Video compression tools?

[danielja]

Hi everyone,

I've read a few of the posts on using powweb to host streaming video, but I'm trying it with my site anyway--say a prayer for me!

I have some mpeg-4s of students doing teaching demos on my moodle site which I'd like my classes to watch. They load (but don't seem to buffer--it's all or nothing) and the time it takes is 6 minutes. On average, my videos are 23MB. I would like the videos to buffer and take much, much less time to load in the browser.

I have no experience with video compression, but I would like to try compressing these videos. First, what formats do you suggest and do you think compression will improve the download time? Second, what software recommendations do people have? I am considering BLAZE or DivX, anything that I can try, then buy (if it gets the job done on a mac).

Thanks in advance!

[Croc Hunter]

At Powweb most find the wmv or flv format works best to do as you wish. I quite like Xilsoft (not sure about a Mac version) as it converts between a wide variety of formats and most settings like bitrate kHz and tags are customizable. Camtasia and Pinnacle are also good video handlers.

[geekworx]

+1 to wmv

Windows Media Encoder 9

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

[tpoynton]

I converted a couple of things with ffmpegx to flv, and it seemed to work fine. Installation was a little weird, as I recall, but it ended up working, for free.

and, on a Mac.

[Dbrazzell]

Ill make a recommendation for HandBrake

http://handbrake.fr/

It has a bit of a steep learning curve initially. But its cross platform and very powerful. So if you get to know it it will always be useful to you.

[tpoynton]

I initially thought of Handbrake, but then realized it doesnt produce flash files (I think). The OP should look into flv/swf as the file format, as I believe it is the smallest file size.

Handbrake is fantastic, and worth a look regardless.

[Rob_York]

I used to do some video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro (1.5). It's not cheap but it has loads of internet-minded output settings ranging from high-res download files through to files compressed so much that they'll run on dial-up...

Rob

[danielja]

Many thanks for all of your suggestions. I've decided I am probably better off with a file sharing service like DivShare for the video, rather than putting it directly on my site, but I still need to do some conversion and it helps to brush up on what's available.