Format Movie to be viewable in SL?

Hi I have recently shot a movie using fraps and I am having trouble getting it to a format veiwable in SL. I have VirtualDub, TMPEG, and about 10 other movie processing tools. I can turn it into virtually any kind of movie file, but I am still missing something.

Anyone have a good foolproof recommendation on what to use? Codec? Bitrate? anything special I have to do? I prefer to have my movie be in mpg format (rather than QT).

Thanks in advance

~ Snaptick Laxness

SL uses Quicktime to display movies, so you'll have to use a format that Quicktime supports (and the good news is there are many). You can see a complete list on the Quicktime Specs Page. Anything on that list will work.

You'll also need to have Quicktime installed on your machine in order to view the movie in SL (obviously), and you'll need a host server from which to stream the movie. You can't actually upload movies to SL like you can textures and sounds.

There are many online services that offer free video hosting. Putfile, Google Videos, and YouTube are quite popular, or you can use your own website if you have one. I wouldn't recommend streaming from your home PC.

Check out my videoblog tutorial for tips on compressing and hosting video. These work great for playing video in SL

http://freevlog.org/tutorial/#
http://freevlog.org/index.php/2005/10/23/compress-for-the-web-with-3ivx/
http://freevlog.org/index.php/2006/04/26/443/

ok thanks, I got something going using TMPGEnc but it's a bit larger filesize than I wanted

Now I can compress it - in the meantime here is a sample clip :

http://www.stonernewsnetwork.com/kayak.php - plays in explorer

http://www.stonernewsnetwork.com/Kayak_Movie_Final.mpg - plays in SL )

http://www.stonernewsnetwork.com/Kayak_Movie_Final_Small.wmv - download

normally the issue is people dont have hinted mov or mp4 files

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
will convert file to .mov or .mp4 and is totaly free

Just because YouTube was suggested: Be aware that files hosted on YouTube are not viewable in Second Life as they convert any video uploaded to flash format.

This also means that your video can be somewhat distored in the process. I'd therefore recommend to not use YouTube as only storage for your videos. There are other services such as blip.tv which are also free. The latter even also does convert your video to flash (e.g. to make it useable with a nice flash player on your page) but only additionally. This means your video is still available in Quicktime format and thus

a) can beviewed in Second Life
b) can be put into an RSS feed to make it available in iTunes
c) has still the same quality as your original file because it's just that.

Of course this does not mean that you shouldn't upload it to YouTube in order to benefit from their community tools.

I followed Tao's advice, and this blip thing is way better than youtoube, more flexible and allows in-world viewing:

first one http://blip.tv/file/41745,
1 3/4: http://blip.tv/file/41759