Online Demo Reels?

[Mikko Wilson]

So as the world gets more connected, a bunch of us have our reels online, with more beeing posted every day.

 

Now, regardless of content and length, etc.. (the usual topics..)

What is the best format to use? What do demo reel watchers prefer?

 

I see 4 basic choices: Divix, Quick Time, Real Media and Windows Media.

 

Each has it's goods and bads of course. Divix is small but not so comon, QT is big but used more profesionally, Real is the old timer web format and is leader in mobile devices, and Windows Media has best size/quatlity ratio.

 

So what format to use?

 

And along those lines..

How big should they be? Is it worth having to wait a little longer for better content? or is it key to get it out there first, then worry about size?

 

- Mikko Wilson

[TJ Williams]

This is quite a mystery... I'm also redoing my web site and am going to two AVI and two Quick Time choices with a real time mini window working in Flash to preview what can be downloaded. Current streaming has been too expensive to host for me. Maybe there is somthing new here? I hope someone knowledgeable reads this and

can give us some advice.

 

TJ

[Jason Williams]

I try and always use Windows Media Video, for a couple of reasons, firstly, the software is free, and I find it produces some nice video, and you can place multiple bitrate targets in one file, so you can stream to 56k, 512k and 1mb connections so whatever the speed, there's one to match. The other handy thing I find is that you can embed the video on a webpage, like you can with Quicktime.

 

The other I would use is Quicktime, I would imagine that using WMV & QT you can target both audiences on the Windows and Mac platforms, I have a friend with a Mac and he commonly tells me he can't view my clips as his Mac won't support WMV. I'm not too clued up on QT, just enough to make a clip workable on my site.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Jason :)

[PaulEdwards]

I got fed up with producing showreels which were out of date as soon as you'd made them and so recently decided to go the 'on-line' route.

 

I opted for Quicktime 6 ie. the MP4 format, which seems to play OK on both PC and Mac. The compression still leaves you with about 3.5 Mb / min for a reasonable size frame.

 

I decided to break my reel up into clips of between 30 secs and a couple of minutes with a preview page for each, with info. on the length of clip and the download size. Hopefully this lets people go for the clip(s) they want to see and also they can estimate how long the download will take and stops them getting too frustrated waiting.

 

The site is at www.steadicam-op.com

 

Regards

 

Paul

[Thomas English]

mp4 on quicktime only works if peolpe have qt6 ... the codecs cool

 

the best qt codec is sorenson 3 ... or better sortenson 3 pro.,.. they are old but wicked codecs! i feel they look better tham mpg4 ... all to do with the way mpg4 is nt designed for net streaming techie etc etc etc

 

it ll work on any old quik time player

 

"apparently" there s a version on sorenson3 compressor available on the illegal pier to pier things.... i recomend u dont download it and u dont set your clock back to 1999 (as it expires in 2000) and u dont compress it..

 

what u should do is spend thousands of dollars u would otherwise spend on a tiny little bracket ... then u should quite steadicam work and get a job in a bank for the rest of your life.

[Mikko Wilson]

Ok, well the basic consesus seems clear.

Windows Media and QT. (not even a mention of other options so far - though does someone use Real or Divix?)

 

But how big should they be? How long is too long to wait for a download to watch a reel? - I like the idea of splitting them up.

 

I agree that for some reason the best compression is out of Win Movie Maker (go Figure)

 

What's the best wey to compress QT? and how small to make it? (Mine allways end up huge files with itty bitty resolution!)

 

- Mikko