A La Carte Video Encoding
I asked in my last post if there were options for encoding Flash video in H.264 format. I was doing some research about various encoding options and came across Hey Watch.
Hey Watch is an online service that lets you encode video into a myriad of formats, including Flash H.264. What’s interesting about this web service is that each encode only costs $0.10, based on a credit system.
In early tests, I’ve been disappointed by the encoding done by Hey Watch. The audio encoding was bad and it played choppy in Quicktime Pro, VLC and a few other players. Obviously, this isn’t acceptible.
I’m rendering out a very large, very high quality file to see if that makes a difference.
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Our First HD Video
We’ve just posted our first online video shot with our new HD video camera. Here’s a link, though I’m going to talk about the process a bit.
This video, which supports our Annual Fund, was dead simple to produce. We setup in our newly renovated library and interviewed two students. In terms of production, all we did was mic our interviewees. There was no lighting setup, and we were in and out in a half an hour.
To edit, we dumped our footage into iMovie HD (not the new, weird one, but the last version). We edited together everything quickly, but ran into some trouble with getting the titles correct. iMovie didn’t like making titles look correct in a 16×9 aspect ratio. Everything kept coming back squished. So, we ended up making all the titles and other slides in Photoshop.
Did you know there are TV sizes and ratios that are available in Photoshop? When I select new document, most of the time I stay up near the top of the list, since those are web and print sizes I often work in. But, down there at the bottom, is this list of presets:
At first, we tried 1440×1080 anamorphic and iMovie was still squishing it, meaning it wasn’t un-anamorphing it correctly (wow, that’s not even a word). Anamorphic video is video that’s been squeezed and if viewed before being correctly resized or put through a filter, either digital or optical, will look squished. This site has a great description of it. After some trial and error, we found the best size was 1920×1080. iMovie took these in without issue and kept everything smooth and fixed. Note to self: iMovie doesn’t like anamorphic files.
We exported a full-size, fully HD version of the video. Using VisualHub, we output a 640×360 FLV version for the web. At high settings, the 3 minute and 30 second video came in at roughly 25mb. I know that Flash will not play videos encoded in H.264 but I don’t have a full version of Flash to encode in. Are there standalone programs (preferably Mac) that will encode Flash video in H.264?
For our web page, I used the JW FLV player. The JW player is easy to setup and configure, and does some cool stuff like reporting video views to Google Analytics. The video file is hosted at, of course, Amazon S3.
Since we launched this video last Friday and sent an email out to donors, we’ve gotten a good number of gifts.
What I liked best about this is the speed at which the whole project came together. Over the course of 3 days we brainstormed an idea, shot, edited, produced graphics, created music, encoded and distributed. It’s that kind of nimbleness that not only makes the job fun but shows to departments around campus that we’re able to quickly and professionally respond to hot issues and challenges.
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Where the magic happens: Part II
I’ve got more desk action to post this afternoon, this time from Kyle James of Wofford College and DotEduGuru. I’m looking forward to meeting him at EduWeb attending his presentation.
Kyle’s blog is a great source of marketing info especially as it relates to higher ed. He’s added notes to his photo in Flickr. Click on the photo for a guide as to what he’s got going on, including his bobbleheads.
Thanks, Kyle.
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