Posting demo reels to the web

3DRyan

Hey all, just had a curiosity.

I've been struggling to get my demo reel put up online while having the quality actually be decent. I was curious as to how everybody here goes about it. Just stuff like compression format, what websites are good to post them on (I tried youtube and even though I followed their instructions to a "t", my vids still end up looking like shit.)

The main issue I'm having is quality v.s. file size. I've found that h.264 gives me the best quality for having a small file size, but it's still too big for a lot of websites. I have a weebly account, but it always shrinks down the video size, and also wants a smaller file size than what I can manage.

A glimpse into your workflow or links to tuts, etc. would be greatly appreciated. It's an issue I've seemed to have had for years.

Thanks in advance.

Cyrael

You've got the right codec, H.264 is best for web compression, and depending upon the length of your reel it should keep it within 10 mb, which should be fine for most websites, if you want higher quality you could post it to Vimeo, which hosts HD video and is a great site for hosting demo reels. The biggest problem I've noticed with H.264 is color degradation, it's a fine line between higher quality and lowest size.

Depending upon whether you have a site or not, sometimes it's best to host it right there on your own website.

aesir

both vimeo and youtube support HD video although I greatly prefer vimeo.

I don't understand your problem with websites have a file size limit. Where are you trying to put this video? You should host it yourself and give people a link to view/download it.

And yes, H264 is the best option for compression for quicktime. Just lower the quality and video size until you get the file size you need.

Illusions

Even if you don't go with Vimeo their compression guidelines could be useful. Also if your demo reel is mainly art with just some background music, you can probably drop the bit rate on the audio to something like 128 kbps without any issues.

Elyaradine

At our film school where they do short films usually in the region of 3-15 minutes and mainly work on Final Cut, we were told that for web these were good settings:

h.264, keyframe every 10 x framerate (i.e. every 10 seconds), with bitrate set to a multiple of 300kbps, ranging between 300-1200kbps depending on the desired filesize and video quality. We also mainly use Quicktime (.mov) because it scrubs quite nicely.

Also, a tip is to pick a visually complex second of footage (lots of colour and brightness contrast), and to render out a bunch of tests on just that piece. That way you can compare the quality of the different tests, and each render is pretty close to instantaneous so you need not sit around waiting for the results.

I don't know if demo reels would be much different to short film settings (short films being generally much longer than demo reels, so maybe they use lower compression settings to compensate?), but I hope that helps.

Lee3dee

Vimeo is nice because you can hide other links so that they don't watch other videos on your website. Where as youtube the clip ends and it shows other videos like your reel.

EarthQuake

Unless you're an animator, demo reels are pointless, and more importantly, annoying as hell. Its better to have nice, highres screenshots than a demo reel.

Mark Dygert

EarthQuake wrote: »

Unless you're an animator, demo reels are pointless, and more importantly, annoying as hell. Its better to have nice, highres screenshots than a demo reel.

This.

Assuming your an animator I lean heavily toward hosting the files yourself then, vimeo, then youtube.

3DRyan

Thanks everyone! Not sure if I'm gonna do one now, if they aren't required for environment artists (what I am). I think a new thread is in order...