Video Conversion for the Web

[Mark0514]

Hi guys. I would like your input. I am currently working on video recording our services and getting them on the web. I am using a prosumer camera that shoots in HD which leaves me an MTS file (AVCHD I believe). I have windows movie maker and vegas movie maker. I have used koyotesofts HD converter to make the MTS a HD WMV, and I can pull them into mm and edit them fine. I can save the wmv and use koyotesoft's flv converter to get them to flv. I may be able to do better with vegas mm, but I just got it.

My struggle is figuring out the right ratio, bitrate, fps etc for optimum web quality and performance. What would you say is the max file size for a 30 minute flv to run smoothly on an average connection? What about the steps I am using...any thoghts?

[petereit]

We shoot our services in 720p HD, but I don't publish them to the web in full HD. I posted a couple of our services in full 720p and they looked absolutely GORGEOUS, but I received a ton of messages from folks asking why the video was stuttering and wasn't as smooth as previous videos.

That told me two things: 1. People were watching our videos (Yay!!), but 2. the average internet viewer's computer either doesn't have enough processing power to smoothing decode HD video or their internet connection isn't fast enough.

So now I encode H.264 at what is called wide-screen DV resolution: 853 x 480, and upload my video to Vimeo where we have a paid Vimeo+Plus account. Encoded at about 2300 bps I can fit an hour-long sermon into Vimeo's 2GB upload limit. Sometimes I need to drop the bps lower if my encode goes over 2GB. Never know until it's done encoding.

Check out our video page if you want to see the quality.

[Mark0514]

Thanks for your input Mark. When it boils down to it, I guess there are two camps to make happy...those with lightning fast connections and those on DSL or other limited connections. At my work, download speed is regulated at 128kbps. At that speed, your videos on vimeo won't play without stopping to buffer, and the 30 minute 300Mb video I did Sunday stops to buffer every 5 seconds...I dont know if that's a server side issue or not. That video is located on the home page at www.southbay.cc if you want to see it. There is another version on the sermons page that is about half the size, but I cant remember the bps.

My initial thought is to host everything ourselves and provide low and high speed videos, but that would take a lot of storage space. It's either that or a happy medium, and I just dont know if I'll be satisfied with mediocre quality...especially when I am starting with HD. I havent thought about it, but is it right that the video would have to be encoded at 1280 bps for it to be seamless on such a slow (128kb) connection, no matter what the file size is?

[petereit]

Yes, I've been in your shoes. And I had the same struggle: I'm shooting in HD. I don't WANT to sample down to SD. (Ick!)

But I had to deal with the fact that I'm trying to reach as large an audience as possible. And that means that you have to settle on the lowest common denominator. But all is not lost. Downsampling from HD to SD widescreen results in higher overall quality than shooting anamorphic SD.

We use Vimeo to host our video because the Vimeo+ service is CHEAP, we have essentially unlimited storage, we can upload hour-long videos, and Vimeo automatically converts all our video to mobile-friendly versions. If we tried to host our video ourselves, it would become prohibitively expensive REAL QUICK, with collocation and bandwidth up-charges, or if we tried to host it on-site, we would have server and storage expenses and we would either have to pay exorbitant fees for a really large bandwidth pipe, or we would only be able to transmit 2 or 3 streams at a time due to our current bandwidth restrictions.

With Vimeo hosting the video, we upload and we're done!

[Mark0514]

I'm still struggling with the 128kb connection. I finally got it to play non-stop, but had to encode my 30 min. video at 480x272, 750kbps, 30 fps.

I ended up with a flv that is 90.0 Mb. Do these numbers sound right?

[Ramah]

Ok, Mark this is what you need to do: Encode your FLV with the following parameters:
480 px wide
250 kbps for video (use H264 compression)
128 kbps for audio (use MP3 compression)

A good size is 3 MB per minute of video.
Now here is the part that you might not want to hear. To allow someone with a 128k connection to view video is going to be expensive and require a streaming server or one of these video upload services (which I dont think look professional).
So anyone that has a slow connection, you dont have to service them with video. Instead, drop an MP3 for them to listen to. It's one forth of the size, still gets the message across, more portable, and people with slow connections arent used to watching video.
Your page should load fast for 100% of the visitors; However, its very important that you dont compromise an add-on luxury like video.

[Mark0514]

Well, here is a sample http://vimeo.com/13450875

It took about two weeks to work out all the different options, but we can still do HD on Vimeo. I am very happy with the quality, and this 30 min. video is only about a gig. I still have kinks to work out, like recording our audio. I am also not real crazy about the tripod I picked out. I wished I had saved for a better one, as the panning is not very smooth and the tilt is wose. Here is a link to what we have Amazon.com: 757TM Tri-monopod: Electronics
Any input in that regard would be appreciated.

Thanks for all your help.

[dream party]

You can learn from YouTube. As I know, YouTube offers several resolutions of their videos for users, including 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p HD and 1080p HD.