Which compressor do you recommend?

[Amyzon]

I'm very new to video editing, but I'm a fast learner. What I basically want to do is make 30 second video clips of a cartoon show and put them up on my web page. I want the video to be 160x120 and to keep them 5 MB or less. No fancy tricks or anything.

What I'm not sure about is what compressor to use. According to Adobe Premiere 5.5, my options are:

1. Cinepac Codec by Radius
2. Intel Indeo(R) Video R3.2
3. Microsoft Video 1
4. Microsoft RLE
5. Indeo Video 5.04
6. ATI YVU9 Format Codec
7. None

Does anyone have a recommendation? And do I need to "always recompress?"

Any suggestions you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Regards,

Jennifer

[DrMordrid]

None of the above.

Use MPEG-1. The files will be smaller and easier to download.

There is a free MPEG encoder available at

http://members.home.net/beyeler/bbmpeg.html

It's not very fast, but it's free and can be used as a Premiere plugin or standalone program. Plenty good for short projects.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 28 May 2000).]

[Joxx]

Use the DivX codec. It gives superior image quality in half the size. (It takes only about half the time to encode the clip too..!!)

divx.ctw.cc

have anyone heard of an divx capture board?

[Walrus]

Joxx: Divx definatly has some advantages over MPEG-1, but it also has some severe disadvantages. As a hacked version of Microsoft's MPEG-4 codec, it may not be around too long. Microsoft has a habit of looking the other way while people pirate their products when they are trying to build market share (as they did with DOS, Windows and MS Office), but as soon as they achieve their goal, they crack down like crazy. What this means is that files created in this format may not be useable once Microsoft goes after the people responsible for Divx. Microsoft has already stopped VirtualDub's author (Avery Lee) from including a feature in VirtualDub that allows transcoding MPEG-4v3 streams from ASF files into .AVIs, and more importantly they have already broken compatibility with MPEG-4v3 in their own AVI codecs. (which lead to Divx's creation, as a hacked earlier version of Microsoft's codec)
MPEG-4 has a lot of potential, but I will not deal with any of Microsoft's variants until a standard is in place (and that includes DIVX). MPEG-1 is nice since it's a standard, and will play in just about anything on any platform, unlike Divx. If you want higher quality, denoise the video stream before you process it, and it improves signifigantly if you use variable bit rates. (I've gotten VBR MPEG-1 to look just as good as Divx at the same file size) However, MPEG-1 (especially with bbMPEG) will take longer to encode than MS MPEG-4 (or Divx).
Best of luck!

[Tinnes]

Hey Walrus I have been playing around with Mpeg-1 for what seems like ages now. I have used pretty much EVERY encoder and every setting. Yet I still haven't found a method I am happy with.

If it's not too much trouble could you please tell me the process and the settings you use?

I would really appriate it.

Thank you

Tinnes



------------------

Get paid to surf http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=MAC649 it really works. Free Money.

[Walrus]

Tinnes: The main tricks I recommend are the following:
Using my 2d cleaner and temporal cleaner noise reduction filters for virtualdub.
Using VirtualDub's frame server to stream an .AVI to a mpeg compressor directly (this is tricky, look up in the help system)
Encoding in either LSX 3.0 or bbMPEG. In either, turn up the motion compensation values to the max, and in LSX turn down the processing speed to "slow" (not the slowest)
Use variable bitrates, and experiment to see which ones give you the best quality/file size ratio for you.
Generally, bbMPEG gives slightly better results at the cost of having no bitrate cap, and taking a much longer time to generate the file.
These are general tips, let me know if you need more help.
Amyzon: Since you want your clip to be viewable on the web, you may want to take a look at the Real Video 8.0 discussion going on in another thread. Real Video has pretty decent cross platform support and even tighter compression than Divx, and is even better suited for the web.

[Tinnes]

Cheers.

Tinnes =)

------------------

Get paid to surf http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=MAC649 it really works. Free Money.