Encode to FLV
This is a quick help for how to Encode/Convert movies to the Flash FLV format. There are a couple of general encoding features that could be good to know. The key is to find a good balance of frame rate, data rate and keyframe.
When working with digitally compressed video in a format such as Flash Video, the higher the frame rate, the larger the file size. To reduce the file size, you must lower either the frame rate or the data rate If you lower the data rate and leave the frame rate unchanged, the image quality is reduced. If you lower the frame rate and leave the data rate unchanged, the video motion may look less smooth than desired. Something to remember here as well is that you can never gain quality when encoding, so if you have a bad video to start with it will not get any more pleasant to look at just because you boost the data rate.
For short;
Frame rate (fps); The less, the more jumpy.
Data rate (bitrate); The less, the more pixels/blur.
Keyframe; The less, smaller file size.
Since Flash Player 9,0,115,0 there is now the possibility to convert HD quality, so i brief version list of the codecs;
Flash 6-7; Sorenson Video
Flash 8-9; On2
Flash 9-10; On2 (new F4V open format since 9,0,115,0)
There is a really good convert guide to get some help on the export settings;
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/apps/flv_bitrate_calculator/
How to work out the best video compression for me?
This is the hard bit, for short I would recommend these steps.
1.) Figure out a compression that you guess would be the perfect one (get help from calculator).
2.) Setup 4 more compressions, 2 that has higher quality than your (1.) setting and 2 that are below.
3.) Line up all the videos and find the video with the lowest quality settings but that you find is still good. Now from this go back to step 2.
4.) After a couple of rounds this way you should have found a compression for your video.
Remember that all videos are different, so there is no magic setting that will work on all your videos. Also when choosing the “best” video you need to keep track on the file size and what the target is going to be.
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