Ulf,

that's great, but I'd rather get the crux of the matter without purchasing a video.

Anyone? Even the best FORMAT to render to?

heers,

Andy

Windows Media (.WMV) has very good quality and is fairly universaly playable. It is also pretty easy to imbed on a web page. Flash Video is another good choice and is arguably even more universaly playable. It's slightly more involved to get imbed it on a web page. However, Flix Pro from On2 makes it pretty easy to encode high quality clips and will generate the necessary code to put it on a web page.

I agree with what John says.

But for an easy life you might choose to host the videos on a sharing site, where they are typically flash videos, and embed the site's player in your own pages.

I have been using Brightcove's free service to build players and host 480px-wide videos and I've been very happy with it. You can see a brightcove single player embedded on this page and a multi-player on this page.

The free Brightcove Publishpod will do a very nice 2-pass flv encode for you (30 fps only) or you can encode your own in Flix or whatever and they won't reencode it like YouTube etc. would. I use Flix Pro and keep my 25fps framerate.

I think you may be committing to advertising with the videos with Brightcove, but I am yet to see any ads with mine (or earn any money from them). It may be possible to opt out of ads. I'm not sure. But check if it's essential that you don't have any ads.

I think it'd be crazy to use anything else but FLV. It is the defacto web standard, and for many good reasons. For playback and embedding there are many excellent FLV players out there including by On2, JW, Riva etc etc

Stick them on Vimeo in HD even.

There are some real advantages to wmv over flash:

One is that you can tweak better quality out of it. Another is that it taxes the viewer's cpu a heck of a lot less. A third is that anyone who updates Windows regularly has what they need to play it back. A fourth is that it will play back in a 64 bit browser. A fifth is that you can always double click on the video to see it full screen, even when it is embedded. A sixth is that you can render it straight from Vegas.

Wmv is a whole lot more universally playable than most people realize.

But I was never happy with the quality vs file size of WMV9, despite trying to encode it with Vegas, Procoder, WM Encoder etc.. On2 VP6 flv or DivX/Xvid is much better in my experience.

If I revisit WMV, what's the current recommendation? Still WMV9 or are there newer flavours (VC1 is it???)?

Nick, I love the Brightcove stuff!

Wmv has been gradually improving and is now pretty darned good. What I like about having a format that I can render directly from Vegas is that I can add a little color correction and sharpening as I render. What I do is use the Sony color corrector with the "Studio RGB to Computer RGB preset" and a pretty healthy amount of the "Sony Sharpen" filter as well. The color correction keeps the color the same after the render and the sharpen is something that I only do on downrezzes.

You can see the results in http://architecturalvideoshowcase.com/Vivian/ASIS_Slideshow_Big.htmlthis extremely boring slideshow.[/link]

My server has been having a little trouble lately and their tech support said that it is being updated tonight, so there might be glitches in the playback.

That does look great Laurence but it is just a slowly moving slideshow, which is much easier for a codec than say underwater "fog".

Is it still just WMV9?

you can render mp4 files directly out of Vegas and newer versions of flash player will play it.

.flv will be played by any flash player by now, so that is the most universal format. For that, though, you may need to buy another app, like flix or sorenson.

I'd go with mp4 directly from vegas, and let everyone know they need to update their flash players ( if they don't see any video ).
If you know how to make your own flash players, you could always check for version and display mp4 or .flv depending on which version that particular visitor had. And this could all be controlled via xml. That is one of the benefits of using your own players.

That's all there is to it really, you can get away with lower bit rates if video is shot properly or/and doesn't have much movement, but that is just a few test renders to see what works best. Choosing 700kbs as average and 1200 as max can give almost uncompressed look sometimes ( vegas mp4 render settings ).

Hard to be enthusiastic about wmv or quicktime these days. Too many limitations. especially with what you can do if you know flash.

Hard to be enthusiastic about wmv or quicktime these days. Too many limitations. especially with what you can do if you know flash.
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The limitations with flash are greater for people who don't have the computing power to play it these days. If you have a website and the purpose of it is to attract customers why discourage a portion of the public that may be interested. For example, I am typing this on my main computer. It is a PIII 1HGZ with 750 MB of ram. Not the type of computer the average individual throws away. For me it is one of three computers at my workstation. For some people that may be their only computer because it works just fine for most purposes and is just as fast on the internet as anyone elses is. If all they need the computer for is word documents and internet access they wouldn't throw it away.

It plays QT and WMV just fine, but it stutters with higher quality flash video. So what if a person who may be interested in a product or a service goes to a company website and the first thing that hits them is a flash video that doesn't play correctly and causes erratic performance on the main page. They first have to turn it off just to get navigation ability on the main web page before they can go anywhere else. Or sometimes they are hit with a warning that they have to download a player or a codec first. Or they are hit with a page playing flash video and somewhere faded on the page is a barely visible button to click if you want to skip that page and go to the real home page.
In my case I often go somewhere else because it is so annoying and I am sure to others it is as big a turn off as well.

You say that QT and WMV have too many limitations? Take a look at the way Bluecore Media set up their website. For samples of their wedding videos they have three stills to click on, each of which bring you to a page that contains a flash video that only runs of you click on it and also a choice of either Small, Medium, Large, or Ipod Quicktime 7 versions and also a Windows Media version.
They also have a Portfolio Page with those choices with everything on one page for a potential client to easily access.

John

>>>It plays QT and WMV just fine, but it stutters with higher quality flash video. <<<

For every person experiencing that kind of a problem, there are probably 5 others who have problems with quicktime or wmv and can view flash just fine. I am exactly the opposite of what you describe. If I click on a video link, and instead of flash they pop up another small window with windows media player or quicktime, most of the time I close it and don't bother unless it's something I really want to see, then I may wait.

There is nothing wrong with giving them all three options if you feel it's worth it, but in my opinion flash covers whatever needs to be covered. It would depend on original poster's site, and target audience as well, of course.

One of the best examples would be CNN vs. BBC
While I go to BBC if I feel like reading news, I never click on their videos because they are still crap. CNN's, on the other hand uses flash and videos look great, unfortunatelly, the news they have is crap. I guess, you just can't win sometimes.

>>>It plays QT and WMV just fine, but it stutters with higher quality flash video. <<<

For every person experiencing that kind of a problem, there are probably 5 others who have problems with quicktime or wmv and can view flash just fine. I am exactly the opposite of what you describe. If I click on a video link, and instead of flash they pop up another small window with windows media player or quicktime, most of the time I close it and don't bother unless it's something I really want to see, then I may wait.

There is nothing wrong with giving them all three options if you feel it's worth it, but in my opinion flash covers whatever needs to be covered. It would depend on original poster's site, and target audience as well, of course.

One of the best examples would be CNN vs. BBC
While I go to BBC if I feel like reading news, I never click on their videos because they are still crap. CNN's, on the other hand use flash and videos look great, unfortunatelly, the news they have is crap. I guess, you just can't win sometimes.

Wmv is lighter on the CPU than Quicktime by the way. DivX is even lighter yet, but I've given up on that because so few people can play it back.

I find that pretty much everybody can play back wmv without installing anything or taking any steps to make it work.

CNN's, on the other hand use flash and videos look great, unfortunatelly, the news they have is crap.

Yes, CNN does have an extensive selection of video and it does look great, however, they stretch their 4x3 videos to 16x9 and that just bugs me to no end. Also, I don't happen to believe that their news is crap. On the other hand, Fox news is crap.

Fox isn't news. It's entertainment for conservatives!

I have found some success with VEOH veoh.com

They are free and they have a flash player that includes full screen. Really easy to work with so far. I thought Vimeo had the best quality but they discourage commercial or promotion videos. They want to showcase films -- also you should read their terms of use since they appear to claim some ownership over some of the material posted. Whereas the others like to distance themselves from the content to cover their backsides. You can render out in WMV if you want from Vegas and upload to Veoh and they will convert it. They accept a variety of formats.

So what did you think of the Bluecore Media video choices? Did they not provide pretty much everything for both PC and Apple visitors? Maybe they could have provided a clip for QT5 users, but as far as I could tell they pretty much covered all potential customer's systems.
The QT5 clips using the Sorenson 3 codec allow quality video at low file size. For example, this 1.5 minute video created at under 3MB.

John

A few years back I switched all the videos on the website I maintain to Flash from Wmv because I was getting complaints that some user computers simply refused to play the wmv files properly. In my own home I had difficulty with 2 of the 4 computers we had at the time. Flash was a guaranteed success, and we never had any complaints after the switch.

Now, several years later, I would assume that about 90% of all internet video is flash-based, due in large measure to wildly successful sites such as YouTube. I did have a chance to visit both the BBC and CNN sites mentioned above, and after 30 seconds of fits and starts the BBC site did play a WMV file in a separate window very nicely. Good image, too. The CNN video played as well, though I am mystified as to why they apparently purposely stretch 4:3 video to fit a widescreen window. Is it something on my PC? If your CNN videos are showing a stretched appearance also, then why on earth do you think they would do such a thing on purpose? Is it a "look" they are after? Do they not realize that 4:3 video is SUPPOSED to have a pillarbox look on widescreen sets? I'd wager money that their widescreen sets at home have the same stretched look...

EDIT:
Go take a look at other major news sites, such as NBC and/or CBS. Both have elaborate flash-based video delivery systems, and both show 4:3 as 4:3. Both have attractive sites and very clean video. I'd have to conclude: (1) that wmv is in a very weak position relative to flash, and (2) the CNN video webmaster should be replaced.

EDIT2:
In my delay in getting this posted, I see that others see the same stretched CNN video window. Good.

As for FoxNews, let's not inject politics into yet another thread. I do note that reputable monitoring organizations show them to be the most "fair" to both sides, by far, of any major news outlet. They also are just killing the other networks in their ratings, so perhaps the bias charge is not as universally felt as some would have us believe.

As for FoxNews, let's not inject politics into yet another thread. I do note that reputable monitoring organizations show them to be the most "fair" to both sides, by far, of any major news outlet. They also are just killing the other networks in their ratings, so perhaps the bias charge is not as universally felt as some would have us believe.
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I agree, that is why I haven't started detailing specific examples again that demostrate clearly that ALL of the US networks are telling the same lies only packaged for different audiences that have resulted in the dumbing down of nearly an entire nation.
Let's keep it to web video lest we end up derailing the thread.

John

Amen.

John, do I understand that you live in Santa Monica? I used to fly out of Santa Monica Airport all the time, and learned to fly there back in the late '70's at a hole in the wall place called the Claire Walters Flight Academy. She used to hang with Amelia Earhart, so she had lots of stories to tell.

Amen.

John, do I understand that you live in Santa Monica? I used to fly out of Santa Monica Airport all the time, and learned to fly there back in the late '70's at a hole in the wall place called the Claire Walters Flight Academy. She used to hang with Amelia Earhart, so she had lots of stories to tell.
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This John (craftech)?
I live in New York Riredale. I love small planes, but I don't have a pilot's license. I get to fly when I go with someone who does.

John