#1 2008-09-17 11:16:01

**_sdiener_**

Optimum video encoding settings

We are about to go into production on a presenation created in Presenter that includes a lot of video (30-40 minutes), and could use some advice on formatting the video for optimum quality but minimal network drag. This will be accessed by users on a corporate wide area network, although not all users will be in the same physical location.

Our video content has three elements:

- The program presenter audio video runs from start to finish, synchronized with PPT, with seven stops/starts along the way: 4 for quiz questions, spread out here and there, two for when we switch to video clips that will appear in the PowerPoint window, and one for when we run audio only that is synchronized to animation within the slide itself. The Presenter AV is tied to individual slides, and there are plenty of those (42) -- so each clip tied to a slide runs about 20-75 seconds (so good for buffering, downloads). Total time on the presenter video is about 30-35 minutes.

- Each of the video clips in the PowerPoint window are about 3 mintes long, so could take some time to load

So, what is the best format (flv, swf??) and  settings (encoding) for the final video we will import into the PPT?

If you have any other comments or suggestions, we'd love to hear them.

Many, many thanks.

**_catholicon_**

Re: Optimum video encoding settings

I am not really an expert in video settings. But as an empirical info the lesser re-encoding is done lesser is the loss in quality.
So, I would imagine it would be useful to get .flv directly from your videographer (if any). (Note: flv is a better option for video)

Regarding encoding settings, it completely depends upon the bandwidth of your users and the amount of data load your server would be able to handle at a time.
A few useful things to note while calculating a basic peek data requirement would be:
* for initial load, Presenter would start loading the slide(n).swf, dependencies (audio, video on slide, thv) for 1st slide.
* Video, if being hosted on Connect, would be streamed; hence the bandwidth requirement would be less after Presenter fills up its initial buffer
* Video from normal http server would start showing up after initial buffer, although the video-data would keep on coming until the flv file is completely downloaded.

I know, the answers are not definitive, but they really can't be in such cases. Still HTH :)

**_dyun_**

Re: Optimum video encoding settings

If you are using Presenter 7, the encoding tool (flash video encoder) is already integrated into the product and so P7 accepts most video formats and automatically converts them to FLV using On2VP6 codec.   

There is no need for any other conversion tool in almost every case, the exception being if you want to use the H.264 (HD quality) codec.  These videos can be embedded but are not re-encoded.

See the documentation for more details on this feature:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Presenter/7 … 27058.html

Best,
David