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Video encoding question

J

JeffCos

Golden Member
I don't really know much abot video. I'm asking this for a friend. He just shot his first movie and wants to upload the trailer to his website. He has already uploaded it in windows media format, but his webmaster told him his quicktime and real files were too big and they would take users too long to download them. Is there anyway he can encode the WM file differently and make it quicktime or real? and how else can he shrink the file? I don't know what he has it at now but i told him to make it no bigger than 640x480. He said he's thinking about dropping the frame rate. If i'm asking the wrong things i'll try to explain better. Any help would be appreciated.


Jeff
 
Your options are basically:

Lower the resolution (and hence cut the bitrate accordingly -- 320x240 video is 1/4 the size of 640x480 video with the same relative bitrate).
Keep the resolution the same and lower the bitrate, and/or use VBR if the codec supports it (will lead to motion artifacting and/or frame loss if reduced too far). Cutting the framerate usually gives worse results than just re-encoding with a lower bitrate, especially if the codec supports VBR.
Use a more efficient codec (such as MPEG4 DivX or XviD, or WMV9 if he's using an older WMV codec).

I would not expect particularly good quality video below 3Mbps or so (~300-400KBps), even with a decent codec. Unless you want it to be postage-stamp sized when people watch it. 😛
 
Dropping the framerate will make the movie look like crap, far worse than dropping the resolution. What type of video source did the video come from? Was it from a normal camcorder, e.g. one that records on VHS, VHS-C, Hi8 or similar? If so, there's no reason why your resolution should be at anything above 352x240. (though that's not 4:3 AR... 320x240 would be the norm)

Now is the actual source video in WM format? This could be a problem, as MS has gone out of their way to try and make sure nothing can access WM* files but MS products.

If you can get the video out, try converting to an MPEG-4 video source like XviD. RealMedia, Quicktime and Windows Media are good for low-bitrate, low-quality stuff, but if you want good quality you should consider MPEG-4 codecs. It'd help if I knew specifics, like the length of the video, what the content is, etc.
 
He has the original because he filmed the whole thing, so I assume he can encode it in whichever format he wants. I think it's all done on a really good digital video camera. He told me what program he's using to edit/encode everything but i forgot...What should he be using?
 
To edit? I know of no truly good freeware editors out there at the moment. Whatever he's using is fine, most likely.

To encode? That's different. VirtualDubMod is the standard; there are frontends which automate the process, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. He should output his video to something like HuffyUV (google it) then recompress using XviD through VirtualDubMod. I can walk you through it if you want.
 
I'll have to get more info from him. Maybe i'll tell him to create an account here and he can do the talking himself because it's difficult going through me. Thanks for your help though.
 
Unless you know the target audience is familiar with computing, stick with WMV files, or else be prepared to answer many upon many questions about codecs. To reduce the file size, definately lower the resolution, you don't see many files for download that are above 320x240. Keep the current framerate, a smaller but smooth video is much better to watch than a large choppy video.
 
but his webmaster told him his quicktime and real files were too big and they would take users too long to download them. Is there anyway he can encode the WM file differently and make it quicktime or real?
Click to expand...

If he is using DV, it would be pretty simple to use Windows Movie Maker to import it via firewire, edit and then encode to windows media using the appropriate profile for the taget audience. Forget real media, and quicktime should really be used only if you want cross platform support. Don't make it any harder than it has to be, Windows media is made just for this purpose, and with DV, it doesn't get much easier.
 
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