On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 01:01 PM, Stephen Bannasch wrote:
What is the best way to create quicktime, realmedia, and windows media
format encodings of video. Most of the source will be high-quality
digital (some in older analog archives).
We are planning to deliver 20-30 short (2-4 minute) video clips over
the web as part of a teacher professional development project on
Algebra.
I'd like to deliver these clips in whatever format a users wants at
various rates.
Will you be literally asking each user individually, or are you trying
to cover your bases by encoding in the three major formats (and several
variations for each)?
It's very dangerous to let users drive technical decisions (it's
important to consider their needs, but never to ask literally "what
spec do you want"), unless these users are actually going to be
manipulating this footage someone (doubtful, it sounds like educational
programming?).
Is this all for internal distribution, or to random people on the Web?
Members only? Depending on the answers to these questions, you may be
better off coming up with fewer, more standardized specs and providing
the basic support to make sure they can use them. I can't see
supporting all the major formats being necessary for most audiences,
don't be afraid to draw a line in the sand...
Discreet's Cleaner claims to do this. If you use it are you satisfied
with it? Is there another application which handles this?
Cleaner is a serious mixed bag. It was once the king of the market, but
has fallen quite far. You didn't mention what platform you're on, but
this matters now as they have essentially two separate product lines
now, depending on your platform.
Cleaner 6 (Mac) - does Quicktime well, Real and WM not so well
(compared to other products).
Cleaner XL (Windows) - no comment :)
The best application (IMHO) for straightforward Windows Media Encoding
is Microsoft's own, free WM Encoder. Excellent tool.
On Windows, Canopus Procoder supports all but Real for output, and is
an excellent tool.
I avoid Real like the plague these days - between Quicktime and Windows
Media you have all the bases covered, Real won't give you much more
reach. You could always provide MPEG-4 for both Quicktime and Real, and
then Windows Media for everyone else.
On the other hand is this a straightforward job which can be reliably
outsourced? Any company recommendations?
I would recommend outsourcing this, and it may be best to find someone
semi-local (in other words, outside my sphere of contacts). Others may
be able to recommend someone local to you.
Farming it out to someone truly experienced - not that rare these days
- is probably your best bet. Be sure you're working with someone
professional, not soomeone at home running the same tools you could
just buy. Quicktime is possible to do really well on both platforms
right now, but if you want the best Real and WM results they will have
to be on a PC. Likewise, you'll have to establish your expectations for
digitizing your analog archives - will you be satisfied with someone
passing it through a DV bridge, or do you expect (and are willing to
pay for) the best possible digitization.
What kind of content is this? And how will you be distributing it? Have
you developed specs for each of the formats you want to support, and
will do the whole project in one shot, or do you expect to do it
piecemeal as you figure it out?
Cheers,
roger howard
senior digital media specialist
the j. paul getty museum
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