How do you Compress YOUR videos

[Bravo]

Just playing with fraps and virtualdub last night and then uploaded a video to youtube, the quality isn't as good as I've seen others post on here so I was wondering what you fellow film makers had for settings. last night I recorded fraps full screen, after reading a few tutorials I'll be changing this to half, 30FPS, then in virtual dub I used a mpeg-4 compression with a single quality pass, I recieved error messages when I tried to execute a 2 pass. Then shot it up to youtube.

I've heard Windows movie maker produces fairly good movies?

What do you do?

[Stabface]

I just made & posted my first movie, I captured at 1280x1024 & 30fps in Fraps then used VirtualDub and xvid codec with MP3 audio.

[Diamndzngunz]

How to Render for Stage6 (Sony Vegas)

[Eteocles]

Personally I record no-sound, half-size, 29.97 fps on FRAPs(Something about 29.97 being the "true" fps that you can perceive; any higher than 30 is just extra effects if any being visible and not worth the size)

I use Vegas, I think 6.0, might be 5.0...I need to upgrade soon I guess, but I work with the .wmv Windows 9 codec, Quality Slider VBR, I usually render at video's original size and slide the VBR slider down to 75-89% Depending on how clear I want the vid; 75% is about as low as you can go with text still being readable, and is a fair tradeoff for less filesize when done. Haven't had a vid over 200mb yet, most 120 or less, being up to 9mins, longest made was 15 cut down from 30mins(Longest. Azuregos Fight. Ever. We had an audience of like 4 other guilds + a horde guild while we did it and it took us forever but we eventually down it without losing our tag on it and while keeping the horde off us lol)

[Bravo]

Thanks Eteocles, I'll try out wmv codec tonight.

[Stabface]

Slightly OT here but there's a pretty interesting history behind the the 29.97 frames per second video standard, it comes from the NTSC color television standard. Essentially: broadcast TV is sent with the picture and color signals separate, so as to be compatible with B&W television receivers. The black & white picture is a 15.75khz signal, displayed at 525 lines with 2:1 interlaced display, which gives you at 30 full screen draws per second or 30fps. Of course the math is obvious the other way, 525 lines being drawn, 30 times per second gives you 525x30 = 15750 hz carrier signal.These numbers are chosen because the framerate needed to be an even multiple of the AC current frequency (60hz in the US) to prevent picture flicker.
But, the addition of the color carrier signal required a slight reduction in the bandwidth available to the picture signal, approximately 1%. So as a result the framerate is reduced to (approximately) 29.97 - it's actually 15.75khz, minus the frequency of the color carrier, divided by 525.

Anyways, tl;dr, it's not something to be really concerned about with computer video - since you have no idea what refresh rate your target display is running at.

[Eteocles]

Very interesting...Stab, do you work for the History Channel or "How it's made"? :P(not picking on you, I watch both fairly often lol); the last line is also true, I'd assume PAL rates would be different for you EU folks and anyone can change 'em anytime, somepeople use 75hz refresh rates etc...

[Stabface]

Nope, but my uncle was a TV repairman in the 1960s and 70s... growing up I was really into electronics so I picked up all kinds of 'useful' information like this

PAL video spec actually doesn't define the lines and frame rate... it's just an alternate way of encoding the color signal onto the picture carrier that provides a better image. Normally it's 625 lines and 25fps (or 24.9x maybe), since the AC wall voltage is at 50hz frequency in most? of Europe. But in different areas have different line counts and frame rates, countries in South Ameria I think has 60hz AC so they probably have 525 line 29.97fps PAL TV there.

[Majo]

Slightly OT here but there's a pretty interesting history behind the the 29.97 frames per second video standard, it comes from the NTSC color television standard.

Oh man, I love random facts like this. That was awesome. I think my favorite random fact about electronics related specifications is about the length of an audio cd -- 74 minutes. Wierd number, right? Originally the companies involved in developing compact disc technology, Sony and Philips, were planning on making compact discs hold 60 minutes of audio... but the japanese company, Sony, later insisted they extend it to 74 minutes so that the entire Beethoven's 9th Symphony could fit on 1 disc. Why that song? They it every New Year as a tradition in Japan.

And that's why we have 74 minute audio discs. Strange how these things happen, isn't it?

[Eteocles]

Very...if you have any more, make a topic in one of the offtopic/non-wow forums here so I have something interesting to read during my "daily grind" at work ;)