Greg Takacs
Veteran
Location: Fort Worth, TX
| I usually compress my videos with MPEG-1 standard as pretty much any computer in the world is capable of playing that.
I use Ulead Media Studio Pro 6.0 it is a pretty nice software, I think it is beter than Adobe Premiere, but that is just my humble opinion.
The new MPEG-4 compression is actually a codec (codes is an acronym means to COde and DECode) and it can be different file type at the end, the most common is AVI which is another acronym for Audio Video Interactive and one of the oldest standards around developed by Microsoft in the infancy of Windows. So the file might have AVI extension but it can be coded with different codec's. Some others are Cinepac, MJPEG and MPEG-4 of course. So if you give an AVI file to someone he/she might not be able to play it due to lack of the proper codec. This is why mpeg shines better.
If your audience is the Mac users then their favorite format is Quicktime (Apple's take on AVI bacn from the good ol' times  ) and these files are playable on PCs as well. There are different codecs for Qucktime as well, I am not very familiar with the format.
If you're planning on using the footage on the 'net I recommend one of the on-line streaming video formats such as Real Video or Microsoft ASF format. ASF is another format that can use many different codec's (pretty simple stuff, huh? ) and probably it will be some kind of MPEG derivative. For an example here is a file that I whipped together www.hirobotechnique.com/flyingcar.asf
This file is 3.5 MB and runs for a 1.5 minutes. That is pretty decent compression yet it is enjoyable.
You might also want to consider the resolution, if you cut the width and height in half, you just cut the file size in 1/4th of the original (in theory at least). This is obviously not valid when you're talking about fixed bitrate codecs like MPEG-4 or MPEG-2 but you can lower the bitrate if you lower the resolution.
All in all, I like to do VCD standard files (it is an MPEG-1 type that follows strict rules on bitrate and dimensions). If it goes on the internet I used to do RealVideo but I have switched over to ASF since Microsoft came out with a decent codec for it that looks good.
P.S. If you're serious about video editing you'd want to invest in Ulead Media Studio Pro or Adobe Premiere. I hope I could be of help....... |
especially server space is quite limited for big video files, as well the downloading time to viewers as well.
cool.. glad to see you had fun.. I have Adobe Premiere.. I will see if i can shave down some of my video files.. I did try asf on ulead.. for some reason it only play audio only No Video.
