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Tony,
The guide you pointed to in your 2/4 post is really useful. All of the other suggestions in this string have been useful too. I now have a functional solution, but I'm afraid that I'm still not clear about the interplay between bitrate and all of the other quality parameters.
The situation reminds me of those shopping carts you see in the grocery store, with a little seat to put a child in. There's a steering wheel in front of the seat. The kid thinks they're steering the shopping cart, and the parent also thinks they're steering. Only one of them really is.
In a similar manner, I can adjust the bitrate, or I can control the various quality parameters such as resolution and frames per second. Which one is really determining the quality? Who's really driving this shopping cart?
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Cranston,
Thanks for your reply on Feb 1. Sorry it's taken me a few days to find the custom WMV profiles Dafydd loaded to SMWOV. I found 3 in each format, PAL and NTSC, which I'll play with.
I certainly understand your point about there being no right answer - it's a balance between file size / load speed, and quality.
Can you help me understand the difference between bit rate and frames per second? In your response you frequently say "bitrate" as a measure of quality. This surprised me because I'd understood that the frames per second was a measure of how many images are flashed each second, and more fps would result in smoother action. I'd understood that bitrate tells the server and the client how fast to pump the video file across the WAN/LAN.
Thanks again for volunteering your time to helping us newbies get up to speed.
PS, I seldom make muffins but I can do a mean brownie.
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Thanks Tuan,
Yes, with your help I found the "Create a New Profile" under AVC, MPEG-2, and MOV formats, but I don't see it under .WMV, RM, AVI, MPEG-1, or MPEG-2. So my current thinking is that if I want a non standard .WMV profile I need to use the file copy/rename approach.
You say that WMV is a good choice unless I want even better quality. Which do you advise using if I want to improve quality? Actually the general question here is how you choose which of the eight file formats to use. Power Director gives some hints, but I'd be interested in any rules of thumb you use.
Thanks again for your time and expertise.
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Thanks Cap'n Kevin,
Cranston - your suggestion makes sense, and it would be terrific, but I'm not seeing a button for "create profile" on the Produce Tab of Power Director 8. Please tell me a bit more about where to look in the User Interface.
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Hello Cap'n Kevin,
Thanks for your response. I love that photo of you in your shades with that older guy in his shades.
You're asking what my particular need is at the moment. I'll respond, but I think there's also a broad need to be able to identify the best format in general.
Here's my current need:
* The video's aspect ratio is 16:9
* It was recorded at 7 FPS
* It was recorded in stereo
* It was recorded with at cannon vixia HF S100 which records video at 6.01 Megapixels
* I'd like to output 720 x 480 pixels
I'm looking for a video format that meets these constraints with a minimum file size.
I plan to show the video on Motionbox, which can handle these file types.
.3g2, .3gp, .3gp2, .3gpp, .60d, .ajp, .amv, .asf, .avi, .bik, .bix, .box, .byu, .camrec, .cvc, .d2v, .d3v, .dat, .dce, .dif, .divx, .dmb, .dpg, .dv, .dvr-ms, .dvx, .dxr, .eye, .flc, .flh, .fli, .flv, .flx, .gl, .grasp, .gvi, .ivf, .ivr, .ivs, .lsf, .lsx, .m1pg, .m1v, .m21, .m2t, .m2ts, .m2v, .m4e, .m4u, .m4v, .mjp, .mkv, .mnv, .mod, .moov, .mov, .movie, .mp21, .mp4, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .mpv2, .mqv, .mts, .nsv, .ogm, .par, .pds, .piv, .pmf, .qt, .qtch, .qtz, .rm, .rmvb, .rp, .rv, .scm, .scm, .scn, .sfvidcap, .smil, .smk, .smv, .spl, .ssm, .str, .svi, .swi, .tivo, .tod, .tp, .ts, .vdo, .vfw, .vid, .viewlet, .viv, .vivo, .vob, .vp6, .vp7, .vro, .wm, .wmv, .xvid, .yuv, .zm1, .zm2, .zm3, .zmv
Actually, in exploring around, I found this video by DAFYDD; Creating and adding new WMV templates to CyberLink PowerDirector 7 http://seemyworldonvideo.com/view/218/creating-wmv-templates/ It seems that the 168 options I see are just profiles someone has set up, and I can set my own profile to meet my particular situation.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
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On the Produce tab there are 8 file format alternatives. Each of these brings up 3 to 20 different profile types (Let's say the average is 7). Most of these bring up roughly 3 alternatives for Profile Name/Quality. 8 * 7 * 3 = 168 alternatives. The question is how I rapidly identify the alternative that best meets my need.
I imagine a table with all the alternative selections. Then columns would show, for each alternative,
the output pixel dimensions,
the aspect ratio,
the number of FPS,
whether the audio is mono or stereo,
the number of kbps for the sound,
the file suffix (eg .wmv)
and about how many MBYTES per minute the produced video uses.
Users could consult this table to find the alternative that meets their need.
I've entered a series of Support issues related to this but I get very shallow answers back from the Support Engineers.
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