PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hello, a couple of questions related to video formats...

1) wich is the video compression algorythm (or format) easier on a PC cpu? I'd like to know it because I can ask the format I want to the producers of the documentaries I work with...I usually visualize them in Cubase...

2)wich is the better video format for streaming images and music clips to put on web?

Thanks in advance

mpg works for me. Some people prefer divx or xvid but these require codec downloads if the viewer doesn't already have it. MPG plays without any extra downloads (through media player)

DivX is fine but I am not trusting this stuff. Some time ago I downloaded the codecs from their offical side, it included a spy program called gaintrickler32 or so.

MPG is good enough and you choose different quality levels before you encode.

For the streming stuff I use the real player things, there is a free and good encoder here:
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/

Also you should have a look at *icrosofts ASF format for streaming, we got good results with it, too.

I know this isn't what you asked, Alfonso, but personally if I were working on audio for video I would NOT be using one of the lossy compression codecs. I'd ask for a ZIPPed AVI file.

But that's just me, and I don't do this for a living, so...

Cheers,

Johann

Video formats are great so long as you're actually going to use 24 (or maybe as low as 15?) frames per second motion. But if you're thinking of having some still pics, slow pans, colour effects, text or whatever then using video is a waste of bandwidth.

Standard video is also very restrictive in terms of embedding interactivity, URLs, email links etc

I believe Flash is by far the bext choice to give all this flexibility as well as - in mnay circumstances - resulting in much smaller file sizes.

But the really big choice is whether you want to do true streaming so its hard to "steal" the content (but not impossible), or progressive download which gives the same effect for end users but is much easier for people to capture your material.

You can do Flash or video as true streaming or progressive download, but streaming will cost more to host.

S

Regarding the Cubase visualization for soundscoring purposes I guess that the uncompressed avi's should be the easier on cpu, but if I remember well 6 mins is around 4 giga of stuff...a bit too much! In fact, as long as the motion is smooth, i don't need the "perfect" image, I can loose a bit of detail, I must only make the music of it, tailored on video events....

Regarding the streaming formats I was just curious of the best quality/weight ratio available...

working with video in cubase eh. I do that quite a lot. Usually, most any compression will work fine (uncompressed is too big). Just make sure the video dimensions are small, like 320x240 and it should be fine. You're not using CPU intensive VSTis are you?

hehe...I don't use Vst's at all.....I hate cubase mixer and vst sound, so I keep everything at 0 and on separate busses...but I like to have high bitrate and tons of midi data...

For me the microsoft vid1 codec is working fine. Tecnically seen it´s crap but I made some comparisons in Combustion and this codec delivers the video with high framerates to the RAM (HD not beeing the bottleneck!). So I often use this codec to make a proxy and doing the compositing. Afterwards it will be replaced by uncompressed material in original resolution.

For your situation: I would try this codec if you don´t need highest image quality. The finished audio will be delivered seperatly to the customer afterwards...

Also try MPEG1. I couldn´t play mpeg2 Files in VST though I have the codecs installed...

Mainconcept have a very good name in codec land

There are many video compression codecs. IMHO the fastest and best quality comprssor is the XVid MPEG 4 compressor. In fact there are two versions of this compressor both are free with source code, but one was made by a guy whos name I forgat which I use, the second is available at http://www.xvid.org. Divix is ok but not free. For an MPEG 1 compressor, look for Huffyuv, it's good. For streaming media, there are couple options: windows, real media, quicktime and ON2 VP3. All have their strenghts and weakneses but VP3 IMHO offers the best quality/size ratio.
There is also a M-Jpeg good compressor made by Morgan. Pegasus makes a good lossless jpeg compressor. A lot of choices. I would start with Xvid.

http://www.divx-digest.com/software/index2.html#codecs

There are 3 versions of Divx:

Divx Pro, Free Divx Pro and regular Divx.

Free Divx Pro has spyware and they state that on their site. The Pro versions allow you to create Divx movies while the regular version only lets you read Divx movies. Regular Divx is free.

On 2004-09-06 04:22, ChrisWerner wrote:
DivX is fine but I am not trusting this stuff. Some time ago I downloaded the codecs from their offical side, it included a spy program called gaintrickler32 or so.

MPG is good enough and you choose different quality levels before you encode.

For the streming stuff I use the real player things, there is a free and good encoder here:
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/

Also you should have a look at *icrosofts ASF format for streaming, we got good results with it, too.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2004-09-08 11:22 ]</font>

Thank you all

I'll check things for the better solution !

Bingo offers good info on alternative codecs. Most of the 'underground' online market has abandoned divx and moved to xvid. I could add a ton to this as I started doing TV in 1995 but I am too tired atm...will reread tomorrow.