Recommended render settings for web?

Ptero wrote on 12/8/2005, 10:05 AM

I just finished my first VMS6 project (wheee!) and I'm looking to upload it to a hosting service.

Here's the problem: it's a little under 15 minutes long. If I set the project properties as "multimedia" (I think that's the one, the first in the dropdown, that sets it for 320 pix wide) then use the default render template with output to a WMV file, it comes out at around 125Mb.

What I'd like to do is offer the usual choices that you often see for, for example, movie trailers - one link for 56k modem speed, another for broadband.

So, what would you people recommend for the project/render settings to do that? Also, is WMV the format of choice or would MOV be better?

Comments

dibbkd wrote on 12/10/2005, 10:55 AM

You're on the right track, but when you click the WMV format, right below that where it says "Template", click that to have choices drop-down.

You can pick 56, 256, 512Kbps, etc.

I've found for cable/DSL users that 512Kbps is reasonable, 256 if it's a larger file.

Vegas also shows the estimated file size.

Shaz wrote on 12/14/2005, 9:30 PM

I would experiment with the various settings... maybe render a smaller piece of your project, 30 seconds or so... and see how they each look and what their relative file sizes are. You can get quite a variety of settings by choosing Advanced and Custom. A lot of people use Qucktime and .mov, but I think it's terrible compared to .wmv, at least in terms of sound quality.

I have a 3 minute music video and I've just trying to find the best options to have both WMV and MOV files available. I can't seem to get anything on .mov that isn't either too incredible large, or where the audio doesn't sound terribly compressed. The .wmv files, by comparison, sound great and are smaller files. They both look the same, so that seals the deal for me. But people want the option of both, so I'll have to do what I can to provide the best of each.

What I wonder is when I watch movie trailers online, how they are getting such good sound and picture quality at a reasonable file size. Of course, the picture quality is great to begin with, but still...

Ptero wrote on 12/15/2005, 11:28 AM

Thanks all. I've been messing with this and found that the 56k setting creates a truly horrible postage-stamp sized image, but hey, if a 56k modem is all you have at least you can see the thing and the sound isn't so bad. I also did a 256kbps render which is MUCH better (wanna see it? - be gentle, this is my first serious project so please forgive shaky camerawork and lousy sound, I'm still learning this stuff!)

vannest wrote on 12/30/2005, 9:27 AM

Really enjoyed it!

Ptero wrote on 12/30/2005, 10:00 AM

I'm glad you liked it :) In playing it back now (and especially compared to work that others have posted here) I can see how rough it is, but even so this is my first real project and I'm kinda proud of it. You can see how crowded the place was so I had to do everything hand-held - no room for a tripod or dolly - and background noise was a problem. The narration was recorded on a digital voice recorder in my garage!