Video Compression

[glorybound]

I have a quest.... best video compression for both the web and LCD. I tried everything, but nothing gives me the kind of quality this guys is getting.

http://www.tangram3ds.com/

Any clues?

[Neilg]

I posted the name of a program in your last thread - AVS video converter, it has a number of very good presets. h.264 at 1200kbps is the best one, but biggest in size - good for cd delivery/FTP work. The default is fine for web usually.
The demo just puts a bit of text on the video it outputs, so you can still check quality/filesize.

I did try figuring out which would be best from premiere/the RAM player, but unfortunatly it all tends to be pretty awful. Most good compression is done outside of the editing package, I believe.

[Morne]

jip, as above. did you try virtualdub? also....for flash animations you can look at this (havent tried it myself but it looks usefull)
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?a...&product=video

[glorybound]

video compression

I tried both, but neither produces a very clear animation.

[Morne]

it all depends on the codec you use. as mentioned use the H.264 codec and save it as a avi file. (or if you have qtime pro save as mov file)
I had some limited success by using Microsoft MP4 Codec. Only works sometimes.
try downloading and installing K-Lite and experiment with different codecs.
(Be sure to use the more common ones since if you use some obscure coded, chances are your client wont be able to play the file on their pc)

Kind Regards,
Morne

[schroeder]

We've been using H.264 and Sorenson Squeeze to get the filesize/compression balance worked out, and are pretty pleased with the results. It's not as clean as we'd like it sometimes but the output filesizes are really great (especially the output to Flash option, for creating self-contained SWFs).

[MikeHampton]

How can you tell the "quality" this guy is getting? The animations are so small.. I would think a 5 year old codec would look good at that size!

[glorybound]

Codec

Maybe codec isn't my issue. I did a 870 frame animation at 872x492 and it took 10 minutes per frame. I have this huge 1.5 gig raw avi that in itself doesn't look the greatest.

Here it is a QuickTime

http://www.nor-son.info/bullinger/an.../bullinger.htm

and a swf

http://www.nor-son.info/bullinger/an...animation.html

Maybe this is as good as it gets and I only think I saw better streaming video.

[rivoli]

I have this huge 1.5 gig raw avi that in itself doesn't look the greatest.

so I take you didn't output a sequence of frames?

[MikeHampton]

Hmm... why are you using an .avi file? What is the codec that you are using in that avi file? And what codec is the Quicktime file in? I still run into some divx .avi files now and again.. but now that most newer codecs are in someway based upon the mpeg4 specs., windows media and quicktime H264 seem to be the most currently widely used, and maybe shockwave flash for streaming stuff... I don't see too many people using .avi's anymore.

I would try outputting using the newest windows media codec or trying to get it into the quicktime H264. I don't have much luck using ANY program other than quicktime pro to get a video into the H264 codec. Every program I have (including Premier CS2) doesn't seem to have many settings it lets you set for H264, so the output is less than stellar. I have to end up outputting it as an uncompressed quicktime and then using quicktime pro to convert it to H264.

[glorybound]

QuickTime

I downloaded the latest QuickTime and bought Pro, but you can no longer assemble a series of frames.... I was pissed! I went to the QuickTime forum and this is known thing, but Apple hasn't issues any statements.

[Morne]

cant you just assemble your frames in your NLE and then just ouput to quicktime H264?

[glorybound]

Nle

What is NLE?

[dlparisi]

Non-Linear Editor (i.e. Premiere. Final Cut or similar)