting files to the web, my two far preferred formats are RealMedia
and MPEG 1. All Windows 95 and above installations have a Windows
Media Player capable of handling MPEG 1, and anyone who installs or
has Netscape 4.x or higher or MSIE 4.x or higher probably got RealPlayer
installed as well. Both formats are also compatible with other operating
systems.

No need to recapture your source files. It's rendering them to the
appropriate output format that matters. You'll need to decide if your
target audience is dial-up users or more cable modem/DSL users. You'll
also have to decide if you want them to be able to stream the files (play
them as they download in real time) or if it's acceptable to have them
download a larger file to their drive to be played later.

Most dial-up users can't transfer data much faster than about 40Kbits
per second. If you encode a RealMedia file at 56K, it will play at 34K,
and your website visitors can watch it as it streams through the modem.
These files will be about 250Kbytes per minute. The quality will be pretty
lousy though. But this is the best you can do streaming through a dial-up
connection.

Cable modem/DSL users can usually stream a 225K (RealMedia 256K
template) file pretty well and will get a much better quality image.
However, these files will be about 1.6Mbytes per minute. A dial-up user
would need about 6 minutes to download a 1 minute video at this rate.

If you'd like to see a comparison of quality at the different bit rates, go
to http://www.chienworks.com/media/
and look at the "jeff2-..." files. The 4 digit number in the file name is
the bitrate that was used for encoding it. Click on the .ram version to try
streaming it, or the .rm version to download first.

frostg1ant wrote on 12/2/2001, 1:41 PM

Thank you very very much! Those were exactly the answers what I was looking for.

One more question based on your answer. Is the MPEG 1 feature not available now? Everytime I choose it and try and register the feature it gives me an error message telling me that I am using an Activation code or something to that effect. I read in another thread that the MPEG support is being retooled and does not work right now. Is this still the case?

Thanks,

:-D

frosty

wvg wrote on 12/2/2001, 2:57 PM

If you're a new user or have trouble registering the MPEG plug (boy have I) you're out of luck until Sonic Foundry releases a replacement for the previous Ligos encoder. Probably another week or so, based on what they said previously.