ONAN - Dev's Teaser

Comment by Shyam Madhavan Sarada on August 19, 2008 at 3:14am

And ladies and gentlemen, that's the whole lot of first teasers :-)

Comment by videowilliams on August 19, 2008 at 6:55am

That's one cool customer... man of mystery... what power lurks behind those shades?

Well, I for one am totally jazzed to see this movie. Whatever independent films I make in future, I want you to do the teasers! And for Marian to score them.

Are you going to put them up on YouTube too? I would love to make an Onan Teaser Playlist and promote it, along with the other Wannabes there.

Comment by Shyam Madhavan Sarada on August 19, 2008 at 10:51am

Let's do the Yootoob then! Give me a day.

And Dave, thanks for endorsement. I come as a package - shoot, edit, finish. Oh, and I get to do the posters. And drive the car ;-)

Comment by Shyam Madhavan Sarada on August 19, 2008 at 11:49am

Just tested it - I'll have to re-encode the videos. Everything's going totally out of sync on there! Ahhhlllbeebach.

Comment by videowilliams on August 19, 2008 at 12:39pm

Yes, it seems to push the sound about half a second behind the pictures in the .flv files it makes. I've noticed that too. Will be most interested in hearing what your encoding formula is once you've nailed it.

Comment by Shyam Madhavan Sarada on August 20, 2008 at 2:19pm

I used to do Quicktime files for Yootoob uploads. I've experimented with lots of 'expert' settings I found on the www and have concluded that that there is no 'one setting that fits all types' of video. It is a trade-off between video fidelity, playback smoothness, picture sharpness and audio sync - and you have to make the compromises depending on the kind of content.

I tested with Jenny's Teaser and had excellent results with something I did - only to see that the the last shot that dollies in just doesn't make it. The motion was too much for consistent results. But yes, I do have a few 'expert' settings of my own now, which I can share with you (with wmv files) :-)

Let me see - I'll try and write an article about it one of these days.

Comment by Shyam Madhavan Sarada on August 20, 2008 at 2:22pm

Oh and the quality you get on Wannabe Studios is just excellent for online video, I just have to say it.

That's why I prefer to 'release' stuff here. Too bad you can't embed files there. Perhaps it will be possible when interoperability of the Opensocial kind becomes a de facto standard. Let's wait and see.

Comment by videowilliams on August 21, 2008 at 5:55am

Thank you, Herr Direktor, for that excellent explanation on how to optimise video quality for the net. I remember making those trade-offs on Aussie Short Films when producing clips for 250kbps or less, usually erring toward the smoothest motion option. For YouTube/Wannabe, however, I simply make an 1128 kbps wmv streaming file (the maximum possible size) and let the re-compression programme at the other end do its thing. Once sent a big fat .avi file up instead, but the quality ended up about the same.

Our erstwhile member Eric Bumpus drove himself nuts over several weeks attempting to force a good quality picture out of YouTube- he tried every combination imaginable- but never arrived at something that made him very happy. I think filmmakers get hung up on picture quality too much sometimes: if your message is compelling, people won't sit there counting pixels. It is frustrating, however, to see the occasional clip that just looks dazzling, and wonder "how on earth did User X achieve that?" (Webcam pictures seem to come up unusually clear.)

In any case, I do look forward to your article explaining the ins and outs: I'm sure a "How To" guide would get a lot of hits.

Comment by Shyam Madhavan Sarada on August 21, 2008 at 2:55pm

I remember Eric's experiments - I had offered to help with his research and had begun trying out different things with a certain 'manifesto'... until it ceased to interest me. More the content than anything else, I must admit. I never concluded that 'research' of mine :-)

For Wannabe, I make a 640 x 480 (or 640 x 360 - which corresponds to half 720p in my case - for 16:9) wmv file with VBR video, quality set at 93%. As for sound settings, I do CBR (don't remember exact number) at 44Khz, stereo. And as most of my content is captured 24fps, I render them likewise. Typically speaking, I get a file size of around 8-9 mb for a teaser like this one, running 30 sec. The rest I leave to the re-compression. I feel the results are of pretty good quality. What do you think?

I don't know how much the configuration of the computer affects the playback of the flash video on Wannabe, but on mine I can say the quality is really very good once the buffering is over. (The machine I use has an Intel Core2-duo processor with 2 Gb of RAM. I also have a graphics accelerator card, a 1Tb RAID and some 1Tb of HDD space)

I'll start off on the How-to soon!

Comment by videowilliams on August 22, 2008 at 4:32pm

Wow, Shyam: I'm embarrassed to say you seem to know more than I do!

Yes, these Wannabe clips have excellent image quality- and I'm sure you've got these pictures looking as good as they possibly can- but the frame rate does annoy me. What is it: 10 frames per second or so? I'm a smooth-motion guy myself, who would be happy to sacrifice clarity for a nice smooth 24 or 25 fps. To me, the magic of "motion pictures" is that they move- it's all an optical illusion after all- so to me the films on .ning feel kinda jerky.

Still, we cannot be perfectionists on the net. If we want to see our pictures at their best, we need to watch them on a big screen. Last night, I saw a movie shot in north-west Pakistan- "Son Of A Lion"- which had actually been filmed on MiniDV, but had been tweaked in post-production to look good on the cinema screen. The director's father said it took them hundreds of hours, but they did it. It looked great at my local theatre: the landscapes truly reminded me of Australia's outback.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing "Onan" on the big screen too. It sounds as if you're close to having it finished!

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