Compressing a 2-hour long video for the internet

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Compressing a 2-hour long video for the internet

Hi all,
I'm having this issue with a customer, who is requesting a video for a press conference to be placed on the internet.
The video will be shot on HDV, edited in FCP and then compressed in some way to be viewed on streaming on my customer's website.
I've been trying different formats and sizes, but I'm not sure I found the best compromise.
What kind of compression should I adopt, in your experience ?
Since the video will be showing talking heads, I also tried to reduce the fps (to 15) but I couldn't lower the file size to less than 10MB per minute.
The final length of the video will be around 2 or 3 hours (don't ask who will watch them...).

ANY suggestion is welcome!
Many thanks

Michele

MacPro, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Mar 4, 2009 9:43 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 4, 2009 9:57 AM in response to Mouse Remy

h264 is cool, but you should make sure your client can view it,
and it does take a long time to encode. The usual tips apply,
making your dimensions divisible by 8 (like 600x336 for 16:9),
crushing your blacks, and reducing framerate (which you've already done).

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Answer 2

Mouse Remy Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 4, 2009 10:00 AM in response to stuckfootage

Hi stuckfootage,

thanks for your reply. Yes, I tried H264 with different settings and the best I could obtain is 21,6 MB for a 2-minute test video. I also tried flv/f4v (with Adobe Media Encoder) and the result is quite similar.
If I compress a 2-hour video, I guess a 1,2 GB file will come out!
I'm really trying to considerably reduce this file size.

Has anybody managed similar video lengths (2 hours and more) ?

Thanks

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Answer 3

Mar 4, 2009 11:26 AM in response to Mouse Remy

Hmm, that sounds about right. A typical 45 min video that you would download from iTunes is going to be about 500 MB for a SD version and 1.25 GB for the HD version. So a 2 hour standard definition video should be around 1.2 GB. You are getting exactly the file sizes that you should be getting.

Yes h.264 is considerably reducing the file size. A two hour DVD would have an MPEG-2 of over 4 GB in size.

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Answer 4

Mouse Remy Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 4, 2009 12:00 PM in response to Shawn Birmingham

Thanks Shawn,
your post reassures me.
I thought 1,2GB could be sensibly lowered by changing some other settings, but as it seems your results are similar to mine.
Now I have to tell my customer that he needs 6 GB to put his 5 press conferences on the web.

Thanks for sharing your experience and Gigabytes with me !

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Answer 5

Mar 4, 2009 12:34 PM in response to Mouse Remy

I'm really trying to considerably reduce this file size.< </div>

Each frame of an HD image is more than 2,000,000 pixels. It's freakin' HUGE.
You can reduce file size by reducing the frame size, the frame rate, the CLUT, the number of pixels.
You get to decide where the compromises destroy your idea of "HD".

bogiesan

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Answer 6

Mar 4, 2009 12:40 PM in response to Mouse Remy

Another idea that is worth testing is to download the screen capturing program "ISHOWU" and tweek the settings to the desired output size. Then use your computer's DVD player to play the video while capturing it using ISHOWU. Be sure to set the program to hide during recording, and remember to set the audio to record internally. It will produce the most amazing quality at a file size so small it blows me away to this day. (because I've tried probably every compressor program and yielded nothing compared to the results from this program.)

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