I am into web site design and would like to know which is best on a web
page. would it be AVI or MPEG?  I have installed AVI Creator and TMPGEnc2.
Thank you for your opinions.

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MontanaSteve <swh### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> I am into web site design and would like to know which is best on a web
> page. would it be AVI or MPEG?  I have installed AVI Creator and TMPGEnc2.
> Thank you for your opinions.

  AVI is not a video compression format. It's a multimedia container
format which basically doesn't care what is stored inside it. In fact,
you can perfectly put a MPEG-1 video stream inside an AVI.

  From video compressing formats, MPEG is probably the only choice
(regardless of whether you put it inside an AVI or not). Whether
it's MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 is your choice.
  The first one is the most widely supported and can be distributed
in its own file format, but has the worst quality/size ratio.
MPEG-4 is nowadays the most popular format because of its quality/size
ratio. Its problem is that there are many different subformats based
on MPEG-4, such as divx, xvid, asf, etc etc.
  Going for xvid or divx should be a rather safe choice.

  If you want to encode eg xvid avis, you just have to install the
xvid codec in your system and then use a program like VirtualDub
to create the avi.

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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Warp wrote:

> MontanaSteve <swh### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> 
>>I am into web site design and would like to know which is best on a web
>>page. would it be AVI or MPEG?  I have installed AVI Creator and TMPGEnc2.
>>Thank you for your opinions.
> 
> 
>   AVI is not a video compression format. It's a multimedia container
> format which basically doesn't care what is stored inside it. In fact,
> you can perfectly put a MPEG-1 video stream inside an AVI.
> 
>   From video compressing formats, MPEG is probably the only choice
> (regardless of whether you put it inside an AVI or not). Whether
> it's MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 is your choice.
>   The first one is the most widely supported and can be distributed
> in its own file format, but has the worst quality/size ratio.
> MPEG-4 is nowadays the most popular format because of its quality/size
> ratio. Its problem is that there are many different subformats based
> on MPEG-4, such as divx, xvid, asf, etc etc.
>   Going for xvid or divx should be a rather safe choice.
> 
>   If you want to encode eg xvid avis, you just have to install the
> xvid codec in your system and then use a program like VirtualDub
> to create the avi.
> 
I've been away from making POV animations for several years, and this 
leads to a few questions:

Does the IIRC take divx movies?  or is it all MPG1?

What (free) encoders are available?  I'm sure there's new ones I haven't 
heard of.

Thanks!

Tom A.

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4216d3f5@news.povray.org...
>  Going for xvid or divx should be a rather safe choice.


divx will greatly restrict your viewers' pool.  even among animation 
professionals.

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Greg M. Johnson <gregj;-)565### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> divx will greatly restrict your viewers' pool.  even among animation 
> professionals. 

  Why? I can watch divx videos even in this sparc/solaris machine.
Is there some commonly used system where it doesn't work?

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

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On 9 Mar 2005 04:44:55 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > divx will greatly restrict your viewers' pool.  even among animation 
> > professionals. 
>
> Why? I can watch divx videos even in this sparc/solaris machine.
> Is there some commonly used system where it doesn't work?

There is plenty of Windows installs in companies with disabled feature of
installing anything different than OS delivered (which include pure
old-fashioned MPG playing). IMO posting DIVX vs. MPG is the same kind of
courtesy like posting HTML vs. plain text emails.

ABX

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ABX <abx### [at] abxartpl> wrote:
> There is plenty of Windows installs in companies with disabled feature of
> installing anything different than OS delivered (which include pure
> old-fashioned MPG playing). IMO posting DIVX vs. MPG is the same kind of
> courtesy like posting HTML vs. plain text emails.
>


ABX's note match my experience.  Furthermore, I once was lurking about some
forums for the 10secondclub.org.  There was a guy who was an actual
professional animator complaining about how he couldn't see someone's demo
reel because it was on some bleeding edge video format.   The guy
apparently only had spare time to browse other folks' animation work during
coffee breaks on a machine actually used to render movies, and he was
asking folks for an MPG-1.

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ABX <abx### [at] abxartpl> wrote:
> IMO posting DIVX vs. MPG is the same kind of
> courtesy like posting HTML vs. plain text emails.

  That comparison is flawed.

  An HTML email is bigger than a plain text email, which is one reason
why it is bad.
  However, a DivX is *smaller* than an MPG of the same quality, which
often is a valuable feature (specially if you are paying per minute
or per kilobyte).

  "Serious" companies don't adhere to any "courtesy" principles when
distributing videos. They freely use proprietary closed formats
(which often can be played only with proprietary software available
only for a few systems unless you want to try some third-party hacks)
such as .rm, .wmv and .mov, completely disregarding people who can't
view those formats (or don't want to because they hate the players).

  (I think that from those I can watch wmv files in this sparc/solaris
system, but certainly not thanks to microsoft. The others are hopeless,
I think.)

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

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Warp wrote:

>   (I think that from those I can watch wmv files in this sparc/solaris
> system, but certainly not thanks to microsoft. The others are hopeless,
> I think.)
> 

Doubt that. MPlayer plays at least some the rm's and mov's on Linux, so 
I'd guess it'll do it on Solaris also.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Okay here's the flipside: what's the best HTML (or other web page syntax) 
means for distributing a video?

While I'm adamant about MPG-1 being best for viewability, I've made 
assumptions about MPG-1 delivery  that have not been universally viewable.

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