10 second club (April )

[Paul Forwood]

Hi

 

This file is a heavily compressed version of my entry to the April Competition at 10secondclub.com. I missed the deadline due to last minute compression problems. I was taking a 640x320 avi file, (13+ Mb), and attempting to get a 320x240 MPEG-1 file which fell between 1.5Mb and 1.8Mb. In the end I failed.

 

The file shown here has been compressed as follows:

640x480 to 200x180pixels compressed with Sorenson3 at 20%.

Audio compressed to 8bit mono using MACE 6:1

 

The results are not good so I am hoping that one of you wizards out there will be able to offer some advice. What is the best way of creating an MPEG-1 at 320x240 with decent sound and a legible video?

 

Any advice would be very welcome.

Thanks.

 

Paul Forwood

[Aminator]

I think you can find help with this on the 10-second club forums, but here's my advice:

 

1. Render your animation frames to targa files

2. Use whatever editor/compositor you like to assemble to an uncompressed AVI (with sound)

3. Use the free TMPGenc to convert the AVI to MPEG-1. Bypass the Wizard and configure settings directly. To get 1.5MB for 10 seconds, do the math - you need a bit rate of 1500*8/10 kbps = 1200 kpbs. Go to the Video tab and set the proper size (320x240), frame rate (probably 30), rate mode (2-pass VBR), and click the rate mode "Setting" button to set the bit rate. Try average=900 and max=1200.

[Paul Forwood]

Thanks for the suggestions, Jack. I will try them and see what the results are like.