Compressing animations for web uploading

[chow choppe]

hi everyone

 

i am trying to put some animation samples onto my website but i dont have much knowledge about web design and compression formats that will fit in as best for this purpose

What i know is that i have .mov animations rendered from after effects and now i will open these animations in after effects and try to decrease the size and quality/format of these so that they are good to be uploaded on web and at the same time wont be much trouble for the viewer.

 

can u please tell me how to go about it. i want to edit /compress them thru AE becaue i have to crop some parts, add watermarks and text etc. and then decrease the size which is right now DVD size and then render it out as animations that look good on web and are of small size and not a pain while viewing.

 

Do u suggest any other way to do this?

 

i looked on this forum and found a thread which says either to use SUper or adobe media encoder but i would prefer After effects as i have to do editing in the clips

 

Thanks

[SandmanNinja]

I know Adobe CS4 has a new Media Encoder that can easily output your animation as a .FLV, which I believe streams from your website.

 

I'm not sure about doing it directly within Adobe After Effects, but since the CS4 is a Suite of Apps designed to work together, I wonder if Adobe put that option in the Media Encoder thinking people would use that primarily for it?

[tayrona]

We use a RIVA encoder (google it), it is free and easy to use.

[chow choppe]

does Riva encoder allow for adding watermark, removing part of animation etc?

 

And is Adobe media encoder simple to learn and not a complicated software in itself?

 

thanks

[Noise]

The only problem with Riva is that it doesn't like movie dimensions which are different to the drop down list.

[Nic H]

use vimeo and embed, it will stream faster at better quality than your hosting im better.

[tayrona]

does Riva encoder allow for adding watermark, removing part of animation etc?

 

And is Adobe media encoder simple to learn and not a complicated software in itself?

 

thanks

 

Is just an encoder you can not edit nothing there.. just convert to FLV.. and it comes with a FLV player too.

 

The only problem with Riva is that it doesn't like movie dimensions which are different to the drop down list.

 

You can use other dimensions, you can do it clicking inside the box and edit the numbers of course try to keep proportions...

[anton]

From my experience, using h.264 as codec is the best option for high quality web streaming videos. The only issue is that if you try to use it straight from AE or premiere it won't compress properly. The way to go is export your movie as a .mov but uncompressed then using QuickTime Pro, export it for web using h.264.

 

I have no idea why it doesn't work from AE or Premiere...

[AndyC]

I always use an FLV file in a flash movie player. I use CS4 Media player to optimize the FLV file. A good flash movie player will intelligently test your viewers connection and calculate rates etc before starting the stream. Go to flashden.net and buy a good player for 20 dollars. H264 is widely accepted and is very efficient.

[Jimy]

I've tried both Quicktime and FLV and FLV for the web seems better. Quicktime is currently not very well supported on the web; it just hasn't moved on. FLV is now the standard and has great compression vs quality.

 

Nic's right in that websites like Vimeo are great for uploading and they do it for you. You can then embed in whatever you want including your blog etc, and they have higher hits than a personal site often. But you don't get total control and sometimes they embed adverts and stuff.

[tayrona]

After trying several FLV converters, I found this one.. is working very good.

 

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/downloads/download-free-video-to-flash-converter.htm