Video export sizing constraints?

[Rob in VA]

I'm trying to streamline my time spent with editing files in order to post them online. I use vimeo plus and it has an upload limit of 1024 megs. Most of my produced files are larger than that and I do another round of compression using handbrake. Unfortunately this process takes quite long. To export the video from dashware it takes around 30-45 minutes (my desktop is pretty healthy and has a ton of memory) and then to post-process using handbrake and a constraint of <= 1000 megs, another hour or so.

I'm wondering if anyone has figured out some efficiencies for doing this? Does anyone have dashware video presets for vimeo?

Video quality is pretty important to me.

An example of my latest video - http://vimeo.com/13284806

[Rolf]

Hi Rob,

Which DashWare video profile are you using? Have you tried High Def Medium or Low quality? Those should produce smaller files than the High Quality option.

In general you would want to compress once instead of twice. Each time you compress there will be some quality loss. Not to mention the extra time it takes.

The encoding bit rate has the biggest effect on output file size. You can pop up the Video Profile Editor (under the File menu) and clone an existing video profile, such as the High quality one. Then you can pop up the Video Encoder settings to tweak the bit rate. This is the main thing we change going from High to Medium to Low. You can play with it until you find a setting that gives you a small enough file with a good enough quality.

If you upload a lot of videos, it may be worth paying for the premium Vimeo account. I think it was $50 a year and you can then upload 5 Gigs a week and supposedly they will be better quality too.

Thanks,
Rolf

[Rob in VA]

Thanks for the info. I am using a plus account and the limit is 1024 per upload. Is there a video preset setting for max size? That would be pretty convenient instead of trail and error.

[Rolf]

Oh, I just got my plus account recently. I forgot there was a 1GB per file restriction.

Hmm... By default we use a Variable Bit Rate, which means it will go up and down a little depending on how much action is in the scene. So then it's impossible to tell how big the resulting file is going to be before it's done.

If you choose Constant Bit Rate then in theory you can do some math to figure out what to set it to.

Mark is on vacation and he is our codec expert... but note that changing some of these options can affect your compatibility with players like QuickTime and sites like Vimeo or YouTube.

OK, so let's see... if you clone our High Quality profile and set it to use a constant bit rate, that would be 8000 kilobits per second for video and 160 kilobits per second for audio, which works out to about 60 megabytes per minute, rounding up.

So then 10 minutes of video would be 600 megs.

To go the other way, if you have a 10 minute video that you want to make 950 megs (to leave some room for error), then you can use up to 95 megs per minute. That works out to 12970 kilobits per second so you can set that as the constant bitrate. Make sense?

Google can do these conversions for you:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=95+megabytes+per+minute+to+kilobits+per+second&aq=f&aqi=h1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Thanks,
Rolf