Help with Render setting for web

brnijeff wrote on 11/16/2003, 8:16 PM

Hi gang,
Finally getting back into a little video editing and need your help. I have DV footage from camcorder, am capturing it using the default settings in VV3, and need to render it for web viewing.

I don't care if it should be an avi, real media, etc. Mainly, I want human faces to be recognizable. Sound quality doesn't matter much.

This has got to be an awfully common use for VV. Can you fine folks please share your thoughts on the best template/settings for this? If you also have examples of your own stuff on the web with these settings, please post the link, too.

Thanks!
(in over my head?)
Jeff

Comments

Jessariah67 wrote on 11/16/2003, 9:43 PM

Jeff,

Settings are one thing, viewability is another. The more movement you have, the more pixelating you're gonna get -- even at 512kbps, which is rather large, unless you know that the people you're making it for have a solid, high-speed connection.

I use a customized template based on the 256k, Windows Media Video 8 template in Vegas. I tweaked the settings to make the video rendering set at "best" and "enable two-pass encoding." It doesn't do a bad job.

All of the samples on my website use this setting. For demo purposes, I think it turns out pretty well.

HTH

BillyBoy wrote on 11/16/2003, 9:50 PM

If you're not that worried about quality, then render as

Windows Media Video v9. (wmv) Its what many of the vid sample that people in the forum use when they post to the Video Share site..

You can see a sample of a lower quality wmv file here, I just redid my last tutorial with it.

http://www.wideopenwest.com/%7Ewvg/DVD-A

As long as you don't want to embed the movie into a web page, you can just link to the external browser this way:

-a href="NameOfYourFile.wmv">some text description </a-

Oops... can't put HTML in forum with it changing into a link, so change the "-" with "<" and < and start and end.

Just use any FTP Client to upload to your Web Server. If you put it in the same directory as the web page all you need is the name of the file.

thrillcat wrote on 11/16/2003, 9:52 PM

I tend to use Sorenson Squeeze for all my web video conversions. It does a better job, especially with QuickTime. Vegas does a great job with Windows Media 9 files, but all in all, Sorenson is a top notch compressor. It's a bit pricey, but if you're a professional using your website to draw business, it's worth it. Mine is www.thrillcatproductions.com

Ironically enough, alot of my clients have hired me to compress video for their website since they've seen mine --- enough to pay for Sorenson just in that aspect, let alone the new clients I've gained through my site.

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/16/2003, 10:48 PM

Actually, Vegas does a much better job at everything BUT Quicktime than Squeeze, IMO. Vegas scaling and preprocessing is much more efficient, but Squeeze is understandably faster. When it comes to QT, Squeeze is king, queen, and crown prince. Even Apple's compressor isn't as good as Squeeze, and Sorenson wrote that from what I understand.

thrillcat wrote on 11/16/2003, 10:56 PM

I guess most of my rendering has been quicktime since I got Sorenson. QuickTime and tiny little mpg1 thumbnails for my audio mixer to run in his installation of Vegas for doing the audio mix.

brnijeff wrote on 11/17/2003, 7:26 AM

Thrillcat, those look great! I assume the original video came from a camcorder with standard resolution? Your images are then squashed into a smaller size. Is there a particular dimension I should render to to keep the image from distorting due to the shrink?
Thanks,
Jeff