Ask me anything video related. Email address in my profile.
(Not mentioning my video startup because I don't want to turn Offer HN into spam, but it's in my profile if you're interested.)
What sort of settings are "best" for flash videos? eg bit rate/resolution?
Every time i go to encode in flv i tend to use default settings, never really knowing if its a good idea to increase (/decrease) the bit rate etc? I have some sites where i know most people view the videos in full screen, so want high quality, but at the risk of it running slow (both because of internet speeds + flash videos are choppy on slow computers)
There is no one "best" setting, unfortunately. Here are some guidelines, though.
-- You have two real codec options in FLV: VP6 and H.264. H.264 compresses significantly better than VP6.
-- Bitrate and lossiness are directly linked. Increase bitrate and visual quality will go up (within limits, of course), and vice versa.
-- When using H.264, use Baseline profile if you're concerned about choppy video on slow computers. Main and High profiles compress better, but require more CPU to decode.
-- Use one of two encoding modes: 2-pass Variable Bitrate (VBR), or one-pass Constant Quality (e.g. CRF). One-pass VBR doesn't look good.
-- CRF mode (for x264) is great. It targets a fixed visual quality/loss, and the bitrate adjusts to match that. Think of it as an "auto-bitrate" feature.
This is a really general starting point. Any more specific questions I can answer?