Release a DV video on the net?

[bugmenot]

Hi

I have an 8 min long DV video. It is recorded in PAL with 720x576 as the resolution. It is currently encoded in huffyuv and takes about 5 GB. Now I want to make this video availabe on my server, but my bandwidth would be lost fast if everyone would download 5 GB, and very few people would bother to download 5 GB. The question is can anyone give me a guide on what way is the best to encode it for release on the net? I know i have to resize it and make it smaller, but I dont want to have it at 128x96 resolution either. I want something small but still viewable. And I would also like if I could encode it in an open source format like XviD, but if a format like WMV is the only choice than that would be good to I guess, as long as the quality is viewable. I would like the size to be around 15-20 MB. If anyone can guide me on how to do this, or give me a link to a guide then I would be very happy (prefferably with freeware software).

Thanx

[The Geek]

It is currently encoded in huffyuv and takes about 5 GB.

Why in the world did you do that ? DV has a data rate of 3.6 MB/s. Means, 8 min of DV video take about 1.7 GB. And you enlarged it to more than twice as that :eek:

Best would be to encode into one of the formats A380 mentioned, that way you get high quality video and small file size.

The Geek

[scharfis_brain]

with some processing applied, one can squeeze 8 minutes
with reasonable *) quality in to a range of 20 to 250 MB.


*)
20 MB => 340 kbps => max. 384x288 pixels with 16.66 fps
250 MB => 4.2 Mbps => MPEG2@ 720x576 interlaced should look okay

[bugmenot]

I had to re-encode the video to de-interlace it so then i saved it into a temporary format, huffyuv. I tried to make the file 360x288 25 fps and encode it to XviD with VirtualDubMod and got it at 135 MB size, which was unacceptable. I couldnt get it smaller, therefor I need a guide which explains how to do it and what type of resolution, fps, etc... I need to have.

Thanx

[theReal]

I couldnt get it smaller, therefor I need a guide which explains how to do it and what type of resolution, fps, etc... I need to have.First I'd use 384x288 as a resolution, 360x288 is 1.25 but you need 1.333 (4:3).
DV video is 1.25 because tv sets have non-square pixels --> the 1.25 resolution on the computer screen will show 1.3333 on a tv set, but as your video is meant for computer screens, you have to compensate for that.I had to re-encode the video to de-interlace it That's absolutely not necessary (and probably lowers quality) if you're using 384x288(PAL)/320x240 (ntsc) or below. It's only half of the lines anyways, so there's no interlacing anymore.

When choosing a resolution also check the numbers if they are both divisible at least by eight (mpeg compresses a little better with those sizes).

On the encoding: Be sure to crop off all black borders, they use more bitrate than you'd expect (I once did a comparison with a single black line above the video that made it use up 8% more bitrate!)

What do you mean by you couldn't get it smaller? Lower the quality setting (or use a higher quantizer) in the Xvid settings. If you want total size control then calculate the desired bitrate and use two-pass encoding in Xvid.

To keep the quality acceptable at low bitrates, you'll need to smooth the video. I'd suggest avisynth and filters like convolution3d and temporalsoften, but there are also good filters for Virtualdub (a little easier to use if you don't know avisynth).