video format

[craig05 webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

Hi everyone,

I am using Director to create a relatively simple application. It will be non interactive, but just a mixture of 2D animation (images moving around on the screen) and video. The video is 3D flythroughs (architectural). The whole thing will be burned to CD. So, my question is, what do people suggest I use for the video. It only has to run on PCs. Ideally, I'd like the video to be full screen at the best possible quality. Of course, don't want it to play jerky. So, will MPEG, QT or AVIs give me the best result? And what suggestions for movie size (320x340, 400x 300, 640 x480), what frame rate, data rate etc? Any advice from someone who has already done this before and can advise me would be greatly appreaciated.

Thanks.

[D.Reefus webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

i like to use a large projector window so i use the 800X600 setting.....i wish i had the answers to your other questions....i have had trouble using different vid formats so i convert everything to gif to use....if you know how to prevent a projector from stalling in between dir files please let me know.....

[pixelguy webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I've been working through these same questions the last few months. Here's what I've come up with:

I would suggest keeping your project at 640x480 and changing the user's screen resolution to fill their monitor. I found a cool piece of software called Disk Jockey ([url]http://www.reaction-media.com/diskjockey/[/url]) that does a lot of helpful things. I think you can do all this with Lingo and BuddyAPI, but I really don't know much about Lingo so this is the easier fix for me. It will test and switch screen resolution, system volume, creates autorun CDs, tests for and installs QT and/or some MPEG player, and stuff like that.

For video format, I'd suggest QT with Sorenson (not Sorenson3) compression, if you're targeting older machines. Someone said Sorenson3 is more processor-heavy. The frame rate is dependent on your personal taste and the amount of action in the footage. If you have fast-moving action, a low frame rate will make it look kind of choppy/jerky. But a movie with 15 fps is half the size of 30 fps and so will take less space on your CD. Bit rate is also really important. I'd say go as low as you can. If you MUST have crystal clarity, then you're going to be limited as to what systems will play the movies normally. You'd be surprised at how low you can get and still have it look mostly good (especially if you can invest in Discreet Cleaner--for Mac if possible). I had someone tell me they never go above 150 Kbps, and still had good quality but I'm not sure how.

As with everything, PLAN on testing a lot! Try different bit rates, different frame rates, different codecs. You'll eventually find a compromise between the three that will give you decent quality, small file size and smooth action. It's dependent on your personal taste.

Also, search the Director tech notes. They already have a lot of good tips for digital video and Director.

[rad3D]

Craig -

Here's some guidelines I use...

I generally like to use a stage size of 800x600

If my client has requested there be no installation for the CD, I always go
with MPEG-1. I use TMPEnc to encode. If the end user base will have
reasonable systems (PIII 500MHz and up), I'll push for a data rate anywhere
from 800kbps to 1200kbps, with a resolution of 400x304 (some MPEG encoders
wont let you go to an even 300). If I have to support slower systems, I'll
use a lower data rate (around 4-600kbps). I then generally play it in a
Window using MPEG Advance Xtra at 400x300, and set up a behavior that allows
the movie to be scaled to the full size of the stage (800x600). With the
400x300 movie, it generally looks OK when doubled in size.

If I can use an installation procedure AND I know the user base will have
higher end processors (high end PIIIs and P4s), then I will look at
something like either Divx or Xvid which I can use effectively at 640x480
with a data rate of around 700kbps. I again use MPEG Advance Xtra to play
in a 640x480 window, again giving the user the ability to scale to full
stage size. I use VirtualDub for the encoding.

Hope this helps. These are not hard and fast guidelines, just ones that
have worked for me.

Conrad


"craig05" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:bicrn3$90b$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> Hi everyone,
>
> I am using Director to create a relatively simple application. It will be

non interactive, but just a mixture of 2D animation (images moving around on
the screen) and video. The video is 3D flythroughs (architectural). The
whole thing will be burned to CD. So, my question is, what do people suggest
I use for the video. It only has to run on PCs. Ideally, I'd like the video
to be full screen at the best possible quality. Of course, don't want it to
play jerky. So, will MPEG, QT or AVIs give me the best result? And what
suggestions for movie size (320x340, 400x 300, 640 x480), what frame rate,
data rate etc? Any advice from someone who has already done this before and
can advise me would be greatly appreaciated.

>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
>
>

[coolpyx1]

Can anyone please tell me what is the largest live video possible .
Is a 500 x 500 format possible with rather good resolution.
Thanks for answering

[FMS_Developer]

Everything is possible. You can transmit 40 Mbit video to a single client if
that client has enough bandwidth and your server enough cpu-power to deliver
the stream. Afaik the videocodec has no size (pixels, width, height)
restriction.

It all depends on the bandwidth between server and client en cpu power on
client and server. If you want to publish 10 streams on a Dual Xeon server you
won't have a problem delivering streams up to 4 Mbit per piece. But if you want
to stream 1000 streams on a small P3 800 Mhz system with a 8 Mbit uplink you
will hit the limit in no time. I'm confident you can make the proper
calculations yourself.

A decent FMS server can deliver 1000 streams and/or up to 40 Mbit thruput
(thanks to the license) , on paper.

[coolpyx1]

Thanks very much for your replay.
I do not understand my the video I get is so poor in quality even locally with
one connexion.
So my problem so far is how I can improve the video settings.
The webcam I am using is logitech pro 400 which is a rather good camm.
The video is quite good using 200 x 200 format but it gets very distorted when
I use a 400 x 400 format.
For this I used the AV prersence component.
Thanks very much for your concern

[FMS_Developer]

use setMode to increase the quality. By default it's locked to 16 kbytes/sec.

Use something like setMode(80000,90) to make your video record at 80
kbytes/sec and quality setting "90". 90 is like jpeg compression ; the higher
the number the better the quality but the lower the compression resulting in
less frames/images per second. You should fiddle al lot with setMode to get a
good quality setting or even make a custom combobox and let people set their
own quality and bandwidth "per camera".

[coolpyx1]

Thanks for your answer.
SetMode seems to be obvious for but unfortunatelly if I use an AV presence component
where do i put or where can I find the setMode.
Thanks again