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Best compression-quality
- Thread starter petemax
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EdwardMartinIII
Technical User
Petemax,
Your question is small, but has a large answer.
There are, say, twenty decent codecs out there. Of each of those codecs, say there's a "quality" setting of 0% to 100%, in increments of 10. That gives you a base choice of 250 different combinations to try.
Now, some codecs are better for some things, so it might help to know what you, personally, want out of the final product?
For example, here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do I want it to look as good as possible, no matter what? Do I want it to be as small a file size as possible, no matter what? Do I want it to be as good as possible, but be small enough to fit on a CDR (650M)? Do I want to show it on a TV? Am I planning on showing it from a website? Can the contents be shared with a small screen, or does it require lots of detail (such as, say, a technical tutorial)? If it's on the web, do I want to prevent Apple people from seeing it? If it's on the web, do I want to serve it streaming, or just have a single file?
So, you ask yourself these questions and figure out what your basic needs are.
Then, you start looking over your list of codecs. The answers to the questions you asked yourself will probably help. Start with your list of codecs. For each one, export some portion of your project. Nothing huge, just about 20 seconds of some part that's really critical to you. Export one file at maximum resolution for the codec, and then successively drop the resolution, exporting each time. Check out each of the resultant files and compare against your specs.
You will find that some codecs will not be able to produce the quality of video you want, no matter what their quality is set for. You will find that some codecs will not produce a sufficiently small file no matter what they're set for.
Keep track of all of these settings in a notebook, as well as your observations. Eventually, you'll start narrowing down a codec that produces a small enough file at a quality that'll please you.
Note that your readings will not be consistent across codecs. For example, Joe Bob's Crazy Wild Codec, even at 40% quality, still looks better on live action stuff than Amalgamated Industrial Codec, even when AIC is set to 100%.
in short, the best judge of file size vs. quality tradeoff acceptability is you!
Cheers,
![[monkey]](/data/assets/smilies/monkey.gif "[monkey] [monkey]")
Edward
"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door
Your question is small, but has a large answer.
There are, say, twenty decent codecs out there. Of each of those codecs, say there's a "quality" setting of 0% to 100%, in increments of 10. That gives you a base choice of 250 different combinations to try.
Now, some codecs are better for some things, so it might help to know what you, personally, want out of the final product?
For example, here are some questions to ask yourself:
Do I want it to look as good as possible, no matter what? Do I want it to be as small a file size as possible, no matter what? Do I want it to be as good as possible, but be small enough to fit on a CDR (650M)? Do I want to show it on a TV? Am I planning on showing it from a website? Can the contents be shared with a small screen, or does it require lots of detail (such as, say, a technical tutorial)? If it's on the web, do I want to prevent Apple people from seeing it? If it's on the web, do I want to serve it streaming, or just have a single file?
So, you ask yourself these questions and figure out what your basic needs are.
Then, you start looking over your list of codecs. The answers to the questions you asked yourself will probably help. Start with your list of codecs. For each one, export some portion of your project. Nothing huge, just about 20 seconds of some part that's really critical to you. Export one file at maximum resolution for the codec, and then successively drop the resolution, exporting each time. Check out each of the resultant files and compare against your specs.
You will find that some codecs will not be able to produce the quality of video you want, no matter what their quality is set for. You will find that some codecs will not produce a sufficiently small file no matter what they're set for.
Keep track of all of these settings in a notebook, as well as your observations. Eventually, you'll start narrowing down a codec that produces a small enough file at a quality that'll please you.
Note that your readings will not be consistent across codecs. For example, Joe Bob's Crazy Wild Codec, even at 40% quality, still looks better on live action stuff than Amalgamated Industrial Codec, even when AIC is set to 100%.
in short, the best judge of file size vs. quality tradeoff acceptability is you!
Cheers,
Edward "Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door
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