In my experience, the best playback by far from old archaic computers comes from using the DivX codec. Before it finally died, my old 1Ghz PIII laptop could playback 1280x720 DivX HD video smoothly. That same computer would give you maybe one frame every minute and a half if you were watching Youtube.

thanks corug7,

i'm not sure how they intend playing it back - i'll give them the files on disk, from then on it's out of my hands. i suspect that they'll give it as a second option on their web site (the other being standard hd mp4), offer it as a down load, and perhaps distrib. on cd with other material (cd cause some of these pc's don't have dvd drives!)

i'm not sure if mac's come into the equation, if they do, how does wmv play on them?

again, thanks for the prompt response....

leslie

DivX playback is quite a bit lighter on the CPU than wmv, though wmv is probably the next lightest on the list.

the main problem is that the pc's are institutionalized, ie, pretty well locked down, and from past experience getting an it person is next to impossible, and when you do, 'oh no mate, can't load a ______ (fill in gap with program, codec, etc.,), it's more than my jobs worth...'

looks like wmv.

is there a present i can just render out at - there's a few listed but which would be the best?

FWIW I wouldn't go over 240 height -- letting the graphics hard/software up-size is much less computation intensive, so it helps on older machines. You also want to stay away from any post processing -- it's common with the latest DivX/Xvid, H264, & many winmedia filters [there are a couple of apps for setting the reg values that are the only way to control pre/post processing for winmedia encoding]. If possible stay away from Flash -- high CPU usage. PAL/NTSC should be irrelevant, & use sizes with both dimmensions divisible by 4. If you're going for smaller file sizes, definitely go VBR -- you'll cut your peak bit rate too much otherwise, & watch out for most preset minimums -- far too low. Frame rate depends on the content, but if you don't mind adding blur FX to pans & rapid moves before render, cut it to 12 - 15... if you don't have any pans or moves, cut it to 12 - 15 anyway. Bit rate depends on motion, but generally you can go 300 - 700 for web vid [with peak at 1500, you can do movies at average bit rate = 700]... If you've got graphics, render in Vegas, which will give you a softer picture... do the resize in the render settings, so the encoder has the max data. By going softer, even sometimes adding noise, you tend to escape the blockiness that can plague solids or subtle patterns. You can get away reducing size in the render settings because that will de-interlace for you -- no need for additional steps. Audio you can drop bit rate on quite a bit depending on content & delivery format -- 50 to 100 is pretty std, with joint stereo if both MP3 & real stereo... mono otherwise [the PCs probably won't have the gear to tell the difference]. Stay away from VBR audio at all costs -- it's for playing movies on your own gear, & terribly problematic.

That said, the only thing close to universal for web delivery at the moment is Flash -- if you're handing it off, with no info, control etc., whomever puts it on-line is expecting it. In that case I'd render to final size in mjpeg, huff, or lagarith, & then make an flv using riva, or one in Riva & 1 wmv & give them both... their choice. If they come back & want something else, it'll just take a short time to transcode once more.

"looks like wmv.

is there a present i can just render out at - there's a few listed but which would be the best?"

Depends on your standards. ;-)

I assume you're at 16:9, & if so, should make the vid frame the same size as the picture, rather than letterbox -- compressing letterboxing stinks. I'd size proportionately from 160, 180 or 240 height, making sure width was divisible by 4. Depending on whatever encoder, usually just get 320 x 240 in that range as a preset.

just updating what i've found.....

downloaded m$'s expression encoder 2 trial - mostly because i was curious about silverlight, but by golly gosh, not only will it take in m2t, avchd, etc., but it will spit out any silverlight ready, AND any one of a number of wmv files ready to go.

i haven't done any side by side comparisons (as yet), but it's easy to use, very fast, and the higher bit-rate files look spectacular. i'm certainly going to have to play a little longer with it....