[Bf-webcontent] Reply to codec question

[Glen Moyes]

When I started the project I wanted to provide videos in a format that 
would offer the smallest file size without sacrificing quality too badly 
as to hinder readability of the interface. That is why the tutorials are 
800x600, because any lower than that and the buttons are not readable. 
Both Greybeard and I use an MPEG4 codec of some sort (I use DivX, I 
believe he uses Microsoft MPEG4). The compression rate is the same 
story. I set it as low as it could go until the compression artifacts 
started to interfere with the interfaces readability. Since there is 
more that you HAVE to see on the screen compared to a live-action video, 
that is why the quality is a bit higher and the frame size is large.

Soon I'll be making tutorials that can be put on a DVD. They will 
naturally be at a smaller size and I'll add captions and occasionally 
zoom in on important parts so that it will be readable on a television 
set. Because of the zoom-ins that will allow the actual frame size to be 
smaller for Internet download, and if I start using transcode the files 
will also compress better.

Everyone that make these tutorials tries to make them as small as 
possible, but people always want them smaller for what ever reason. We 
could offer more than one format for download but the problem with 
offering video files in different formats is that it requires more space 
on our mirror's servers and could split up the number of seeds on 
BitTorrent. In the near future we will try and put these videos on a 
disc that you can buy and have mailed to you. We understand that we 
can't please everyone with the right file size or codec but we try and 
hit the majority. As always the authors of these tutorials try their 
best to make sure they are as small and as OS friendly as possible.

Thanks,

- Glen

>Hi Steve,
>
>I've forwarded your message to our website content group; the 
>maintainer of the video section will read this as well. I'll leave it 
>up to him to answer.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Bart
>
>---
>
>Hi,
>
>I'm excited about the new Video Tutorial secton on the website. But I 
>was scared off downloading when I noticed that the video's are in AVI 
>format. My broadband cap is 200Mb per month, so I'm not too keen to eat 
>up 50Mb with just 1 clip. Could you please offer smaller versions of 
>these files.
>As part of my work, I'm occasionally required to email video clips to 
>clients for approval. Out of all the streaming     and downloadable 
>media formats I have come across, the Windows Media format  with a 
>Medium Compression setting offers the most reasonable quality for file 
>size ratio. It also seems to be the most user friendly for the 
>recipient.
>There are free WMV players available for Mac and Linux too.
>Also worth a serious look are the Bink and Smacker formats from RAD 
>Game Tools.  Bink has a "better than DVD non-mpeg" variable compression 
>codec that I think is deserving of promotion. You can download the free 
>Bink Tools from here
>http://www.radgametools.com/default.htm
>which include an encoder that will also create self executing video 
>files for just an extra 100Kb in size.
>
>Thanks for a great website,
>
>~ Steve
>
>  
>