Posting demo reels to the web
polycounter lvl 8
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.
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.
Replies
Depending upon whether you have a site or not, sometimes it's best to host it right there on your own website.
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.
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.
Assuming your an animator I lean heavily toward hosting the files yourself then, vimeo, then youtube.