Best recording format for web distribution

J

Jeff

Member
I have a new HMC150, and am going to be making a 5 min informational video about a counseling center. Pretty simple, mostly interviews etc. - no high speed chase scenes! After editing, they want to post the video on their website, and be able to direct potential contributors & clients to it. We may make some DVDs, but the primary distribution will be via internet.

My question is the best recording format to use. Some (a kind Vimeo poster) suggest 30p. So, would 1080/30p be the best setting for me to shoot with? I have a pretty good Mac Pro desktop, and will edit with FCE4. Thanks in advance for any suggestions, Jeff.
 
Record at 1080/30p or 720/60p if its high action or you want to ever slow down footage.

When you export/render you can pick the right format for whatever you need, ie. dvd, vimeo, blue-ray, ipod, etc.
 
I was under the impression that both YouTube and Vimeo convert whatever you upload to 24fps. I like the look of 24fps in general so record in PH mode 1080/24p but then again I do not have much "high action" sports type things going on.

CS4 now has a "YouTube Widescreen HD" option which is nice but I do not know if FCE has something comperable.

Basically for the web (YouTube/Vimeo), export to 720/24p.
 
Let Vimeo or Youtube handle the final frame rate conversion, just deliver whatever you shot, so you don't get a stutter effect.
Vimeo streams at 25 fps unless the original source was slower. YouTube varies.
 
Thanks everyone for your help. This really is the place to go for advice. Think I will try 1080/30p. Jeff
 
...Also, remember to scale your final video to the delivery display size. Video editors do a much better job of scaling than any encoder will, and you may want to adjust the sharpness of the finished video, before sending it to the encoder.
 
It depends on what you are after...

Sometimes the scaled down video looks a little "soft", which can be corrected with a small increase in sharpening.

Sometimes you want a "softer" looking video because this will compress down to a smaller file size.

Like anything, you have to find a balance that works for you. I see a lot of online video that suffers from bad color timing ( unintentional color casts ), bad gamma timing ( contrast and tonal range keep changing, or are far from optimal ), bad audio ( badly recorded, or over-compressed so that it has a metalic tone to it ), and bad compression. ( under-compressed so that it won't stream in real-time, or over-compressed so the original quality is lost )
 
I wasn't expecting this at all. I did a little test on my own video that I shot with my HMC150 and exported with the CS4 using the YouTube HD preset. Which spits out:
An mp4: 24fps 1280x720
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzU1jP2xc2E&fmt=22

I went to YouTube and downloaded all of the video options available (Using the firefox add-on "Download Helper")


low quality flash - 30fps 320x180
high quality flash - 24fps 854x480
mp4 - 24fps 1280x720

I wasn't expecting a different framerate for the lower quality flash. Wonder why that is...
 
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