why do so many gay paysites have such lousy video quality?

i would think a 720x480 MPEG-2 with a 3000k bitrate should look okay as a 480x360 WMV at 1100k. the shrinking would hopefully take care of the artifacting for the most part.

i did once try one of our videos as an MPEG-2 and when i changed it to a WMV at full size it looked a little off but then i'm not a fan of MPGs anyway. WMVs stream for most people so you don't have to wait for the video to download before you watch it. and although some webmasters still believe that WMV is an inferior video format, my 1600k WMVs look very close to our uncompressed videos where at 2200k there's no visible difference.

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Originally Posted by basschick

i would think a 720x480 MPEG-2 with a 3000k bitrate should look okay as a 480x360 WMV at 1100k. the shrinking would hopefully take care of the artifacting for the most part.

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It will probably work, but you'll have to try it... I've seen some very strange artifacting even of WMV converted from MPEGs encoded at 4500-5000... it seems to be an additive problem; the MPEG codec throws away about 90% of the data, so there are very few keyframes with the full image (can't remember exactly), so when WM goes to encode, it's keyframes may not match up exactly, and if you have a busy background, then it starts to do stuff like lose definition in the face so it has more data to record the background info. What I noticed most was artifacting during movement; it sometimes would be come very "blocky."

Don't get me wrong, we've definitely encoded WMV from a DVD source, and at smaller sizes, it is acceptable, but nothing compared to encoding direct from an AVI or full-res Quicktime.

Hey Guys,

Mary from Maleflixxx here. I've been wandering through this site for quite a while, but haven't posted before.

Basschick asked: what bitrates are the maleflixxx videos encoded at and what are the resolutions and video formats you use?

Maleflixxx streams in both Real Player and Windows Media. We encode for bitrates from 56kbps (for those lost in dial-up) right up to 1100+

This allows users to get near DVD quality on their computer screens and anything from a 2x2 window to a full screen depending on their broadband provider. Users also get to adjust their own settings (either themselves or using our testing tools) so they can be sure that they are always getting the best streaming they can.

And, yes, we'll take a DVD from a studio in a pinch but we prefer the DVCams so that we can maximize the quality of all of the videos on our network.

Check us out: www.maleflixxx.tv and PM me if you have any questions.

I have experimented over and over adjusting the compression etc and really need to find a professional to handle the work for our videos. OR I need to get some help on making them look as good as possible. Makes me nuts to see how clear and beautiful the movie trailers on apple site work in quick time and can't seem to get ours there regardless of how large the files are.

Any ideas?

Alex

yup - encode at a higher bitrate directly from your originals. your videos can't be as clear as you want them at 500k. at the size your videos are, if you want 'em to look beautiful try 768k or better. there are some more things you can probably do - what program are you using to edit and render your videos?

and don't forget - part of how a video looks is lighting - that you can only change during shooting.

I didn't want to hijack your thread so I started another but then thought it was relevant here so:

http://forums.gaywidewebmasters.com/...ad.php?t=16459

PS I have already taken on board everything in this thread too....thanks for all the input guys

xx