Transcoding, Conforming and Distribution... It all sounds like a Pride parade gone horribly awry. In an earlier post, I gushed about how intuitive FinalCutPro is. Now that I've spent the last 3 weeks trying to create polished videos, I've experienced the steep learning curve of FCP's many gotcha's, obscure short-cuts, and issues with round-tripping between related Pro-Tools. OUCH!!!
We also upgraded from the crappy sound on the video camera to some super-slick Sennheiser EW100 wireless mics. The sound is gorgeous, but ooof, the price was out of this world. Along with that, we bought another external hard-drive- the LaCie d2 quadra. I got some bad advice about RAIDing the drives, and some dropped-frame warnings from FinalCutPro about my drive not being fast enough. (!!) Sheesh!! The drives exceed the spec requirements, but still I have issues... how much does one have to spend?
Nevertheless, there is progress. While initially declining a request to build a website for the RV-park here, we stayed long enough (and watched enough Lynda.com tutorials by Larry Jordan) to feel that a project like that would be fun, profitable, and allow us to ground our new-founded knowledge, and put it all to practical purposes.
I watched with growing alarm as Kate created site design after site design, but stayed mainly in Illustrator. I cautioned about how long getting it all to work in multiple browsers would be, and how she should get started on that. I knew, because years ago, I learned these hard lessons myself! I didn't worry too much after she demonstrated it working in FireFox.
Still, every time I turned around, there was a new and much improved version of the website- all dolled up in Illustrator! The clients kept looking at each iteration, and giving it a thumbs up, and then as soon as they turned around, Kate was improving it yet again. Finally, I put my foot down yesterday, and gave her a genuine project manager talk about deadlines, and where gold-plating like this belonged in the schedule. Suffice to say that the day Kate moved into DreamWeaver full-time was her longest day yet. Coincidentally, it was also the first time she previewed her work in Internet Explorer, where page elements were strewn wildly across and down the page. I'm not sure what time she finally went to bed.
For my part, I've moved from 1 video for the site to 3, (yes, I'm gold-plating too!), but my rough edits are all in order. I am giving myself only the rest of today to get the sound mixes done, and then everything will be encoded for the Web. I spent several days last week figuring out the optimal encoding for uploading and getting videos to stream decently. What I settled on, for anyone who cares, for getting from high-def AVC to QuickTime for Flash conversion (at light file sizes and fast streaming times) follows:
* Size = 640x360 with 16:9 aspect ratio preserved
* CODEC = h.264
* Data rate: 2.000 (Mbps)
* Audio = AAC audio, 48kHz. Render settings = Best. Target bit rate = 128+. Mono or stereo depending on mic used to record.
* Key frame interval = 10 K.F
* Fast Start: On
* Frame rate: Current
* Frame Controls: Off
* Multi-pass: On
* Frame reorder: On
I had quality issues until I got aggressively low with the key-frame intervals. I probably had 20 versions of the first video on my desktop before I started getting close, and then I found some great advice in the Learning Centre at Blip.tv that should have saved me loads of time had I realized it was there.
We will be leaving here in the next couple of days, assuming Kate gets her beautiful designs wrestled into DreamWeaver successfully.
In the meantime- we will be locked in front of our computers from dawn to ...midnight each day, wrapping this up- but with 2 hours reserved each and every day for the beach here. Well, what did you think? You wouldn't want us to suffer, now would you?
