An audience of millions . . .

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Peter Stedman
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Location: Wiltshire

An audience of millions . . .

Post by Peter Stedman »

:roll: In the February issue of Film & Video Maker, also the Soco News, I added my contribution to the opening debate about clubs keeping up with the times and technology. I was pleased to see in the latest issues much more debate on the subject and what splendid content there is in the lastest issues.

Of particular interest is the first class article by Jan Watterson (I don’t suppose that is your photograph Jan?) giving us so much information on getting our offerings on to sites like You Tube. Although I do have a few videos on You Tube it still remains a bit of a mystery. Till now I have used a programme called RivaFLV, recommended by someone here I think, and it works fine. Recently I tried using Windows Movie Maker but, to my aged eyes, it looked quite poor.

I have now been fortunate in getting a new machine with Premiere Pro C4 installed. (Absolutely amazing is that there were no manuals at all with this complete kit from the dealer. However, eventually they did supply a DVD with C4 on). I am learning that from within C4 one can export a project ready prepared for the web. The programme gives many settings to enable one to create the best quality for uploading.

For the unskilled, deciding what is the best or correct settings is still a bit of a mystery. From the vast dropdown list I chose FLV PAL 4x3 WEB MEDIUM. I am assuming that the setting LARGE might be top quality but a resulting larger file? I chose FLV because those are the letters shown with the Riva prog. However it worked and my video appeared on the web. For my next effort I tried the setting of F4V WEB LARGE ETC . . . Whatever that means, it worked. I couldn’t see any difference really.

Trial & error gave me the result, but could you Jan (or anyone else) help in simple words the best settings to use because, great as your article is, the words used in your suggested, General Compression Settings, paragraph seem to get me reaching for a large glass of scotch. Perhaps others would appreciate a bit more hand holding over this. Thanks to you all. Pete :roll: :?
Roy

Re: An audience of millions . . .

Post by Roy »

Peter. You will find that YouTube itself gives a comprehensive guide on how to upload to their site. I personally use H264/ACC coupled with a resolution of 720 which is in effect an Mpeg4 setting. I find that short of HD this gives a choice by YouTube to viewers of selecting between Normal quality and high Quality on playback. I always use a stand alone converter to make mpeg 4 files as I find for me they give a better image quality than the converters built into Editing programmes. For playback in HD and high quality you do need a fairly fast downloading Computer, otherwise the picture stutters or doesn't play. Other people will have their own ideas but I suggest you look at YOUTUBE'S guide first.
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Peter Stedman
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Location: Wiltshire

Re: An audience of millions . . .

Post by Peter Stedman »

Thanks for the reply. Today I took a new short production of about 2 and half minutes and from within Premiere C4 compressed it to one of their presets to MPEG4. Try it out thinks I.

Well it all went OK and I uploaded it to You Tube but when viewing, to my horror, the audio was fine but the video was all rubbish and totally unidentifiable in any way. I promptly removed it from the site and am now uploading another version as F4V WEB LARGE ETC. I will wait to see.
However, I will note what you say and see how it goes. Thanks again.
Pete
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Dave Watterson
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Re: An audience of millions . . .

Post by Dave Watterson »

Pete - did you check out the articles on the main website about compressing film for use on YouTube and Google Video? (http://www.theiac.org.uk/resources/web- ... intro.html)

MP4 (MPEG4) is certainly the way to go
H.264/AVC codec is the preferred one (as Roy says)
AAC=Advanced Audio Coding and LC=Low Complexity is the sound to go for
resize picture to 640:480 for standard aspect films or 480:270 for 16x9
stick to 25 frames per second
If you have a choice of bitrates go for 2Kb (2000 bytes) unless that takes your file above YouTube's 1 Gb limit, Google does not have such a limit
YouTube recommend using 44,100Hz sound sampling

I know you wanted "help in simple words on the best settings to use" and this looks confusing. You cannot escape the odd acronyms I'm afraid.

There is a LOT of advice on the web about preparing films for YouTube ... but the service changes how it works and never reveals details so there is a great deal of outdated stuff out there. Even their own various help and advice notes do not always agree! These details above seem the most widely agreed, practical settings to aim for.

YouTube sends movies back to computers as flv files (Flash Video Files) which are very small. The trouble is that if you send your movies up to YouTube in that format you have compressed them enormously. YouTube always processes what comes in and so your film will be compressed yet again ... hence the poor appearance. Send up an AVI file.

Dave
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Peter Stedman
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Location: Wiltshire

Re: An audience of millions . . .

Post by Peter Stedman »

Dave,
Thanks for your reply with lots of things I am trying to absorb. However I will go straight to your last paragraph. This is fully understand and appreciate. I have frequently wondered why one compresses a movie before sendng up to You Tube, for You Tube to compress it again.

From what I read, the advice has always been, not to sent movies to You Tube as AVI but at the end of your bit you advise to send up as AVI and not using the settings you previously have advised.

I’m not a little confused (again). Pete. :?
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