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Posted by Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media] on 12/07/06 23:06
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:40:47 -0500, Jefferis NoSpamme
<jefferisp7@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hi Folks, Got a major question here, if anyone can help, it would be
>appreciated:
>
>Someone called today and wants to convert 20 hours of miniDV footage for the
>web each month,
>
>From what I know of Flash, once you get files of a certain size and length
>of time, the audio portion no longer syncs. His market will be on both Mac
>and Windows computers. Mostly the videos are talking head stuff, no fast
>motions. But I got concerned both with the potential file sizes and server
>options, since they initially were interested in non-streaming servers.
Your concerns are right but for the wrong reasons. On a web server
delivery, the user can't in general fast forward / rewind, or skip
backwards without having to download the content in real time.
If you're talking 20 hours of work a month, that should generate
enough revenue to pay for a streaming media server hardware and
license (DSS is free on all platforms, WMS comes with windows server
2003, Rea/Helix and Flash video servers are serious $$$)
>Here are the questions I had and was hoping someone could help me find the
>right answers:
>1. The videos are in 1 hour segments. Compressed for broadband, roughly how
>large are these miniDV files going to be? 100 megs???
It depends : <shrugs> full screen or 320x240 ? </shrugs>
>2. can they be served as downloadable/flash videos, or are they still going
>to need a streaming server [assuming there are only a max of 10 computers
>watching at any given time and you are not taxing the non-streaming server].
That assumption depends if the video URL is widely distributed, of
great interest or goes viral. You should speak to your client about
exactly the audience numbers before your server has a chance to go
titsup, taking all you websites offline with the load ;-)
And when you've got those estimates, make sure to negotiate additional
costs per GB of delivery so they know *you* aren't going to pay for
*their* promotional material's bandwidth - i.e. it's part of the cost
of hosting.
>3. Does anyone have any idea how long it would take to compress a 1 hour
>minidv for the web on a fast desktop? I currently use a G5 dual with Cleaner
>6.5 but would upgrade to a new computer...
It will take ... precisely 1 hour per tape.
Your bottleneck is transfer rather than compression on modern
machines. AFAIK MiniDV tapes aren't designed to be "read" back faster
than that, at least not when using a DV cam connected over firewire.
Perhaps somebody here knows a deck to transfer the video faster than
realtime.
The actual compression is trivial if you're not editing but doing
straight transfer - there may be a minute or so lag while compression
buffers the initial input (looks-ahead). Talking head stuff takes no
effort to compress (because there's very little movement, and little
dynamic range on the audio)
HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs
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