overcast #047
This week, Ricky shares his review of the Adobe Premiere update in the CS4 package, Phil expresses some frustration about Circuit City, and then the two discuss (at great length) encoding practices as they relate to getting good results from various video sharing destinations.
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This Week’s Itinerary:
Music Credits for this show:
- Opening music is by Nine Inch Nails, from the album The Slip, the track title is “Demon Seed.”
- This musical selection is used under the Creative Commons license graciously chosen by the artist. Please consider supporting them with a music purchase if you enjoy what you hear.
- Ricky’s Renderosity Review of Adobe Premiere CS4 and SoundBooth
- VUE 7 personal learning edition available
- Fear 2 demo is out
- Blu-Ray (see also: Blu-Ray drive on NewEgg)
- Blade Runner Collector’s Edition (5-disc Blu-Ray)
- Sisch, Saving Grace, Machiniplex Premiere, Feb 15th, Sunday, 10am SLT
- National Film Board of Canada re-works website. Lots of wonderful animation
available for free. Juke-Bar, Hothouse series, Blackfly, more. - DivX 7 w/ H.264 support
- Wikipedia: H.264
- StreamingMedia.com: Cracking the H.264 Codec
- Circuit City rant (see also: Inside Circuit City’s Liquidation Sale)
Main Topic: Encoding Practices for Video Sharing Sites
NOTES:
YouTube
- YouTube's Official Encoding Recommendations
- They recommend H.264, MPEG-2, or MPEG-4
- thumbnails are picked at 25%, 50%, and 75% (I think?)
- Channel Types: Comedian, Director, Musician, Guru, Reporter... each gives some distinctive features regarding branding / custom logos, custom data fields, etc. Director account is of particular interest because larger / longer files are allowed for upload. To change your account type, go to your YouTube channel, click Edit Channel, and then near the bottom of the Channel Info tab, look for the Channel Type field.
- Normal and High Quality videos are displayed at 640x360, but they're actually 480x270 (with black bars on left/right if necessary to fill out at 16:9 frame). To give videos a "High Quality" playback option, upload at 640x360. (Or higher, but I recommend hitting the target size precisely; always do your own resizing when possible)
- HD videos are displayed at 854x480 or roughly 1/2 a 720p size. Invoke fullscreen mode to see full HD. Upload at 1280x720 to get the HD option (may not appear right away, and they warn it isn't guaranteed for every video right now).
Vimeo
- Vimeo's Official Encoding Recommendations / Vimeo's HD FAQ
- They strongly recommend H.264 encoding.
- Normal accounts: 1 HD video upload per week, 500mb total per week.
- custom thumbnail is an option
- To embed HD videos offsite, you have to be in Vimeo Plus ($59.95 a year), also allows unlimited HD uploading, other features. HD embeds cost money PER PLAY. Vimeo Plus includes 5000 HD embed plays, after that they are 9.95 per 1000 (or less per if you buy in volume).
- HD vids are displayed on website at 640x360 (full res when HD button is pressed)
- Other vids are displayed on website at about 500px wide at native aspect ratio (I think)
Veoh
- No file size limits, but videos longer than 20 minutes must be played back using their special player.
- WMV, QuickTime, and DivX supported, in TONS of encoding types.
- VeohPro is free, offers higher quality encoding (on playback), cross-site encoding, other features.
- They do support HD as well (720p)
- Veoh displays normal videos at 540x405 or so (4:3). HD vids are displayed at 657x355 or something (16:9).
Machinima.com
- Prefer WMV, but accept other formats. Resolution 320x240 to 800x600
- Max 100mb, but will make exceptions (contact them first).
- Custom thumbnail required (4:3)
- Videos are displayed at: 400x300 (including player controls). They also syndicate to YouTube, I assume they use your uploaded source video for that but not sure.
Blip.tv
- Upload any format video, they'll convert to Flash. (You can upload Flash yourself if you want). You can upload MULTIPLE types to offer viewers multiple options for a film.
- Custom thumbnail required (640x480 recommended, though keep in mind it will be resized to 110x110 in some settings so make sure it'll look okay crunched into a square - better to do this than upload a square and have them stretch it)
- They have an FTP upload option.
- They prefer compressed Quicktime or WMV (for the one from which they'll encode Flash).
- 1GB size limit, but they recommend keeping videos under 100MB.
- They display videos at at 16:9 size of 675x380 (or so), they black bar to left/right to pad 4:3 videos. They'll display Flash video by default, but you can tell them not to do so and specify another embeddable type (like DivX).
ENCODING - GENERAL
- 3000-5000 video bitrate is a good target for HD videos. Some sites support even higher.
- For standard sizes, cut that about in half.
- Audio, go for 160kbps whenever you can, 128kbps if you have to.
- Framerate - go with what makes sense based on your source.
- Keyframes - About 1 per second is usually a good bet. In some instances, automatic keyframing is a good idea, but be mindful of the upload site's specs on this, and be aware it could balloon your video size. (Explain Keyframes).
- Codecs: H.264 QuickTime seems to be a favorite everywhere, when done with above settings it's always a good bet. QuickTime Pro is usually the best way to get it done. DivX is excellent too; DivX Converter (with DivX Pro) is highly recommended; it's very easy, and gets great results. WMV is also liked, and accepted anywhere.
Music Credits for this show: