Best codec for 360x288 and medium bitrate?

[thop]

Hi,

my sister bought herself a DV PAL cam (one of the cheap panasonics, ~450€).

She usually makes short clips (up to 5 minutes) of friends/whatever and then sends them out to mentioned friends vie e-mail. She is familiar with Adobe Premiere 7, so it'd be a plus if the codec would work directly from/within Premiere via the "Adobe Media Encoder" export thingy - but if it's an easy usuable external tool that's also ok.

The clips are not for storage or anything, just for one time viewing by her friends, so the quality doesn't have to be stellar but shouldn't be full of artefacts either. 360x288 is 1/2 resolution of DV PAL if you wondered.

She is currently using WMV9, which comes with Premiere, but IMO the coded is a bit lacking, especially because it is not so highly tweakable. I intend to make two or three presets for her so she doesnt have to bother with all the settings.

Thanks for any help!

[Sirber]

I'd say try VP6. It's VFW so it will work with premiere. I was about to propose RV9, but only l33t people can use it ;)

[bilu]

Better stay with XVID, it's faster than DivX, has some tweaks (but not too much as ffvfw), works through VFW too and it's MPEG-4, so her friends have already a decoder installed, almost for sure.
Also it supports interlaced mode if you ever need to encode full resolution.

That or MPEG-1 for portability :D

Bilu

[scharfis_brain]

but be sure cropping 8 Pixels right and left (704x576) and then resize to 384x288.
360x288 will give you a wrong Aspect Ratio (coneheads)

[thop]

I was about to propose RV9, but only l33t people can use it ;)
That's no problem because i will make presets so she doesnt have to bother with the settings. But i suppose it wont work from within Premiere? Another Problem is it needs RealOne. They could install it, no big deal, but i don't think they can handle that bloated thing ;)

btw. the computer is a duron 1600 (with sse), 512MB RAM, XP.

[Sirber]

RV9 don't work from premiere, since it's not VFW. What bitrate exactly you will use?

[thop]

I don't really know, the lowest possible (that still looks decent) ;)

[Sirber]

for that rez you could go 250kbps with RV9 with nice quality...

[thop]

that's about 10MB for 5 minutes ... sounds good. now i need to find an easy to use encoder. also, is there some exe which automates the regserv realsplitter.ax thing?

[Sirber]

How does your thing work?

Camera --> AVI --> Premiere --> AVI?

[thop]

It's Camera -> Premiere (temp AVI) -> AVI.

[snowcrash]

You can export RV9 directly from Premiere Pro using the Adobe Media Encoder. It's not RV9-EHQ, but it works. WMV9 encoding also works ok from within PPro, however DiVX or XViD encoding do not. So if you want to make things easy for your sis, I suggest you go with either RV9 or WMV9.

[mf]

Originally posted by thop
that's about 10MB for 5 minutes ... sounds good. now i need to find an easy to use encoder. also, is there some exe which automates the regserv realsplitter.ax thing?
RealAlternative installs the RM splitter, MPC and the necessary codecs by default (everything is selectable). I tried it out yesterday (I've stayed away from anything "Real" ever since I couldn't get rid of all the crap it had nested in my system back in 1999, so this was a pretty big step for me :p), and it seems to only put necessary things in the registry :) (I tracked registry changes during install). And it just works, of course.

[Sirber]

In premiere, do you load an AVI that came from your camera or you open the camera directly (no AVI)?

[Blue_MiSfit]

It's a DV cam so premiere's "log and capture" function saves the video as a DV-avi. This is temporarally stored in the premiere project files ( I think )...

not that it really matters of course :D

as far as a video codec to run... I would have to say XviD, as I have done the same thing (DV->premiere->xvid) with excelent results. Quite easy to do from directly within premiere.

However... You may want to output the video in a temp file and do a RV10 encode. I am absolutely amazed at what is possible with 350kbps at that sort of resolution. Even scaled up to fullscreen 1280x1024 these sort of videos arent bad looking at all - just slightly blurry.

~misfit

[snowcrash]

Originally posted by Blue_MiSfit

as far as a video codec to run... I would have to say XviD, as I have done the same thing (DV->premiere->xvid) with excelent results. Quite easy to do from directly within premiere.

~misfit

Exporting Xvid may work from within Premiere 6.5 but it doesn't work properly from Premiere Pro (Premiere 7), which is what he asked about. Anyway, if you know how to get it to work I'd love to hear it and so would a lot of other people in the Adobe forums.

[thop]

Originally posted by Blue_MiSfit
It's a DV cam so premiere's "log and capture" function saves the video as a DV-avi. This is temporarally stored in the premiere project files ( I think )
yes. so what'd be the easiest tool to use that supports presets? :)

[Sirber]

this all surpass me now, you should ask Karl if you can do something with RealVideo :)

[LeonMcNichol]

Wouldn't exporting to a lossless or uncompressed avi and encoding in virtualdub or a RV9 encoder be a better idea than just exporting directly to AVI? This is an extra step and would result in a small HD size limit (at least it's temp), but it would allow you to encode in whatever codec you wanted to use as your output.

If it's for friends that are probably clueless to what to install, I'd either encode to something that's simple (RMVB) or include ffdshow (AVI). Personally, I like XviD, but I found it doesn't work too well with short clips (longer the movie, the better the over all quality). So I'd probably use RV9 EHQ.

[thop]

yeah thats what i'm thinking, cut/edit the movie in premiere, export uncompressed avi and load that in an external tool? but what tool is the easiest to use, preferably like this:

1. chose preset
2. press big red encode button :)

[Sirber]

If you want an easy GUI, take a look at RealAnime. By default it's at 450kbps including sound at 64kbps, in RealVideo 10, VBR 2-pass, with EHQ at high.

[thop]

I'm gonna take a look at it, btw. i see you got upgraded from a RV9 to a RV10 nerd :D

[31 Flavas]

Originally posted by thop

preferably like this:

1. chose preset
2. press big red encode button :) That is RealProducer Plus :)

Setup a job file so you can get your presets, then pick your *.avs or *.avi file, and then click the button with a big red dot and the word encode next to it. That's it.

[31 Flavas]

Originally posted by thop
I'm gonna take a look at it, btw. i see you got upgraded from a RV9 to a RV10 nerd :D Heh, I need to do this too :)

Ok, fixed. Geez, you miss a week around here and you miss a lot.... :)

[Sirber]

depends on the week... :D

but RV10 is RV9 with EHQ... so the big thing new is AAC and AAC+ for realmedia (& matroska)

[mf]

What is it with these "RV10 Nerd" user titles anyway? I've seen RadicalEd (I think) have one too. Is it "teh bomb" to let people know you love to oversmooth? :D

[Sirber]

if you call lack of artefacts oversmoothing... :D

[unmei]

to go even a bit more offtopic, i see you have added a avatar of the super-common naruto to balance out your ad for the super-uncommon RVx :D

[Sirber]

It's my way of the ninjaWhitout animes, I would never have programmed RealAnime and Surreal UI. Whitout animes, I might have never been a "Legenday RV10 Nerd". Whitout animes, I also might never learned how to play Go :D.

[Latexxx]

Originally posted by Sirber
Whitout animes, I would never have programmed RealAnime and Surreal UI. Whitout animes, I might have never been a "Legenday RV10 Nerd". Whitout animes, I also might never learned how to play Go :D.

Without writing "animes" I wouldn't have written this post to tell you to write anime instead. Anime is a genre name and you can't call a single episode anime therefore you can't use the word anime in plural form.

Originally posted by Sirber plural forms removed by Latexxx
Whitout anime, I would never have programmed RealAnime and Surreal UI. Whitout anime, I might have never been a "Legenday RV10 Nerd". Whitout anime, I also might never learned how to play Go :D.

[Sirber]

hum...

as a French Québécois, plurial is not a problem :D. I also watch cartoons, movies, and listen to musics!

[hoola]

what i like about RV-X is that it is indeed becomming more and more common! :rolleyes: ! i see it everywhere now. and increasing day by day.

[31 Flavas]

Originally posted by hoola
what i like about RV-X is that it is indeed becomming more and more common! :rolleyes: ! i see it everywhere now. and increasing day by day. To the chagrin of anti-realnetworks fans, I suppose. Did you see the flames generated when news of RV10 hit at Slashdot? Wow, they were intense.

Although, I wonder if that news was surreptitiously submitted so that it would get the flames. i.e. Get marketing to allow an official RV codec pack + dshow filter for those that want it, over getting it with the RealPlayer.

[hoola]

i am happy to see it moving foward. as my codec of choice it makes me happy.

[mf]

Originally posted by hoola
what i like about RV-X is that it is indeed becomming more and more common! :rolleyes: ! i see it everywhere now. and increasing day by day.
Luckily my everywhere isn't your everywhere. I haven't seen any RM(VB) files lately and I intend to keep it that way :).

[Sirber]

Originally posted by mf
Luckily my everywhere isn't your everywhere. I haven't seen any RM(VB) files lately and I intend to keep it that way :). Yes!, Matroska is the way to go for RM(VB) :D

[mf]

Originally posted by Sirber
Yes!, Matroska is the way to go for RM(VB) :D
Yes, I remember one of the Matroska guys posted an MKV file with RM in it here. I remember MPC managed to open the container (good thing Gabest implemented that into MPC cause I don't have any MKV filters installed :D), but it coughed up on the RM part, since I don't have any of that installed either :rolleyes:.

[Sirber]

So... you're an AVI guy? :p

[mf]

Originally posted by Sirber
So... you're an AVI guy? :p
Actually, yeah. Now if only alexnoe got vorbis working in AVI, then I wouldn't have to bother about that ugly OGM stuff either.. :D

[thop]

strangest thing, i just went over with all the tools and noticed that premiere already can encode to RM9 (apparently when RealOne is installed) :o it's even quite adjustable.

[Sirber]

Premiere don't encode in EHQ, so you should use other tools :)