Exporting the best quality for web DL

[gwyn]

Hey everyone -- I've made a vid for Escapade using HD source for the first time. I finally got my files to work for the size needed for the show, but now I'm trying to get a decent quality file that's not too huge for posting to the web -- both for download at my site, and for uploading to streaming. Nothing I make seems to come out well.

I exported using the H.264 codec (or whatever the number is, I don't have it open right now), and got a fairly shiny file at the Avengers aspect ratio of 965x542. But if I try to make it into any kind of .avi, it becomes massively pixelated and other files types seem really blurry -- not what I want after using all that HD source.

What are people using these days for DL and streaming? I think my methods are woefully out of date. And how did you get there?

For what it's worth, I'm on a Mac using an older version of FCP (6), and use MPEG Streamclip to make a lot of my web files.

Comments

[caramarie]

I've given up on avis since I started vidding in HD. I just couldn't get decent quality without a ridiculous file size. So now I use mp4s with the video in H.264.

I export my vids as lossless avis from my video editing program, and then use Zarx246gui to convert them to mp4s. I find I can just use the default high-quality settings and I'll get something that looks good and isn't too big. (Zarx246gui is Windows-only, but I assume MPEG Streamclip does the same thing?)

If I want to stream the vid myself (rather than upload to Youtube or something), I usually do an SD version of the mp4 and use that. I could probably keep it in HD for somewhat less quality, but I'm too slack to play around with the settings to find out.

Basically, I do whatever the guide on AMV.org tells me to ...

[isagel]

I was trying to do just this yesterday, but I can't make the Zarx gui work right. It makes files, but then I can't open them with any program. :(

[caramarie]

Weird, I've never had any problems :-/ What kind of file is it making, is it the mp4 that isn't working or is it an avs? I always end up with a bunch of leftover avs files.

[gwyn]

I'm honestly not sure -- I think I understand some of this (I should maybe have noted that I am beyond stupid at this sort of thing). What settings do you use in Zarx, so maybe I can take a look at MPEG Streamclip and see if I can find something similar.

Thanks for your reply! I wish I wasn't so stupid so I didn't have to ask so many questions.

[caramarie]

Ha, if I'm honest, the reason I like Zarx is that I just set it to 'highest quality' and 'film' and it thinks about all the rest for me. I'll have a look when I get home and see if I can figure out what that actually means in terms of settings.

(And now I'm wondering if I was just really shitty at compressing avis all this time, and that's why I've seen such a huge difference! :))

[caramarie]

Just had a look at the settings you're offered in Zarx don't seem to match the ones in Streamclip. The thing that makes the biggest different in Zarx is that you can tell it to encode really slowly, and you'll get a better result. But I can't see that option in Streamclip, so that's not very helpful, sorry!