opinion on video streaming/download quality

[markwolff]

I am hoping you guys can help me with what you think is the minimum, what would be standard and what is best, when it comes to the streaming rate,and the size of the player box. I have seen all kinds of numbers thrown out, as to what is acceptable. As far as screen size i have had some of my players in the past at 320x240 which i realize is too small these days. i have had people say 640x360 is what alot of sites are using, or standard. i have read that some sites are using 720x480 which seems huge to me, are there alot of sites using this size? . also what about rate, i have been told anything less that 300kb is no good, you need to be at least 500kb or better. what is the highest you have seen? I have always had my videos downloadable, I am planning on also offering streaming using flash player any feedback on using this? Thanks for your help.

[basschick]

if your videos display at 320x240, 640x360 is the wrong size - that's widescreen. your videos would display at 640x480.

our videos are very high quality - 720x480 at a bitrate of 1699k. we also offer 2 smaller sizes. i'd say these days that 480x360 would work, although in a few months it may be surpassed by a lot of sites. the other muscle sites are offering videos at either 480x360 or 640x480 depending on the site. i see a bitrate in those sites of around between 765k and 1045 on the 480x360s.

i would consider 512k the minimum speed and 480x360 the minimum size these days. 512k would be "average" quality, while other muscle sites have good quality videos allowing the videos to be enlarged and enjoyed where at 512k enlarging will cause a fair amount of loss of quality in the videos.

when i did flash videos in sorenson, they weren't quite as good as our wmvs are and they were larger in file size so the main problem i see here is that by doing this, you could be increasing your bandwidth. perhaps you have different results - why not make a short clip (maybe a minute?) and encode it as a 480x360 high qulity video in both flash and wmv (maybe the wmv could be 768k). see how they both look and see what the file size is of each video.

i prefer the members to download because it costs me less when they watch the movies over and over. and thieves always seem to have a way to steal the movies if you know how, you can save the flash videos you watch from your cache.

hope that helps.

[Xstr8guy]

Hopefully you can clear this up for me Patti...

Shouldn't videos be displayed at 640x480 instead of 720x480 for the proper aspect ratio?

I use Vegas upon you recommendation and Vegas says that the video's original size is 720x480 but if I encode in that size, the aspect ration looks wrong. The video appears stretch out horizontally but 640x480 looks correct. Is this correct or is my aspect ratio screwed up?

[gaybucks_chip]

We do ours at 720x480, and I don't *think* they look stretched.

I do know that when I take a screencap direct from an AVI, it is in 720x480 and I believe that is the native size of DV video, which isn't exactly 4:3, more like 3:2.

I know there's something about the shape of the pixels that is adjustable and can affect whether the video is stretched looking, perhaps that's your problem.

[markwolff]

Thanks Basschick for that detailed answer, i think you covered everything i needed to know.

[basschick]

i believe that simply depends on your camcorder. our videos shot with our main camcorder look squashed in at 640x480 and the guys look natural and the way they looked to me in the studio at 720x480, which is what our capture program says they are.

btw, we have one here that shoots 640x480 and one that shoots 720x480.

Hopefully you can clear this up for me Patti...

Shouldn't videos be displayed at 640x480 instead of 720x480 for the proper aspect ratio?

I use Vegas upon you recommendation and Vegas says that the video's original size is 720x480 but if I encode in that size, the aspect ration looks wrong. The video appears stretch out horizontally but 640x480 looks correct. Is this correct or is my aspect ratio screwed up?