corporate video server

[rikit]

I am going to make a few small maybe 10-15 minute training videos for my fellow technicians in my corporation. We own many properties and there are many people out there that service the same machines I do. I am always answering the same questions for my fellow techs. I finally got my corporation to create a forum within our inner corporate web site. Now we can post. This is were the training video comes in. What is the best way to make this video? The video will have a link to the server were it will be stored and viewed by our techs when they click on the link.
My programs I have are premiere 6. The video will be viewed with Windows media player on the computer. What will be the best way to go about making a wmv complient video. Advice please. Thanks

[redwudz]

I think it would depend on the format of the training video. Do you plan to use video from a camcorder or still photos or will it be more like a Power Point presentation? Or a combination of Power Point and video? For most of that, you may already have the tools. Power Point and Windows Movie Maker could probably do most all of it. Another handy program is Wink. It's used to create tutorials.

Probably many ways to do all this. Just concentrate on the message first, then work on the delivery methods and tools.

[rikit]

I was just talking to someone and they suggested captuing my dv video into premiere and exporting as a AVI. Next import the avi into windows media encoder. After that I can put it on the server and link it so all my fellow techs can watch it. Does that sound ok? I just do not know anything about what to set the settings at to make the wmv look good for viewing. It will be viewed on a computer. I have watched some wmv on the computer at workand some of them look really bad. any suggestions?

[Soopafresh]

That should work. You might want to deinterlace your DV footage for your purposes, since your users will be watching from their PCs.

[rikit]

Thanks everyone

[redwudz]

I have watched some wmv on the computer at workand some of them look really bad. any suggestions?

DV should be fairly high quality. Use a tripod and good lighting, the basics.
Take a representative clip of maybe 5 minutes and try a few different encoder settings, mostly bitrate.

You likely have enough room on your server for large files sizes, but for streaming you want a bitrate that your LAN system can handle, along with the computers that will be viewing it.

You should be able to try out your test clips over the LAN and find a good compromise. WMV can look very good at fairly low file sizes if you start with a good quality source and don't try to squeeze it down too small. The video that looked 'really bad' was probably not that good to start with and was compressed too much.