FLV Clip Questions

[GPallan]

We’re processing FLV clips for our affiliate program and we're not sure if we should encode them in 320x240 or some other larger size. What size do affiliates prefer for the actual FLV and the accompanying JPG?

And do affiliates have an issue if there's a logo on the vid?

Thanks!

Allan

[dzinerbear]

And do affiliates have an issue if there's a logo on the vid?

Too bad if they do. I wouldn't be giving away my videos without watermarks. Besides, the tube sites will just go ahead and add their logos to it. :)

Michael

[basschick]

i prefer the videos a little bigger - at least 400x300 or a pinch bigger - and i prefer them as WMV or quicktime so if they're too long, i can edit them easily. a watermark is fine as long as it's reasonable - it doesn't make sense to give away unwatermarked promo content.

[GPallan]

thanks guys! do the tube sites remove the intro at the begining of the vid? or should i not include the intro at all? and just leave a simple logo at the bottom right hand of the vid

here is a sample intro: http://www.dixter.com/sd_data/videos/58/trailer.wmv

allan

[abostonboy]

The intro is usually fine as most tube sites can pick the pic from the video that they want from the video. If you are using embedded videos for bloggers then the pic will be what the surfer sees at first. 320 x 240 is way too small. I think we are encoding our flvs at 600 by something. (may even go higher soon) Many tube sites allow full screen. Look at some of the popular imports to find out what you want for thumb sizes. Nubiles and Smart XML are popular with affiliates.

[rawTOP]

I stretch things to fit 640 x whatever. It works provided the bitrate is good. So I'm more sensitive to bitrate than native size.

Do make sure the meta data is in the front of the file so the status bar works properly with flv players. The command line tool flvtool2 will move it to the front of the file for you if it's not right (the syntax is flvtool2 -U filename.flv).

[GPallan]

thanks rawtop! i'm not sure if i understand what you're saying about the meta data. is that something i have to worry about as a sponsor? after all, all i'm doing is encoding the flv's and supplying them to my affiliates. shouldn't they take care of those details? i'm not sure how to even do what you explained

allan


I stretch things to fit 640 x whatever. It works provided the bitrate is good. So I'm more sensitive to bitrate than native size.

Do make sure the meta data is in the front of the file so the status bar works properly with flv players. The command line tool flvtool2 will move it to the front of the file for you if it's not right (the syntax is flvtool2 -U filename.flv).

[rawTOP]

thanks rawtop! i'm not sure if i understand what you're saying about the meta data. is that something i have to worry about as a sponsor? after all, all i'm doing is encoding the flv's and supplying them to my affiliates. shouldn't they take care of those details? i'm not sure how to even do what you explained

To put it simply, when a player starts playing a file it's typically using progressive download which means the video starts playing before the file is completely downloaded. One of the challenges from the player's perspective is to properly render the location in the video on the slider bar. While the browser typically gets the file size from the web server, it doesn't pass that information onto the Flash player, so the player gets the video, but doesn't know how long the video is, which means it can't render the current location in the video on the slider bar until the video has fully loaded. That reduces the functionality from the user's perspective. So, what's done is to embed meta data into the file. The problem is that many video encoders put the meta data at the end of the file, so it doesn't help the player - it still needs to fully load the file to know the runtime. If that meta data is at the front of the file then the player knows the length of the video before it starts playing the video and it can render the location in the video on the slider bar correctly from the first second. Hence, correcting the location of the meta data is an important step in usability and is something the sponsor should worry about. If you don't worry about it, then it puts more work on the affiliate and we tend to put the sponsors we know are difficult to work with on the bottom of our list unless your site sells well or we're particularly fond of you... :)

[Seth]

320x240 is way too small. When promoting other sites, the minimum width I typically use is 450. Lately I've been using 600 x whatever.

[GPallan]

Do make sure the meta data is in the front of the file so the status bar works properly with flv players. The command line tool flvtool2 will move it to the front of the file for you if it's not right (the syntax is flvtool2 -U filename.flv).

can someone explaine to me how to do this? i edit using Vegas and encode using SorensonS

thanks!