I am new to video - if that is the right term for movies shot with a
camera [all I have tried to date] or a camcorder.

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask. Please direct me if there
is a better.

1. What is the best format to save movies for viewing on the internet?
I have tried to work out what is commonest on YouTube but failed!

2. My camera has the option to output PAL or NTSC whatever they are -
the manual does not say! What's the difference?

3. The software I have is ULead VideoStudioo 10 and allows saving in
PAL DV, PAL DVD, PAL VCD, PAL SVCD, PAL MPEG1, PAL MPEG2, WMV, WMV
HDPAL, WMV POCKETPC, WMV SMARTPHONE. I have been using plain WMV -
both the MPEGs make bigger files. Is there another format I should
use? I have 2 end uses in mind. Movie clips on web pages and making
slideshows of stills to archive on CDs or DVDs.

4. What is the best way to write the XHTML or HTML? Neither permit
embed At the moment I just use an a href="movie.wmv" tag but that
is hit and miss depending on what the end user has installed. It tends
to throw MSwindows into spasms of 'oooh this contains active-x' etc.
Anyway to avoid that?

5. In answer to my own question it has suddenly occurred to me that I
could stick the whole lot into Flash. I have MX and a bit of knowledge
of ActionScript - would that be my best route for use on the web?

Many thanks for any help or advice.

wrote:
I am new to video - if that is the right term for movies shot with a
camera [all I have tried to date] or a camcorder.

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask. Please direct me if there
is a better.

1. What is the best format to save movies for viewing on the internet?
I have tried to work out what is commonest on YouTube but failed!

2. My camera has the option to output PAL or NTSC whatever they are -
the manual does not say! What's the difference?

3. The software I have is ULead VideoStudioo 10 and allows saving in
PAL DV, PAL DVD, PAL VCD, PAL SVCD, PAL MPEG1, PAL MPEG2, WMV, WMV
HDPAL, WMV POCKETPC, WMV SMARTPHONE. I have been using plain WMV -
both the MPEGs make bigger files. Is there another format I should
use? I have 2 end uses in mind. Movie clips on web pages and making
slideshows of stills to archive on CDs or DVDs.

4. What is the best way to write the XHTML or HTML? Neither permit
embed At the moment I just use an a href="movie.wmv" tag but that
is hit and miss depending on what the end user has installed. It tends
to throw MSwindows into spasms of 'oooh this contains active-x' etc.
Anyway to avoid that?

5. In answer to my own question it has suddenly occurred to me that I
could stick the whole lot into Flash. I have MX and a bit of knowledge
of ActionScript - would that be my best route for use on the web?

Many thanks for any help or advice.

Flash seams to be the current in thing and what has been done on you tube It
also stops theft much better But then most of you tube has alredy been
stolen.

Active x Is Necesery to bring up the player to er, play the clip. So that
will happen in any format if you want it to play as if in your window. If
they just download a file then click on play in my docs Then its not req.
Wmv is good as nearly every one has Media player so they can see it.
I played with the HTML some years back and had to serch the interweb to find
out how. But I forgot exactly what I did. But the page is still there with
the source code if you want to look.

http://www.trevbowden.dsl.pipex.com/...tuff/clip.html
--
Trev
You can always tell a Yorkshire man,
But you can't tell him much.

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:18:13 -0000, "Trev"
trevbowdenAT.dsl.pipex.COM wrote:
Thanks Trev and I'll give Flash a whirl. It's more labour intensive
than using the Ulead software but maybe as you suggest in the long run
better. With Ulead one still has to embed or whatever the output file
in xhtml. And thanks for the link - I'll take a look.

Duncan





Flash seams to be the current in thing and what has been done on you tube It
also stops theft much better But then most of you tube has alredy been
stolen.

Active x Is Necesery to bring up the player to er, play the clip. So that
will happen in any format if you want it to play as if in your window. If
they just download a file then click on play in my docs Then its not req.
Wmv is good as nearly every one has Media player so they can see it.
I played with the HTML some years back and had to serch the interweb to find
out how. But I forgot exactly what I did. But the page is still there with
the source code if you want to look.

http://www.trevbowden.dsl.pipex.com/...tuff/clip.html
--
Trev
You can always tell a Yorkshire man,
But you can't tell him much.

wrote in message
...
I am new to video - if that is the right term for movies shot with a
camera [all I have tried to date] or a camcorder.

....

1. What is the best format to save movies for viewing on the internet?
I have tried to work out what is commonest on YouTube but failed!

Erm - searching YouTube's help centre (or "center") for "best format" yields
a single result:
http://www.google.com/support/youtub...y?answer=55745

which describes exactly the answer you need.


2. My camera has the option to output PAL or NTSC whatever they are -
the manual does not say! What's the difference?

These are TV systems. GIYF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL

PAL is used in the UK. Your camera is probably producing a low-resolution,
30fps video file, and the output of PAL or NTSC is just what happens when
you connect it to a TV directly.


3. The software I have is ULead VideoStudioo 10 and allows saving in
PAL DV, PAL DVD, PAL VCD, PAL SVCD, PAL MPEG1, PAL MPEG2, WMV, WMV
HDPAL, WMV POCKETPC, WMV SMARTPHONE. I have been using plain WMV -
both the MPEGs make bigger files. Is there another format I should
use? I have 2 end uses in mind. Movie clips on web pages and making
slideshows of stills to archive on CDs or DVDs.

VCD-compliant MPEG-1 or DVD-compliant MPEG-2 for display on CD/DVD. If
you're really talking about archiving and not slideshow, just burn the
original stills as JPEGs or RAW onto a CDR/DVDR.


4. What is the best way to write the XHTML or HTML? Neither permit
embed At the moment I just use an a href="movie.wmv" tag but that
is hit and miss depending on what the end user has installed. It tends
to throw MSwindows into spasms of 'oooh this contains active-x' etc.
Anyway to avoid that?

http://www.youtube.com/sharing

G Hardy wrote:

wrote

1. What is the best format to save movies for viewing on the
internet? I have tried to work out what is commonest on YouTube but
failed!

Erm - searching YouTube's help centre (or "center") for "best format"
yields a single result:
http://www.google.com/support/youtub...y?answer=55745

which describes exactly the answer you need.

Not really, if what the OP wants to know is 1) what is the format used
for YouTube videos so that he can 2) use that same video format on his
own personal website (which has no relation to YouTube.)

* * *

The page is also a bit misleading. Although it suggests uploading the
material to YouTube in Divx or Xvid (AVI) format, those are not the
actual video codecs that YouTube will use a) for storing the video clips
and b) for offering them to the public.

What YouTube is based on is a video container format called Flash Video
(FLV). FLV is similar to AVI or QuickTime - i.e., it can contain video
and audio streams that use various codecs - but it does not allow the
use of DivX or XviD codecs. There is more information available about
Flash Video and the supported codecs he

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Video

Hence, if you upload a video clip to YouTube in DivX or XviD (AVI)
format, it won't actually be stored in that format on YouTube's servers.
Instead, YouTube will automatically reencode the clip using different
codecs and different encoding parameters - whatever _they_ deem is best.

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, the video codec that YouTube uses may
actually be Sorenson Spark H.263 and the audio - whatever format it
originally was - will become a low-bitrate mono MP3 stream:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Technical_notes

(Uploading video files to YouTube in a format that passes the automatic
reencoding system unscathed - without getting limited in quality or
bitrate or resolution - is the "holy grail" that some YouTube users have
been seeking. There apparently _has_ been a way to do this in the past -
there have been some random very high-resolution clips on YouTube that
were probably preencoded in FLV/H.263 format before uploading - but
apparently YouTube has added some checks and this trick does not work
any longer.)

* * *

But enough about YouTube. Hosting a Flash video clip on one's personal
web site - complete with a YouTube style player component - is fully
possible, if that is what the original poster wants. You just need the
right tools for that:

1) A software package, such as Sorenson Spark, that will transcode AVI
videos to the FLV format using the audio and video codecs that
Macromedia Flash Player supports (the above-mentioned "Flash Video"
Wikipedia article has some links to free tools as well, such as FFmpeg),

and

2) Some kind of Flash-based (SWF) player component that can be embedded
on web pages and that has a seek bar, volume control, etc. (Here's one:
http://flowplayer.org/.)

4. What is the best way to write the XHTML or HTML? Neither permit
embed At the moment I just use an a href="movie.wmv" tag but that
is hit and miss depending on what the end user has installed. It
tends to throw MSwindows into spasms of 'oooh this contains
active-x' etc. Anyway to avoid that?

http://www.youtube.com/sharing

Again, that information is all good and well if all that the OP wants is
_some other entity_ - in this case, YouTube - to host the video files
for him. But if he wants to host the video files himself - directly from
his personal website, using whatever resolution and bitrate he pleases,
but in the same style as YouTube does it - he needs to use tools such as
those mentioned above.

--
znark

"Jukka Aho" wrote in message
i.fi...
G Hardy wrote:

wrote

1. What is the best format to save movies for viewing on the
internet? I have tried to work out what is commonest on YouTube but
failed!

Erm - searching YouTube's help centre (or "center") for "best format"
yields a single result:
http://www.google.com/support/youtub...y?answer=55745

which describes exactly the answer you need.

Not really, if what the OP wants to know is 1) what is the format used for
YouTube videos so that he can 2) use that same video format on his own
personal website (which has no relation to YouTube.)

The OP doesn't know the difference between PAL and NTSC, so of the two ways
to interpret his references to YouTube, I chose the simplest.

Thanks G Hardy and Jukka Aho - and apologies for slow response but
been awol.

I will follow all your leads! But for the record I know even less
about youtube [just had to check how it was spelled!] than video,
about which I now know a bit more than when I originally posted -
which is a relief! I merely cited youtube as an example of what I am
after as regards the look on the page. I have no interest whatsoever
in uploading stuff there. I should have been clearer. I want the vid
on my own pages, and would prefer if the browser did not have to
launch a separate application to run it - as happens say if I simply
have an a href to a .wmv file.

I think for the time being I will use Flash [which is 'bundled' if
that is the right word - with Sorenson Spark] although at the moment I
am finding that the resulting .swf file is MUCH bigger than a wmv of
the same material produced with Ulead. Maybe I am doing
somethingwrong? Still; early days yet. Using ulead I am back to the
'embedding' problem or putting up with browser launching w media
player.

Thanks for the help!

wrote:

I think for the time being I will use Flash [which is 'bundled' if
that is the right word - with Sorenson Spark] although at the moment I
am finding that the resulting .swf file is MUCH bigger than a wmv of
the same material produced with Ulead. Maybe I am doing
somethingwrong?

I'm not familiar with the practical intricacies of producing a Flash
video file, but three things come into mind:

1) Are you sure you're actually converting the video to the
genuine "Flash Video" format (FLV)? (I believe it is also
possible to convert video frames into some kind of simple
"animation" format embedded within SWF files. There's a
difference between a mere Flash animation and a "real"
FLV video file.)

2) If you're using a video encoder that can actually produce
FLV files, you should be able to find video and audio
bitrate settings somewhere in its user interface. Try
tweaking those to lower values in order to make the
size of the file smaller.

3) The choice of codec matters. According to the Wikipedia
article on Flash Video there are various video codecs
which you could use inside an FLV file. Some of them are
optimized for screen capture type material and not at
all for "real" video.

--
znark