Interesting....I don't recall what resolution I did the movie at -- probably whatever the default was. What does the 352x240 mpg1 format mean exactly? When I do the 'Make Movie' wizard, I see it puts in my folder the .avi file (the large one) - so what is the mpg1 you mention?

I want to be able to view the movie in either the small wmp screen or Full Screen.

You will probably want to choose "WMV" instead of "AVI". AVI files can be enormously huge. WMV is a compressed format that can be played on almost all PCs. You will have to choose which bitrate to use. The higher rates have much better quality and bigger resolution, but the files will be much larger. The 3MB setting is the best, almost as good as a home VHS camcorder, and it allows about 28 minutes on a CD (more than plenty for your 4 minute project). However, if you're sending the file to people with older computers (pre 700MHz era), their computers may have trouble playing it; it may skip or become very blocky. The 1MB setting isn't too bad, and it can be played well even on slower computers, but the image is only half the size so it will show noticeable pixels when zoomed in to full screen.

Hi -- so I chose the 'wmv' file type and the default bitrate was 100kbps, but I chose 1MBps (that was as high as it went - didn't see a 3MB setting). I guess I'm mostly concerned with the file size as I want to be able to put it on a cd (less than 700MB) and have people play it. Two boxes that were checked were 'stretch video to fill output frame' and 'fast video resizing'. Do I want those stretched ya think?

My movie is about 2 1/2 minutes (I added some transitions & background music) and now that I've made the movie as a WMV, I'm not sure which file it is that I should look at to see what size it is? There's a 'video clip' file which is 934 MB and a 'windows media audio/video' file which is 12.4 MB. If it's the 934 MB, it's still too large for a cd-rom.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thx!

It would be the Windows Media file, and that size sounds about right. Normally it would be about 19MB for 2.5 minutes, but Sonic Foundry's encoder seems to be more efficient at saving space.

You usually don't have to worry about either of those settings. The first would stretch pictures that don't fit the frame so that they do fill it, but in so doing it can stretch them out of proportion. The second can change the rendering time, fast resizing will render faster, but the output might not be as clear. Feel free to play.

Good morning - I tried doubleclicking the windows media audio/video file which was 12.4 MB, and it launched windows media player but just had a black screen the whole time, no music or pics. So I launched the other file (the video clip file) and it did the same thing if I remember right. So I wasn't sure if you had to have both files, if the final movie used a combination of them or something? If I 'made movie' to my local harddrive, can I then burn the file to my cd & if so, is it just the onw 12.4MB file I'd burn or a couple of files I need? TIA, -M

p.s. what IS the 'video file' which shows 934MB?

Hello marys,

Hopefully you already found a solution to your problem, but if not, here is my suggestion.

For the record, I am not a VF user...yet.

First here are my assumptions:
1. You have a 2.5 minute production completed in VF and ready for rendering.
2. You would like to distribute this 2.5 minute movie on a CD for playback on a wide variety of computers.
3. You want to put this one movie on the CD by itself.

Solution:
1. Render production to a format that is playable on a wide variety of computers. The most compatible format for this is MPEG-1 (.mpg). Window Media Video (.wmv) is a very good format also, but .mpg will result in a higher quality file and wider compatibility.
2. Click the make movie button, choose write file to disk, for format choose mpeg, choose the highest quality MPEG-1 template available.
3. Make sure that 'Render loop region only' is NOT checked.
4. Make sure that 'Stretch video to fill output frame' is NOT checked.
5. Render the movie and test it when its finished.

TIP: since you seem to be unsure of file formats, etc. give the file a unique name, or render it to a folder by itself so you can find it easily.

Now you should have a playable MPEG-1 movie file with .mpg extension. You can use your favorite CD-burning software or run VF's Make Movie wizard again and this time choose 'Write file to Video CD or CD-ROM' then follow these steps:
1.Choose 'Create a CD-ROM' then click Next.
2.Enter summary info if you want (this is not necessary) and click Next
3. Choose 'Use an existing file', then click Browse and pick the .mpg file you just made, then click Next
4. Pick your CD-RW drive, choose 'Write CD' then click Next.
5. You don't need to check any of the CD options, but you can if you wish.
6. Click Next to begin writing the file to the CD
7. Click Finish and your done.

I hope this helps. Now, I have to go download VF so I can start learning it too ;-)

-NinjaGrinch
ninja_grinch@hotmail.com

Hmmmm...... perhaps you know this, anyway....

If anybody is dowloading VF to "try it out" (ie demo).:

1. You can not save the project created in the Demo version.
2. You can not go on to experiment with MPEG1 production because you need to have a "Registered", that is a bought copy of VF to then be able to "Register" the MPEG1 facility, which only becomes available when you attempt to save the project to an MPEG1 clip.
To recap: As videos created in the demo version can not be saved you can not then go on to Register MPEG1 faciltity and evaluate MPEG1 capabilities.

I bought VF 2.0 and registered it, dowloaded the 2.0c Build 125 update and installed/activiated it, which then allowed me to access the MPEG1 registration.This last MPEG1 registration occurs when you make your "first" MPEG1 video. As long as you have a live connection to the web it takes a split second. It is done once and there you have it for all future MPEG1 productions. MPEG2 is another story! Do a search on our Forum for MPEG2 stuff... and stand back!

Welcome aboard,

Grazie