MPEG compression

[british contingent]

People

I am really struggling getting my MPEG clips down to a decent file size.

I'm not afraid to buy what I need and what I need is to get a 30 second MPEG clip down well below my current best of 8 meg.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Jamie

[Pipecrew]

I can get a 12mb down to 1.6mb and not kill quality that bad.. What you need is

TMPGENC and alot of time on your hands playing with the settings
its free too

[Helix]

Pipecrew is right......it rules
http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

[FlyingIguana]

Originally posted by Pipecrew
I can get a 12mb down to 1.6mb and not kill quality that bad.. What you need is

TMPGENC and alot of time on your hands playing with the settings
its free too

there any tutorials around that can help decrease the time? i can't compress mpegs for shit. well they always look like shit.

[Pipecrew]

To decrease the time

Settings --> Advanced --- > Source Range


and just select where to start and stop

[FlyingIguana]

Originally posted by Pipecrew
To decrease the time

Settings --> Advanced --- > Source Range


and just select where to start and stop

no i meant to reduce the time spent playing with settings. so much shit to change around i just give up.

[fiveyes]

Originally posted by FlyingIguana


no i meant to reduce the time spent playing with settings. so much shit to change around i just give up.

I hear that! There seems to be more parameters on MPEG encoding than there are windows settings on my computer.

I had a dickens of a time looking to encode my DV clips for web distribution, especially with the additional requirement of batch capability. What I came up with was ligos' LSX-MPEG Adobe Premiere Plug-in, available for $250 from http://www.ligos.com/index.phtml?pi=152.

I preprocess the clips using Virtual Dub, filtering with a smart smoother and xsharpener first (to reduce video noise in the original caused by marginally lighted night scenes), reducing the size to 360x240, adding my web url bug and saving it in uncompressed avi (to keep artifacts at a minimum). This is a batch process done while I sleep.

Next, open Premiere 6 and go to Projects -> Utilities -> Batch Processing. Add a single AVI file, which will open the "Export Movie Settings" dialogue box.

Under "General" settings, if your plug in was installed correctly, you'll have the option "LSX-MPEG Encoder" in your "File Type" drop down list. Choose that and go to "Advanced Settings". Choose "MPEG-2" as "Output Type", "Bit Rate set to "Variable" at "800 KBS" and "Rate control modes" set to "Constant quantization scale" to "3".

Under "Video" settings, "Frame size" should be "352x240" (352 instead of 360, which is not divisible by 16!). Frame rate can be varied according to how smooth the action is through the clip- since I use a handheld camcorder with a LOT of movement, I have to keep it at 24 FPS.

Under "Audio" settings, choose "Rate" and "Format" at the top most settings unless you're doing music or have some other reason to expend more bandwidth on sound. "Compressor" must be set to "MPEG Layer 2 Audio".

Under "Key Frame and Rendering", set "Fields" to "No Fields".

Everything else is to be left at default values.

This will render a 30 second, 352x240 clip at a little over 3 MBs without any complaints from my viewers. You can tweak these parameters to suite yourself and save the workable solutions from the "Settings" dialogue box to load later.

To batch process as many clips as needed- put them all in the same directory with nothing else, open Premiere 6 and go to Projects -> Utilities -> Batch Processing, click "Add...", go to the directory and at the bottom of the dialogue box you can "Select that directory". Load your previously saved "Settings", hit "Make" and go back to sleep!

I use the same set up to make QuickTime movies of comparable size and quality and offer both to my Membership, btw. This has completely ended any complaints of "I can't view your movies"...

[FlyingIguana]

hehe quicktime

damn macs!

[british contingent]

Thanks for that guys. Just using the wizard already shaved off a couple of megs so now I'm gonna go play

Jamie

[jollyperv]

A few words of advice:

- Don't use any crazy codecs to encode your movies....the majority of surfers don't have them installed, and even though windows media player tries to auto-download them when played, it doesn't work most of the time. Plain old mpeg-1 will play for everyone. I used to do Divx movies on galleries, and sure the movieposts will list you, but a lot of tgps won't if they don't load for the surfers.

- If you're using tmpgenc(definetely the best, & free), a good way to cut down the file size is to reduce the audio compression to 64 k/s....it hardly makes a difference in quality, but the overall size is greatly affected.

Hope this helps

[TFCash]

Hi guys, I have a question. With the video sites, would they list you if your using the windows media 8 files, I use windows media encoder, and I get my files down to around 1.8Mb for a 1 minute 320 x 240 res video. I assume that the media player gets anything that it needs to play these files, as I have not had anyone tell me they can't play them. Here is a sample, can you tell me if it's good enough, and how it compares to the mpegs that you are getting crunched down so small?? THanks.

http://www.pantykingdom.com/test.wmv

Tim

[Pipecrew]

I'd list your video because it works, but i dont think it would make anyone too excitied, just a girl who bends over and it takes her 30 seconds, You might wanna switch shit up if you want sales

[TFCash]

Thanks pipe That was just a clip I grabbed to run thru the encoder to give a sample. Does it compare vid quality wise with an mpeg that is crunched down ?? Thanks.



Tim

[fiveyes]

Originally posted by hardcorehosting
Hi guys, I have a question. With the video sites, would they list you if your using the windows media 8 files, I use windows media encoder, and I get my files down to around 1.8Mb for a 1 minute 320 x 240 res video. I assume that the media player gets anything that it needs to play these files, as I have not had anyone tell me they can't play them. Here is a sample, can you tell me if it's good enough, and how it compares to the mpegs that you are getting crunched down so small?? THanks.

http://www.pantykingdom.com/test.wmv

Tim

I'm not aware of any MGP's that accept Window Media Files, though that doesn't mean much since I've only surfed them and haven't posted to any yet.

I had a lot of trouble with WMV files- about one in 30 or so would lock up some viewers' computers, requiring a cold reboot. It was always the same files, even when I re-encoded them, but some people (on differing platforms) had no problem viewing them. I finally gave up trying to figure out what the problem was.

As far as (file size)/time goes, I think you're overcompressing- there's a lot of artifacts in the clips. I found that about 2.5 Megs per minute gave better results in WM files and still was better than half the best size I could do with MPEG. Like jollyperv says, cut audio sampling to a minimum, that helps a bit. Also, consider lowering the frame rate, the material you're using could well encode at 15-20 FPS I feel.

Lastly, your end result will always be dependent on the quality of your original source material. Hi-8 is NOT a good format to pull from- that yellow banding plays hell on skin. DV, especially from a 3 chip camcorder, would make a world of difference...

Here's some examples of my encoding, btw. This is event coverage; meaning a handheld cam, at night, in a crowd, at mardi gras, on Bourbon Street; not the easiest to encode or do-

http://www.mardi-gras-flashers.com/mg110-077.mpeg
http://www.mardi-gras-flashers.com/mg110-073.mpeg