Best Format To Share Via Internet - DivX?? WMV?? MPG??

[Boydie]

Hi All

I would really appreciate if a few people could post their preferred compromise between QUALITY and FILE SIZE for sharing your masterpieces via the internet

Which format offers the best compromise - e.g. I want to get a decent quality for about 2mb per minute

I have played with WMV properties but I am out of my depth when playing with the CODECS - I made a few changes to the NEPTUNE GOOD QUALITY codec - what are the others? - are they all the same? - are some better than others? - what WMV codec do you use and what settings??

I have also heard a lot of talk about DivX - is this a better alternative to WMV to achieve my goal

I cannot work out how to create a DivX file using VS10+ (I have downloaded the free DivX codec pack from DivX.com but do not know how to create a DivX file for sharing in VS10+?? - I can't see an option in "Make Movie Manager"??

From my understanding MPG is better avoided for internet sharing as the file sizes are way too large when compared to similar quality WMV files??

This is the last stage of my workflow that I am uncertain about and when I have my preferred format (and properties) set up for internet sharing I can finally reveal my work to the world......MWAHAHAHA!

[Trevor Andrew]

Hi

I would try WMV files to start with

Most / all of your audience will have Windows Media installed on their computers as it is a Microsoft program.

Microsoft provides a free encoder, this may give you more options.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... fault.mspx

I have not used it that much but use the Share Video on Line from Video Studio Share tab.

I am in the same boat as you and just starting to create video’s for the web.

Just completed one at 15 Mb for 2 minutes, Now that’s far to big. Have to re-assess my settings.

You can view a few samples made from VS. (share video on line)
Enter site http://www.englishdvd.com/ and scroll down to

To see a video clip Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3.

When playing right click the video for properties.

I want to balance quality with file size, as I am sure you do.
Its just a learning curve, and I am on the lower end clawing my way up.

Others on the forum will have ideas, I will be watching

Good luck

Trevor

[TubaDad]

I was sent this link by a colleague, Web Video, and it makes a good argument for using Flash. Depending on your audience, you want to pick something versital.

I have to admit I use WMV files on my wesite, purely because of the size, but I am going to look at what I can do to test out the tools on the website to create flash video files. WMV is not very Mac friendly, from what I understand, I do not have a Mac to test on.

As for the WMV settings, I use a separate program to convert my MPG files to WMV and have tuned that for my audience at a paltry 384Kps.

[GuyL]

Flash is the number one choice followed by windows media. Flash is platform independent and plays nice with everyone. I really wish VS could output directly to it.

[Terry Stetler]

It can be done.

First you install DeBugModes freeware video Frameserver, which will work in VS, MSPro, Cool3D etc. then you frameserve their "create/video file" output to any Flash encoder that can load *.avi's.

What the Videoserver does is put a small proxy file on the HDD with an *.avi extension. This gets loaded into whatever program you like for processing on the fly. You choose it as the export option by selecting its "filetype" in the "Create Video" dialog.

Once the linkup is made the external program essentiall becomes a plugin for VS, MSPro etc. allowing the export of formats not otherwise possible.

This can be a Flash encoder, TMPGEnc MPEG, CCE MPeg, VirtualDUB (a freeware video processor), Windows Media Encoder or whatever. I use this quite often to export MPEG's from Cool3D Production Studio.

http://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/

this link is to the freeware Riva FLV Encoder download page;

http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?downloads&L=3

Lower down the page is a free FLV player. This comes with the encoder, but if you don't want to install it this will give Windows playback ability akin to the DivX player.

For newer versions of MSPro or VideoStudio you may have to browse the Frameserver installer to the programs VIO folder so it can place the frameserver plugin (dfscMSProOut.vio) there. This file can also be copied to the Cool3D VIO folder for use there.