Budget Your Bits for the Best Quality Video
March 1, 2010 by John38
Aside from the codec and frame size, the most important factor in determining the quality of the finished product when rendering video is bitrate.
The term bitrate refers to the number of bits per second used to encode a given clip. Just as the quality of a still image is measured in resolution, the quality of a video file is measured by the bitrate.
For video destined for the web, you don’t want to encode with the bitrate set too high for several reasons:
1. You will make your viewers wait unnecessarily long before they can start viewing your video.
2. Higher bitrate videos put an extra strain on your server and will cost you more money in extra bandwidth.
3. Older computers will have a hard time decoding very high bitrate codecs in real time, leading to dropped frames and jerky appearing motion.
4. Uploading will be slower.
5. You’ll use up unnecessary room on your server and local drives.
On the other hand, you don’t want to encode video with bitrate too low either otherwise the visual quality will suffer – there will be pixelization and blockiness, especially in any areas with motion.
Let’s Get Progressive
“Progressive download” means, as soon as your viewers click to view a particular video, the video starts downloading to a hidden cache file on the users machine.
As soon as enough of the video has downloaded to provide the user with an uninterrupted viewing experience, the video begins playing (as long as it’s set to: autoplay = “true”).
With a video that is encoded at a lower bitrate than the total bandwidth of the connection between the video server and the viewer, the video will start playing within a second or two, and continue without stopping. This is obviously the goal to aspire to for most purposes.
Fortunately, choosing the best bitrate to achieve this goal while retaining visual fidelity is no longer just a matter of luck.
The Bitrate Budget Calculator is just one more great tool in the spectacular new encoder for mac os x from DV-Kitchen.com|dv-kitchen.com
I think it would be a good Idea to make a video making the same panel only with aluminum and longer lasting material. Maybe even using parts of original vid for part comarison. Instead of plexiglass, what do you about using actual glass?
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The device may be defective. Before calling tech support, make sure all Windows Updates are installed and there's no security policy restricting access to the firewire and/or usb ports.
where can we find the rest of Bob Tabor’s videos? he’s an awesome teacher but I don’t want to pay for the tutorials on his website :S
Well, my experience with Excel Saga tells me that an excellent translation is a complete necessity to enjoy it. I had seen two versions, first an old SAHA fansub (a complete eyesore in terms of visual quality, but splendid translation job), and an english DVD version which, while having an almost perfect picture, butchered the texts. I couldn't stomach even 5 episodes of it.
I completely agree that sometimes it seems that technology is being thrown into the education world. Technical support is becoming overwhelmed with the large amount of computers and technology in schools these days, especially with all the problems that older computers have. I think that you're way of thinking for a new paradigm sounds excellent…we just need to take that step.
If we are able to find something that won't shut down on you, cost less money, last longer, it should be the answer to all our problems.
Once technology for computers takes this step I believe and agree with you that there will be less dependence on the technical support and more on the computer (server) itself.
Check out the high-end DELL XPS series gaming computers. They're a little pricey, but the top-end ones are really good. (and you get Dell customer / technical support)
Also – AlienWare is a custom gaming computer company that makes sick systems. (also a little expensive)
If you do a google search for "Custom Gaming PC" you should get some good websites.