Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Geek Speak => Topic started by: PmbPhy on 14/08/2016 00:14:13

Title: What is a good video compression format for online use?
Post by: PmbPhy on 14/08/2016 00:14:13

When I took a video of a physicist explaining common misconceptions in physics the files turned out to be huge, i.e. on the order of 300 Mb. The file format is the .mov too, i.e. Quick Time format and as such its not supported by Windows Media Player. I'm going to edit the files by reducing the size of them. When I do I'm thinking of saving them in the MPEG-4 file format which has the .mp4 extension. Is this a good format to use?

Title: Re: Choosing video file format
Post by: RD on 14/08/2016 03:33:25

If the videos are only going to be viewed 1/4 screen
you can re-size them, which will reduce the file-size dramatically.

I use a free-version of "Microsoft Expression" to do that ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Expression_Encoder

Now the bad news, the free-version doesn't output in MP4 : it only
has Microsoft proprietary "wmv" video format, but that's acceptable by YouTube.

Title: Re: Choosing video file format
Post by: PmbPhy on 16/08/2016 05:51:33

Quote from: RD on 14/08/2016 03:33:25

If the videos are only going to be viewed 1/4 screen
you can re-size them, which will reduce the file-size dramatically.

I use a free-version of "Microsoft Expression" to do that ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Expression_Encoder

Now the bad news, the free-version doesn't output in MP4 : it only
has Microsoft proprietary "wmv" video format, but that's acceptable by YouTube.

Thanks, RD. I bought Pinnacle Studio 19 recently and it has all the fancy doodads to do whatever I want to. I was merely curious if one file format is better than another. Seems to me that I'm better off saving the video files in the MP4 format, wouldn't you say?

Title: Re: Choosing video file format
Post by: RD on 16/08/2016 11:17:34

MP4 is the format YouTube uses when you download videos , even though you may have uploaded them in a different format . So according to YouTube, MP4 is the most widely accepted video format.   

The common video formats all have lossy-compression (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lossy_compression), which trades off file-size with image-quality.  You can experiment by setting different bit-rates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate#Video) to see what is the lowest acceptable image quality.

If you are uploading to YouTube my tip would be err on the side of quality, as YouTube transcode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding) the videos, which reduces the quality a little bit.

Title: Re: Choosing video file format
Post by: nicephotog on 26/03/2017 11:13:13

Mp4 or FLV or Wmv are good compressors, in complex terms AVI is the all rounder usual but remains a wee tad large.

Title: Re: What is a good video compression format for online use?
Post by: chris on 27/03/2017 17:41:27

H.264 as an mp4 returns reasonable quality; if you look at the Naked Pathology videos:

https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/video/naked-pathology-potcasts - they are encoded via this format and are 5-30MB. I captured the promo images as frames from the sequences, so this gives an idea as to the image quality:


potcast-picture.png (413 kB . 600x400 - viewed 4165 times)

Title: Re: What is a good video compression format for online use?
Post by: mrsmith2211 on 29/03/2017 23:32:58

Microsoft still offers Movie maker as a download, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/movie-maker-free-video-editor/9nblggh4wwjr
It used to have the option save for computer viewing, dramatic size reduction good for posting to youtube, I think youtube has options also for posting videos.

Title: Re: What is a good video compression format for online use?
Post by: chris on 29/03/2017 23:41:38

Yes, youTube is of course an option, but then you surrender all control / ability to manipulate, re-purpose and move about your content...

Title: Re: What is a good video compression format for online use?
Post by: mrsmith2211 on 29/03/2017 23:45:57

Try the movie maker free then.