Youtube, avi, and resolution

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DigiTan
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Youtube, avi, and resolution

Post by DigiTan »

I'm compiling some Tribes Vengeance footage of me harassing aircraft pilots and performing other aerial antics. Special thanks to Fraps. Three questions:

1. What's the best video format(s) for youtube?
2. Any good programs for editing .avis? Or converting them, and then editing?
3. Best program to scale the video down to 320x240 resolution without ailising?

Anyway, if there are any tribals out there, you can usually catch me on wolfservers (east coast/texas) with my [Bad Marksman] handle.
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Post by tr1p1ea »

Youtube will convert your video to .flv (Flash Video) when you upload it. The quality is similar to a lowish bitrate .wmv (Window Media). It isnt always good if you have lots of fast motion in your video. Google Video will convert to .flv too, but it does so at a higher bitrate so the quality is better. Plus Google Video doesnt have the 10min limit like Youtube.

I recommend just encoding to say divx or xvid, or even just a wmv. Good program for editing are Adobe Premier Pro, Vegas or if you dont wish to aquire any of these, Windows Movie Maker will work ok. You can use any of those to resize, or you can use VirtualDub.
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Post by Dwedit »

I once tried out Adobe Premier. It's a great program, if your intent is to delete all the AVI files in a folder. Which is what it did. Fortunately I had backups.
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Post by anykey »

iMovie, anyone? :P
I would use mpeg, but that's just me...
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Post by DigiTan »

I guess I'll still with Movie Maker since it seems up to the task. I can't believe how large these 30 seconds avi.'s are compared to the .wmv format.
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Post by Homestar »

While we're on the topic. I've been looking for a file format converter for doing the exact opposite of what digitan is wanting to do.
I want to convert videos I've downloaded in .flv format to something that is comptiable like .avi or at least .wmv.
However I have had a hard time finding a converter that is free, doesn't expire, and doesn't leave a watermark.

Any suggestions?
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Post by DigiTan »

Me too. There's a bunch of cool vids I wanna show my little sister but they have dail-up over there. I mean, "cats spa" is already funny when you explain it, but seeing it in person! Man O Man! :lol:
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Post by tr1p1ea »

CinemaForge is a great program, it can covert FLV:

http://www.download.com/CinemaForge/300 ... 73646.html
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Post by DigiTan »

Okay. I finally solved the mystery here. At least partly. If you upload a video to youtube and you're not getting the clarity you want, these are the steps I took.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Download a trial of Sony Vegas 7.0 or a similar video editor that lets you manually set the resolution, bit rate, brightness and contrast. Movie Maker 2 will not include this.

2. For Sony Vegas, you'll probably want to increase the contrast of each clip to .15 to .25. Click the "Event FX" icon on the clip. Then click "Sony Brightness and Contrast" on the window that appears. Select "Add." Then "Okay." Now you have a slidebar for contrast.

3. Doing this tends to make sky graphics look washed out, so you can lower the brightness to -0.03 or so to counter this. Raising the contrast center will restore detail to bright areas; lowering restores details to dark.

4. When done editing, go to File -> Render As...

5. Select "Save as Windows Media Video V9 (*.wmv) in the drop-down list.

6. Leave the checkboxes unchanged.

7. Click the "custom" button.

8. In the Custom Templates Dialogs enter these settings...
Project Tab: Use "Best" quality.
Audio Tab: Set "Mode" to CBR. Set "Format" to Windows Media Audio 9.2. Set "Attributes" to 128kbps, 44kHZ, stereo (A/V) CBR
Video Tab: Set "Mode" to CBR. Set "format" to Windows Media Video 9. Set "Image Size" to Animation (320x240). Frame rate (fps) = 30.000. Seconds per keyframe = 3. Set "Video smoothness" to 100 (sharpest). Leave everything else at default.
Bit Rate Tab: Select the "Internet/LAN" checkbox and type in "1M" in it's text field.

9. Give this template a name at the top of the Custom Template dialog, then click the disk icon. Click okay.

10. Now that you're back in the "Render As" dialog. Click "save" and your .wmv will begin rendering.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those are the steps I went through and there was a vast improvement in video quality. If there are some other tricks anyone knows, feel free to add to this. Anyway, here are the two videos I did using these settings.

* Tribes Vengeance - Ride! Ride! Ride!
* Tribes Vengeance - Danger Zone!
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Post by hop »

Youtube is for camwhores and silly phone camera recorded stuff.

You want this: http://stage6.divx.com/
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Post by threefingeredguy »

hop wrote:Youtube is for camwhores and silly phone camera recorded stuff.

You want this: http://stage6.divx.com/
I agree, sort of. Youtube is still the place to share videos if you want them to be mainstream, but stage6 is much better. I watch movies on there all the time.
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Post by DigiTan »

The only thing is stage6 takes avi. Anyone know the best render settings for stage 6? I already notice the resolution is much better.

And how do you upload. I downloaded the Codex, player, and uploader but I don't see the option yet.
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