What are your favourite settings/formats for exporting short web-based videos?

December 6, 2004 2:48 PM

What are your favourite settings/formats for exporting short web-based videos? [mi]

I have to post a 3-minute 300×200-pixel video on our intranet. The only media player guaranteed to be on all machines is Windows Media Player 9. The server doesn't allow for any kind of streaming format.

I'm using Premier 6.5 with the Windows Media 9 plug-in to export the video clip and am overwhelmed with the amount of options available. I'm an HTML monkey. I don't know the difference between various codecs (MPEG4 and WMV7, 8 and 9), bit rates, modes (CBR vs Peak VBR vs Quality VBR vs Bit Rate VBR) and audio options.

The exported file has to be small enough that it downloads and starts playing quickly with minimal time spent looking at a "buffering" graphic. (Don't let the fact that this is an intranet fool you into thinking we've got masses of bandwidth. Our "internal" server is two timezones away.)

Random tweaking has produced a 5MB file that takes a minute and a half to start playing. Is this as good as I'm going to get?

posted by Monk to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: You should be able to get that down to under a Meg a minute (or way less, given that it's 300x200).

For free you can download Windows Media Encoder from Microsoft. And I'm going to take some serious liberties here.

1) First, use WMP 9, each iteration of the codec is improved. All but 9, pretty much suck.

2) Drop the frame rate towards 10-15 frames per second. Less frames/second means each frame gets more information and looks better. The lower the number tradeoff yields a choppier video

3) CBR - constant bit rate gives every frame the exactly the same amount of information - but if you use a VBR - Variable bit Rate, it will always look better. CBR's strength is that it's a faster encode.

There are two types of compression - spatial (a la JPEG) and temporal - each frame showing the changes from the previous frame. Variable bit rate analyzes the video and makes it possible to have a lower overall average than CBR.

So, VBR Peak, keeps the bandwidth pipe from going too high.
VBR Quality tries to keep the quality based on a specific setting.
VBR Bit rate, hits a specific # - and is the best controlled (IMHO).

So, I'd go VBR - and do several passes, each at lower bit rates until I get a good tradeoff between size/quality.

I figure you should be able to get to between 2-3 Megs bare minimum.

Feel free to address here or on my email for followups.
posted by filmgeek at 3:29 PM on December 6, 2004

I used to go the VirtualDub/ XViD 2-Pass method, then I discovered NanDub, then I discovered Auto Gordion Knot.

If you want to make the absolute best-looking, lowest size AVI's (XViD), Auto Gordion Knot is the answer. Here's a step-by-step instruction guide.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:14 PM on December 6, 2004