Moho Forum

Hi, Not sure how to make myself understood but- here goes.
For exporting animation I like qt sorenson video 3, I find it best quality for size, but some stuff I do I put into video editing programs, ie., arcsoft. I am able to import the qt videos in to this with no problem. I then add sound and titles etc., if I wish to make a dvd or avi quality film this is good- But when I want compression for the web, I have the choice of quality of I think 'windows tm- or mpeg 4, which is poor quality when uploaded , if I upload directly with a qt movie it's much better- is there a way I can get the edited versions that is, double soundtracks and in the right place in to a sorenson video? I can only output to that directly from as. and not from my video editing program. Can anyone help, or am I trying to do something impossible (as usual) Maggie

Not sure if I understand completely...

It sounds like you are compressing twice. When you export as Sorenson from AS and then load into another editor and export AGAIN as mpg4 you are degrading the quality TWICE.

If you plan to edit after AS export you should not use any compression when exporting from AS. The file will be much larger but the quality will be better in your other video editor.

Forgive me if this is not the case.

-vern

Also, please state whether you're uploading to your own host, or uploading to a service like YouTube that recompresses your videos outside of your own control.

Well, you can precheck your video and audio quality for YouTube, if you compress your video rate at 300 kbps, 24 or 30 fps, and your audio rate at 64 kbps, 22 Khz mono and save as FLV file. If the quality is unacceptable, you should change the contents of your animation. Especially evenly colored, dark still backgrounds seem to compress rather well.

You should also note that animation for the web is something completely different from animation for television, which is also different from animation for the cinema. The smaller the screen, the less detail and complexity you want. That also helps compression for the web.

As an aside, for any Windows or Linux user who wants it, I've created a WinFF preset for encoding videos to YouTube... Actually 2 presets: one for 4:3 source and one for 16:9 source (which mats it to letterboxed, since YouTube presents everything in 4:3 aspect ratio).

Hey, Shawn, thanks for that!

Thanks very much folks- you have answered all my problems. First of all , yes I was compressing twice! and yes of course the host ' youtube' was adding its own compression, so no wonder was all somewhat degraded, to say the least. The trouble is I'm usually trying to make something that I can output in more than one form and thought I'd achieved a good compromise with sorenson 3 and then editing if I needed to, in order to save a massive avi file sitting on my computer. By the way what is FLV? is it flash video or something like that? So many thanks, so will now leave large avi files in video-editin g and delete the avi or zip it. Maggie

Yes, FLV is Flash Video. Sorry for using that acronym.