Roph, I'm sorry.

[Moss.]

Dear Roph,

Today, I used Adobe Media Encoder CS4 to bounce a video down for the web. I used the flv format, and the Large Web default setting. The file went from 200+MB to 64MB without any noticeable change in quality, which might still be too large for a 6 minute video, but it's miles kilometers better than what I had before, and exactly within the range I was looking for. I am sorry I ever doubted you or the flash video format.

I owe you one (1) BJ.

Your Friend,
Arlen

[Roph]

Uh ._.

FLV is a container format, it isn't a video format.

A breakdown:

Container, FLV

Video Track, Probably VP6

Audio Track, Probably MP3

FLV is a deprecated container format, now you should use the standard MP4 container format (like I use for my movie encodes.

This is why I facepalm when I see people saying "avi" as the format, or "wmv". Or if I see a company advertising a portable media player and saying it supports "avi". You can put SO many formats inside an avi container.

I don't like and never have liked the FLV container format, I always saw it as a waste of time. For anything, I recommend an MP4 container, h.264 (x264 encoded, apple's h.264 encoder is complete shit) video, and AAC audio (preferrably nero's AAC encoder).

[tSwitch]

Roph should have just accepted the free BJ

[Moss.]

Whaaat? I could have sworn like over a year ago you were all "use flv it's awesome." I remember because we for some reason got into a fight over it, and I was like "flv is dumb I'm not going to use it."

Bah, whatever.

All I know is that I've tried most of them, and right now flv looks and sounds best for the file size.


No more BJ for you.


And when I use mp4, the quality dies, and the file size doubles. Maybe it is just because I'm on a Mac, and Adobe Media Encoder doesn't want to use x264 even though it probably doesn't HAVE to. ...not that I really understand how x264 is different from "apple's" h.264 ...


edit: Is it like h.264 is corporate, business release that some company made, and x264 is some user-created ... version of it that does the job better? How am I supposed to use x264 then?

[Moss.]

I think I found something...

http://mac-free.com/download/x264-QuickTime-Codec.html

I'm gonna give it a try at work today.

[Moss.]

Bouncing now, but since it's a quicktime plugin.component, it only works through QuickTime, or in Final Cut using QuickTime conversion.
i.e. I can only save as .mov.
..aaaaand, it's 98 MB. ~30 MB larger than the flv. But the quality is slightly better. Yes, the audio is mp3, 128.
Maybe if I could save it as an .mp4? .... but I can't. And I fear taking the .mov I just made and turning it into an mp4 will result in the loss of quality.

God, it really doesn't help that every time I google for x264 I get a million hits for h.264 instead.

And it really doesn't help that there's so many advanced settings.

I'm downloading Avidemux ...


edit: I figured it out. Bouncing in high quality, like, triples the file size, and doesn't even do that much for the quality. Leaving it at medium quality gets me a smaller file, and (astonishingly) better quality than .flv.


Sorry again, Roph.
You can have your BJ back.

[Roph]

x264 and apple's h.264 encoders are both .. encoders. H.264 (also known as AVC) is the format.

Media format specifications typically just say how the file should be decoded. This lets people publish better encoders in the future and increases competition etc. The quality you get from the LAME MP3 encoder today at 128kb/s was simply impossible with the original MP3 encoders back in 1996.

The same goes for h.264. x264 destroys any other h.264 encoder. Not by a small, only nerd-relevant margin either. Apple's h.264 implementation is complete shit. Even XviD (and older, less efficient format) can best it. The encodes I do like those LOTR things would be far from possible if I used apple's h.264 encoder. 700mb dvd-resolution rips in xvid of those films look like shit, that's what you'd get.

If you have a h.264 video stream inside a .mov container, it's easy to simply copy it into an mp4 container. On the PC I'd use mediacoder or SUPER to do this. Also I'd use AAC audio instead of MP3. If I wanted to be super anal then I'd use MP4UI to optimise the file.