Hi everyone,

Before I start putting a lot of video content onto the web I wanted to ask you guys what format and size worked best for you.

I'm not sure I want to put it on YouTube or MySpace, but those are options.

As far as the size of the video goes, are any of you looking at videos on a very small screen (like a phone)?

If you're using a media player, which one, and what file formats can you play back?

Since this forum is my main target audience for these things, I'd like to hear from you.

Thanks for any thoughts you may have on this.

To me, YouTube beats out every other site. Although I use Google Video for very long videos, I use YouTube when I can. MySpace is just terrible (I'll rant at another time.) For videos, I like Quicktime, although I don't mind Windows Media Player (that is until I get my Mac in the next month or so.) Every file is fine with me, although that xvid stuff confuses me.

I'm now working on making videos for my students. I have asked them what they want and tried lots of options. This is what I've come up with. Our lab computers and many students' home computers have monitors that are 1024x768. That's very small but I'm going to optimize my lecture screencasts for that size. That results in videos that are 900x675 which will show full size on those small monitors inside a browser. I am also going to make iPod versions of all the lectures, too. Lots of my students have iPod Videos and really liked that idea. I'm using Quicktime with the H.264 compression algorithm. This results in very high quality with a reasonable size. Both Windows and Mac users can play them with Quicktime. Windows Media Player will not handle H.264. I'm using partial download from servers at the college. This allows me to have videos of any length and quality I want, although I'm trying to keep them shorter. It also allows students to easily download the videos.

Using sites like youtube results in a big loss in quality and resolution. If you want the sound and picture quality to be good I recommend against them. Youtube is fine for performance videos but for instructional ones I would like higher quality sound and pictures.

I'm planning on making some screencasts of some of the software I'm using for learning music this summer. I would love some feedback from this group, too.

-Eric

Just to make the record clear, Macs can play Windows Media Player content just fine with Quicktime and Flip4Mac (which is free):

http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm

-Eric

Thanks for the response, Eric.

So what size and frame rate are the iPod videos? Is it common practice to crop the images down (zoom them in) ?

Although I love youtube, this project seems a bit less fitting. I mean non stickist's probably wouldn't want to watch them, like a performance vid anyway. I like either .mov or wmv, with the high audio setting and decent vid quality. I have found that 320 x 240 pixel somehow looks okay even when I enlarge it. But maybe its how I export my vids that makes it work ok. As long as the vids are not streaming only It shouldn't be a big issue, unless windows has some unknown quirks. On a mac most videos I encounter work fine. I think that they should be on a normal webpage, and maybe have links pertaining to the lesson at hand. Seems like an awesome idea.

I'm happy with anything that will work on a mac. I don't do the small screen thing, I have a really unusual phone in that it's only for phone calls!

I love YouTube, but it's not right for everything. I hate to see great musicians from all walks of life getting insulted by dumb retards who indulge in gratuitous swearing and infantile comments. Seems to happen a lot.