Best file format for email (1min of video)

[Brehmstein]

Hello,

I recently made a very short (1 minute) video from DV footage in Adobe Premiere (v6.5). I would like to email this to a friend, but I do not know what the best file format is for quality vs. size (and playback when he recieves it - no oddball codecs please).

I have the following tools to use: Premiere, Mainconcept Encoder, TMPGEnc (full version), Windows Movie Maker & VirtualDubMod.

I have converted it to a standard VCD and the quality is fair and the file size is 9MB. (I still have the original project in Premire...)

I think I would like to get the file size down to 4MB and maintain the "fair" quality (is that resonable)?

This isn't something that i want to spend money on, so please look at my tools or recomend freeware software...

Any recomendations for software and settings will be greatly appreciated.

[teegee420]

Have a look at Windows Media Encoder, which will create a WMV file. You can probably get a 1 minute clip under 2mb. The quality won't be terrific though. WME has different quality settings so experiment a little.

[noki]

go with Quicktime (mov). in Premiere export video via Cleaner EZ using Sorensen codec. 1 min @320x240, 15-30 fps, bitrate less tha 200kbps will yield a file 1.2 Meg big. increase bitrate for better quality. good luck.

[tekkieman]

If you already have Windows Movie Maker, you can select "Web" as an output type. I believe you can also specify the max size of the file. MMII uses the same engine as Media Encoder, just has a "simpler" interface.

[teegee420]

If you already have Windows Movie Maker, you can select "Web" as an output type. I believe you can also specify the max size of the file. MMII uses the same engine as Media Encoder, just has a "simpler" interface.

Good to know. I haven't used Movie Maker in years, back when I still had Win ME.

[Brehmstein]

Just a follow-up to let you know what worked best for me...

I basically created 4 different versions of the clip...

*.wmv from Widows Encoder
*.wmv from Window movie Maker
*.mpg (VCD) using Mainconcept encoder
*.mov exporting from Premiere

I could not get good results from Window Movie Maker or the .mov from Premiere. In both cases the settings to use either produced too large a file or too poor quality (not enough knobs).

The mpeg file looked good, but was 9MB. I was able to get a 4MB file from Windows Encoder that looked pretty much the same. So, that is what I went with (600kbps video).

Thanks for the help

[tekkieman]

Thanks for the update. I will be doing some of this myself shortly, and had just planned to use MMII, but since I have Media Encoder as well, I'll take that route!

[teegee420]

Yes, thanks for the update. You'd be surprised how many people fail to report back their results.

[Bodysurf]

Hello,

I recently made a very short (1 minute) video from DV footage in Adobe Premiere (v6.5). I would like to email this to a friend, but I do not know what the best file format is for quality vs. size (and playback when he recieves it - no oddball codecs please).

VCD-compliant MPEG-1.

The quality is decent and it is by far the most compatible codec out there. If a computer can play any video, it will play that, whether it's a Windows, MAC, or AIX machine. The only downside is its a bit larger than the newer stuff like WM9, DivX or RM10.