#1 2009-02-17 16:03:37

**_jcervantes09_**

Poor FLV quality after publishing with Presenter

Hello,

We're using Presenter 7 and attempting to import a .flv file into a presentation. Outside of the presentation the video looks good in a standalone FLV player. When we import the video into a Presenter slide and publish, however, the video looks horrible--grainy and out scrunched.

In troubleshooting, I did notice that Presenter imports the video at a completely different size than the actual FLV. We import a 390X260 video and right click on the video properties and it has imported at 360X270. So we changed this by right-clicking on the video properties and changing height and width of the video to match the actual .flv file. This seemed highly unintuitive and did not improve the quality of the FLV upon publishing either.

Could this be an issue with the way the original FLV was encoded? Are there advanced video settings in Presenter? Any insight on this issue would be much appreciated.

**_roysdenc_**

Re: Poor FLV quality after publishing with Presenter

One thing to check would be the bitrate used in the import settings.  I think it defaults to medium (400kb), but you can set it to high (700kb).  Also, it is my understanding that even though you have a .flv file, Presenter will still convert it to a new .flv using the Sorenson codec.  Not the best choice from what I have seen, but it is something. 

Is the presentation you are working on for a live presenation, training module, on demand presentation?  Depending on your need, you I believe should also be able to publish a .flv to the Content Library, after which you could put it in a share pod in a Connect meeting room.  Just a thought.

-Chris

**_jcervantes09_**

Re: Poor FLV quality after publishing with Presenter

Thanks a bunch, Chris. I think you've aptly identified the issue in that Presenter "re-encodes" the FLV a second time around, using the to-be-desired Sorenson codec, nonetheless. To compound the issue, the video that we're trying to bring into Presenter is motion-heavy and maybe a little too much for this particular application, so we're going to "simplify" our video a bit and then try again.

The presentation is to actually demonstrate the capabilities of Presenter to others--video importing being one of the features we'd like to highlight. I appreciate your thoughts and of course any other tid-bits of information on video importing best practices for Presenter.

Cheers!

**_roysdenc_**

Re: Poor FLV quality after publishing with Presenter

I will check with some of my co-workers for their ideas, but one biggie is to have the file you are importing be the best quality possible, in both resolution and bitrate.  By doing this, when Presenter re-encodes, you have a better chance at getting something usable. 

I would be interested to hear other thoughts from people on the board.

-Chris

**_tlogan_**

Re: Poor FLV quality after publishing with Presenter

When Presenter re-encodes any video file format imported it uses the OnVp6 codec, more efficient than the Sorenson codec (but you gotta love the legacy).  390x260 does strike me as odd but a proportional size, no matter.   Compressing an already compressed video file may be the issue here  (like a copy of a copy on a copier just degrades and degrades) so will the video data.  Can you go back to the original or best quality video source you have and export, save or convert to a .flv using the On2Vp6 compression setting?  Use 30 fps and not all tools/solutions make the best .flv files so make sure you test early and often and try the demo versions of the tools from Sorenson or On2 (unless you own the appropriate Adobe video software or Flash) and try it, the demo trial version are free and may or may not apply a watermark.

Some guidance on video on presenter slides

Talking head video (in the sidebar)
Frame rate: 30 fps
Suggested size: 240 x 180
Suggested format: .flv, but On2 FLV files is preferred and the default if you insert any other format

Slide video:
Frame rate: 30 fps
Suggested size: any
Suggested format: .flv, but On2 FLV files is preferred and the default if you insert any other format.

Full slide video:
Frame rate: 30 fps
Suggested size: 720 x 540
Suggested format: .flv, but On2 FLV files is preferred and the default if you insert any other format.

This may be the most important note from the HELP file:
Note: H.264 files are not reencoded as FLV files because they are supported by Flash Player 9.0.115.0 or higher. Files in AVI and MOV format that are H.264 encoded are not converted to FLV.

Just addressing the Flash player versioning that is part of this eco-system.

**_jcervantes09_**

Re: Poor FLV quality after publishing with Presenter

This is great information and helped us a lot to put things into perspective. Thanks so much for your response!