Oh anything.Just getting peoples opinions. Let's say a 5 min video to place on a website.

I encode 500k WMV, 24fps (from 24fps timeline) with 64kbs audio, custom 16:9 aspect ratio of 500x276, square pixels.

I'd wish I could get Quicktimes to look good and then I'd compliment the WMV's with MOV's. Any 500kbs quicktime I encode looks like crap.

When I encode something for the web, I look the following criteria:
A- Compatibility.
Do they have the codec installed? If not, can the user easily install it?

Also, does their system have enough computing power to decode the codec? Some formats are designed so that not-so-powerful devices like cell phones can easily decode the video. HD footage is also an issue, because people will need a powerful system to decode the video.

B- Quality / Compression
The ratio between picture quality to file size.

C- Bandwidth

D- "Features". Indexing is nice so the user can scrub through your video (Quicktime is really good about this). Windows Media has to be specifically encoded to allow this (I believe Vegas defaults to indexing on).
If you want others to evaluate your work, indexing is very good to have for the random access.

Another feature that's nice is streaming. With Quicktime, you can embed it into a webpage and it'll stream. Same deal with Windows Media I believe.

E- Does it hijack your system?
This rules out real player, which is not cool. One hijack it does is that the user won't be able to play back QT MPEG4 with .mp4 extension. Real Player associates .mp4 files to itself, but it can't play them.
Some divX codecs are bundled with spyware.

That being said, this is probably the best route for distribution:
A- Shotgun the audience with multiple choices.
Try to at least do a Windows Media and Quicktime version. This'll cover your bases well.
Windows Media 7 is the most compatible for Windows platforms. Win95/98 may have difficulty with WM7 as the codec is not installed by default. Those platforms won't be able to play WM8 and above as far as I know.
On newer Windows PCs, they can play WM8 and WM9 if they have the codec. Windows Media is supposed to download it automatically, but it doesn't always work.

Quicktime works well with Macs. Also, it'll work with win95+98 if you stick with QT5 (I think QT6 will work too). The user would have to manually install QT Player... and then let it automatically download the appropriate codecs if necessary.

You could do Real Player too, but I think it's evil.
You could also add in 'trick' codecs which offer better compression. (h.264, vp5, etc.)
I never really tried Flash.

Ideally, encode multiple versions for different bandwidths. Indicate file size on the download page... i.e.
56k 1.2MB
broadband (low) 5MB
broadband (high) 20MB

That way people will choose the appropriate size for their connection. If they want a higher quality version, they can download it. Allow an option for people to download the video.

Add clear instructions to make things idiot-proof.


Encoding Windows Media:
You can do it straight out of Vegas. This is easiest.
Or, download Windows Media Encoder, which is free. You can set it up to output multiple versions of one file. For example, use the progressive download presets for 3 different bandwidths. The WME interface is kind of annoying and complicated.

Windows Media gives excellent quality compression- the same as or better than QT with pro codecs, and much better than QT with free codecs. And it's free if you have a PC.

Encoding Quicktime:
You will get better results if you pay for the pro sorenson codecs.

The best video codec to use (according to the criteria above) is sorenson3. It needs QT5 to play, and gives good quality video. I would consider h.264 to be a 'trick' codec which you can add on as another option. It has really good compression (maybe double sorenson3???) BUT viewers may have problems playing it.

For audio, you have a few choices. For compatibility, go with qdesign music or mp3. To get good quality out of those codecs, you need to pay $$$. An encoding app like Sorenson Squeeze will encode mp3 audio. IMA 4:1 is also good quality, but it does not compress your audio well so it's huge. It has a fixed 4:1 compression ratio. It has some problems with sharp transients like clapping.

If you want something that's free/cheap and good quality, use MPEG4 audio. I don't think Vegas compresses mpeg4 audio, so you may need QT Pro (~$30?). MPEG4 audio gives better quality than mp3. The user needs QT6 or above to play things back.

General compression tips:
Pick half the frame rate. The motion will look slightly worse, but file size is halved.

Make the image smaller to increase compression. (sorry this may be kind of obvious)

56k: Have decent audio, and just do a slideshow for the video (i.e. 1fps, high quality). This is probably the best compromise. If you need to impress clients, it may be best to have good image quality at the expense of (smooth) motion. As well, you may want to have good image quality at the expense of audio quality/lack of artifacts? (on cheap computer speakers, they may not notice it anyways)

I'd go along generally with what Glenchan said, but I use different parameters.

First of all, I figured that WMV had the best chance of becoming pretty much a universal standard (one of the few benefits of having Microsoft as a monopoly), so I don't bother with Real, Quicktime, or the new 264 standard. WMV is, in my opinion, as efficient as any of them, with the exception of 264, which represents the state-of-the-art and is probably 50% more efficient (i.e. a 7MB 264 file probably looks as good as a 10MB WMV file).

I use the free Microsoft WMV encoder interface because it allows for a great deal of configuration flexibility.

I settled on an overall bitrate of 200Kb/sec with 161Kb/sec of that for video and 32Kb/sec for WMA audio. The video is VBR and the audio is CBR. The image size is 320x240x29.97.

An example of such an encoded image is here. As you can see on that web page, I also offer the option of downloading the file manually so it can be played without streaming. Also, note that I offer a link to the Microsoft web page that contains the necessary Windows Media 9 codecs for pretty much any system, even those running the old Windows Media 6.4 player.

Flash 8 is coming in September. Flix Pro flash encoder for Flash 8
will be released at the same time. I beta tested both, the results beat
all players hands down! Lower bandwidth, smaller file, higher quality
and a 98% worldwide install base! Actually the 98% install base is for Flash 7, they say it will take up to one year for 98% of the computers to be upgraded to Flash 8. The download & install is
FAST!

Just my opinion, That is all I use for my business. You can check out my site at www.videolistings.ca

I have about 120 VideoTours running at the moment.

Alex.

An example of such an encoded image is here. As you can see on that web page, I also offer the option of downloading the file manually so it can be played without streaming.
========
Riredale,
The file wouldn't stream without buffering every 5 seconds so I had to download it to play it. The quality is decent, but it doesn't stream well. I am running W98SE with WMP 7.1 and all updated codecs installed. I usually don't have this problem. You might want to make a note of that and encode differently.

John

Just my opinion, That is all I use for my business. You can check out my site at www.videolistings.ca

======
That one I like. Plays well using Flash 7 running an IE session and a Firefox session and antivirus software at the same time. And the quality looks good as well. Windows says resources are at only 64% to boot.

John

agree re flash -- check out macromedia.com 's new studio 8 demo flash movies, terrific previews...

waiting for the flix pro update to use w/ultra, do all the NLE work in vegas.. should be a terrific year ahead for web video streams...

ken
sitefomercials.com

I was curious what software you used in creating your websites?

I looked at the videolisting.ca and sitefomercials.com sites and was impressed with the video quality.

Can you use flash with a website designed in Frontpage? Or do you need to use a macromedia web design program?

Thanks everyone. Your input has helped greatly. Billae

Flash is an embedded plugin. Once you have the <embed> code you can easily copy and paste it into any web page created with any software, even notepad while editing raw HTML. All you have to do is edit a few parameters which specify which file to display and you're all set.

"Can you use flash with a website designed in Frontpage? Or do you need to use a macromedia web design program?"

Seriously, why anyone use anything other than Macromedia? FP just feels like a buggy toy compared to the quality of sites one can churn out using Macromedia.

Yes, my site is totally Frontpage with Flash video.

Cheers!

Dreamweaver used to be very difficult to learn, so Frontpage was the popular alternative for many, and they just lived with the very poor HTML code generated, the numerous bugs, and the [limited beauty] of the sites, especially when using FP templates which all look the same (all 2,500+ of them).

Dreamweaver 8 is a masterpiece, and it is vastly easier to learn.

Major useability improvements, and they got more orders in the first 24 hours after its announcement than they got over the entire MX2004 launch campaign last year. Adding video is now really easy, and even many advanced things are now easy to do. Even CSS is close to being outright easy to use properly in this version thanks to lots of UI improvements.

It's absolutely a must-have upgrade for anybody using DW professionally (because it saves so much time) and it is for the first time a realistic alternative for those who are suffering with FrontPage. Especially since you can import the the FP web site into DW (if you want) and then tweak it there.

When does it ship? (studio 8 version)

Craftech:

Thanks for the feedback. The media files are on a separate media server at the ISP used by the choir; I do know they limit the server stream to just 384Kb/sec, so it doesn't take much to choke it when my stream alone is 200Kb/sec. Sorry you had trouble.