What Video Format / Compression Scheme Should I use?

Duderdude2 wrote on 1/30/2005, 11:27 PM

I'll be offering downloadable videos on my website, thus I want to keep the file size as small as possible.

The videos will be 320 x 240, but will contain quite a bit of action, so I need them to be fairly detailed. So what file format is the most efficient file size wise, and what compression specifications should I use? In other words, what should I do to get a pretty good picture at a small file size?

Comments

busterkeaton wrote on 1/31/2005, 4:33 AM

Try Windows Media 9 at 256 Kps. WM9 is a very good codec. It's widely used. 256K is a sweet spot in the trade off between filesize and image quality.

If you are offering videos for download, you need to ask yourself, do I care about people on dialup? Are they my market and do folks who have dialup download videos, since it becomes a bigger hassle for them. If you care about dialup people, you then should make two files available for download for each video clip--one dialup size and one broadband size.

Then you should ask yourself, do I care about people who use QuickTime. If so, then you need to make a QuickTime file too.

Then do the same for RealMedia9.

For me the question becomes do I want to offer anything other than Windows Media 9 for broadband.

Duderdude2 wrote on 1/31/2005, 9:46 AM

Thanks, I'll give that a shot.

Just curious, but do you know how many megs, on average, that compression scheme will use per minute!

ScottW wrote on 1/31/2005, 11:39 AM

256 Kb/s is 32 KB/s * 60 seconds is 1.92 MB.

Duderdude2 wrote on 1/31/2005, 11:46 AM

That's not bad. Thanks for that.

Duderdude2 wrote on 2/1/2005, 12:55 PM

Couple more questions. After I choose the 256kbps template, does it matter what i set the "video rendering quality" to? What exactly does that do?

Also, I tried the 256k setting, and it's not quite not the level of detail I need. Is there another "sweet spot" as far as quality/file size is concerned (obviously the file will have to be a bit bigger, but that's okay by me)?

MJhig wrote on 2/1/2005, 1:51 PM

I generally use the 512 kbps template without changing any parameters for Video greeting cards. The results are quite good even Fullscreen but the filesize will double (approx. 4 MB/min.).

Most are right around a minute so most can live with that. For longer videos (web delivery) I have to drop to the 256 kbps template. I tried Microsoft's WM 9 Encoder since some say the results are better but that's not what I found.

MJ

Duderdude2 wrote on 2/14/2005, 6:51 PM

Well, I tried the 512/kbps and it's not bad. But for some of my videos, specifically ones where I use fast-forward a lot, they have a tendency to blur.

I don't want to increase the file size too much, but what's the next step up in quality that I should use? Again, this is for a 320x240 video.

Chienworks wrote on 2/14/2005, 7:18 PM

I usually use Bit Rate VBR (Peak) and tweak the bitrate to whatever i want. This method also does a two-pass encode which gives better quality i the same file size than one-pass does.

Duderdude2 wrote on 2/14/2005, 7:29 PM

Thanks, I'll have to try that. However, I'm an idiot, so how exactly do I do that?

Chienworks wrote on 2/14/2005, 7:36 PM

Choose the 512K template (or whatever is closest to your desired rate), then click the Custom button. In the Video tab you can select Bit rate VBR (Peak) as the Mode:. Strangely enough, the Average bit rate seems to come up as double the template rate you've selected, but you'll probably be changing that anyway.