hey folks
I just finished a little 'toon I've been working on for a bit and I'd like to set it up on my website. Unfortunately, it plays poorly as a .swf for a variety of reasons, so I've rendered it as Quicktime, resulting in several hundred Megabytes for a few minutes of finished work, even with a smaller size screen.
What are some tips you use to get your video files reduced without loosing too much quality?
Any help is appreciated.
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Cartoon Thunder
There's a little biker in all of us...
I meant why it works. I ran it across a movie just to test and sure enough, it took it down a notch (not a huge notch because it was an incredibly small file to begin with)...what a great tip.
I clearly have more experimentation to do. I got it down to 12 Megs and a smaller video, and lost a lot of quality in the process. Some of my titles and credits are pretty hard to read. Overall, it seems to work, however.
Check it out--it's linked from my home page at Cartoon Thunder.
Cartoon Thunder
There's a little biker in all of us...
I run everything through an application called Discreet Cleaner. It compresses to any number of settings.
The standard preset which I use is Sorenson 3 codec, 400 x 300, keyframe every 300, 768 kb/sec.
Audio is important to note too. For the web, you shouldn't use high quality audio -it takes too much space. Use something like IMA 4:1 encoding at mono and 22.5 k.
A :30 clip might be anywhere from 1.5 to 5 MB depending on color compression using these settings.
You can render from any application using these settings, you don't need Cleaner. It might not be as small, since I'm sure Discreet uses fancier algorithms to encode than a standard animation/editing/compositing program.
I was told earlier this week that when outputting from Flash, you want to export as QT Video, not straight QT. It plays smoother and compresses better. I haven't tried it yet, but that's the story I got.
I'm actually outputting from Toon Boom Studio. I need to look into what options there are in the settings today. Regardless, I'll likely be running it through another program upon completion so I can have a full res, full size copy for home and local use, and another for the internet.
I'm also experiencing some odd black flecks here and there on screen as well as some pops in the audio. I'll do some experimenting with individual scenes to get it dialed in.
Still up for input. Thanks to everyone so far. :)
Cartoon Thunder
There's a little biker in all of us...
This is what I do. I export my files as an avi. Buy Quicktime Pro, it's only about 30 buck. Play the avi through Quicktime, then export it out as an avi using the H.264 compressor. Also drop the audio down, to mono and as low a bit rate as you can. Audio can be dropped down alot more than video befor it starts to turn crappy. This should get your file down pretty small. I compressed my demo on my site from 300+ megs down to around 17 megs. The way I did that was to do all the above, then take that compressed version and compression again.
Oh DSB, I never export Quicktimes from Flash. If you're on a PC Flash doesn't export true quicktimes, they're swfs with the extension changed. I always export as an avi. and if I need to, export it out through QT Pro.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."
You can compress a compression? That's nuts...I wonder how that works.
It works surprizingly well. My demo reel on my site isn't the highest quality, but it's still really good for viewing on the web.
Aloha,
the Ape
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."