I usually stick with QT. I've found that the best quality/smoothness ratio is obtained by using Sorenson at 15 fps. There's usually not a reason to go higher than 15 fps; most people can't tell the difference between it and 25 or 30 fps.
Also, a tip I have learned through experimentation is that it's better to drop the spatial quality on Sorenson than to limit its data rate. If you limit its data rate, you'll get good video part of the time, but you'll get garbage whenever the needed data rate spikes above your limit. I just drop the spatial quality to 85 or lower. You can usually go down to 60 without much noticeable quality loss. Keyframes are frames which are saved in their entirety, as opposed to just saving the data of what's changed since the last frame (as most codecs do). The more you have, the smoother playback will be, and the easier it will be to rewind and fastforward, but the tradeoff is a larger file size. One every five seconds or so seems to be good on average. Other video formats work well, also, and you'll need to adjust settings based on the individual project's needs, but these settings seem to consistently work well. Charlie Fiskeaux II The Creative Group www.cre8tivegroup.com 859/858-9054 x29 cell: 859/312-3883 ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 5:12 PM Subject: <lingo-l> RE: best way of showing movies in dir. Mattias, There's many other variables with video compression you need to consider when optimizing for system speed - not just the shell they come in. First off, I would strongly suggest using QuickTime - I have had some pretty flaky results with AVI and it is quickly becoming obsolete. Also, lingo has much more control over QT than other formats. You could also consider MPEG-1 if you are delivering on a PC, but you will require an Xtra such as DirectMedia. To minimize user aggravation, you can build a launcher movie or frame that simply checks the system for the QuickTime version and if older or non-existent, launches QT for Windows. They will still have to go through the install process, but at least they are prompted. Other considerations with video compression: Flavour of CODEC: Many to choose from - Cinepak is an older algorithm and is more grainy than others, but runs extremely well and in sync on slower machines. Indeo is great for Windows delivery and sits somewhere in the middle of the quality versus speed scale. Sorenson is beautiful video, small file size, but needs a faster processor to support it. Pixel Size: Commonly 320x240 - the smaller the dimensions the less processor power needed. For older, slower machines go as small as is acceptable. Data Rate: You can cap the data rate based on a maximum number of kilobytes/second. The lower you cap the maximum data transfer at, the slower the machine it will run on. Finally, there are other issues such as frames/second, keyframing, audio file size, etc. The point is, all these things are directly related to speed of machine for playback. The trick is testing it on your target machine and coming up with a formula that runs optimally and still delivers acceptable quality. As a sidenote, I have found that preloading digital video members when needed and then unloading after use helps RAM manage the streaming process. You can use preLoadRAM to specify how many seconds of the video you want to preLoad based on data rate. Regardless, if you are trying to push to much data through too slow a system, its going to choke. HTH, --Craig Craig Taylor Renegade Digital Media Inc. Hi! (I typed this message before but i dont know if i got any answers) What is the best way of showing movies in Director?(qt, avi or anything else) I´m about to import 7 movies (8-14 mb/ mov) after eachother in director. Im going to put everything directly on cd-rom and let user run it directly from the cd-rom. Everything must run pretty smooth even on slow comp like for example Pentium 166, 32MB ram, 4MB graphic memory. If possible a dont want user to install any program like quiktime but I rather do it if its the best way of doing it. So in an experiment ive made a stub movie and in the movie where I have the avi and qt movies im using function preLoadRAM and I crossed checkbox for preload in cast for every avi movie. Also I tried the function preloadMovie. With that I try to preload the movie with all of my qt and avi movies but that didnt matter. It runs as fast or as slow with or without it. Still Quicktime seem to run best on slow comp. But I´m sure need some advice to get good performance on slow comp. Does anybody know what to do? Any suggestions? /Mattias [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!] [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
