Best video codec for SL movies?

I am getting ready to host an in-world DVD release party, and I'm hoping to get some advice from others who have hosted movie related events. Alt-Zoomers?

Which video codec(s) would you suggest? In the past I have settled on the old Sorenson codec, mostly beacuse it seems to be more compatible with older versions of Quicktime. I would love to use the newer, more efficient codecs that (like H.264) but I'm worried that a lot of the folks will not have Quicktime 7 installed.

Has anyone done any testing or have experience in this area? Thanks.

i have done a little testing because of bandwith usage and load times
i really like the xvid .3gp codecs i use 2 diffrent converters
"3GP_converter" and pspvideo9.com converter
i have a lot of short anime music videos on my land
and no one has told me of any problems
-LW

I usually get good results with the 3ivx codec (http://www.3ivx.com/). It might not be better that H264 but is more compatible and is a lot faster in encoding that H264 via Quicktime.

It costs $20, though.

You might also look at freevlog.org for examples of encoder settings.

(I still have the plan though to make some broader testing about what's best settings/encoders etc. for doing machinima stuff. Although I don't know if you're speaking of machinima here. If not I guess the normal vlog mechanisms should apply and thus you should go with freevlog.org).

Thanks for the tips, folks. I certainly like the quality and smaller file sizes of these new codecs, I am just worried that I will be excluding some viewers. Maybe I should set up some sort of testing station in-world - or maybe I will just go with the new codecs and assume that we are all geeky enough to install Quicktime 7.

There is only one codec that can be read by older stand-alone dvd players; newer ones can read the xvid codec. They must be marked though that they can read the xvid format. That format is know as .vob and is actually a .mpeg 2 format. But, when you upload a file to the internet or host a file; I recommend using the H.264 format. A great encoding programming to look into for the H.264 format is the meGui program. It's freeware and can be easily found by googling it. Quicktime can encode both formats as well. But, you have to buy a extension for quicktime for encoding .vob files. Hopes this helps.

I get good results with the 3gp encoding streaming over http. I very occasionally get customers claiming the videos don't work, and I refund them but that's a very small percentage.

That 3GP_converter program can be hard to get the hang of at first and doesn't like some files I've noticed.

To add is only that meGUI uses for H.264 encoding x264, a really good public encoder, that supports lots of different features... unfortunately not all supported by quicktime. To avoid the risk of having a proper H.264 stream... but not playable with quicktime a good rule can be to stay conservative with all the encoding options (or if all this panics you immediately you will be also quite fine but not that effective with mpeg4 enconding well done by either xvid or divx).

The added step-by-step guide H.264 (with megui, x264 and Quicktime as player) gives good material to avoid the pitfalls.

A quote from the guide is this:


With meGUI it is also possible to process another format like PAL (25FPS) and interlaced video... although the steps slightly differ then.

The complete guide for further details on x264 with quicktime is here:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=102609

Thanks guys.

I've been trying unsucessfully for months, to create a file that would play in SL. This thread is actually the best info I've found yet, so far.

I'm rather annoyed, that when I typed "Quicktime" into the Wiki's search engine, I got this page:

http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=QuickTime

Which says, in it's entirety:

"You aren't allowed to read this page."

Nice.

I'm trying the 3vix codec out right now. Fingers crossed.

I run a videoblog tutorial site that has really great tutorials on making quicktime movies - perfect for Second Life.
Check these out:
http://freevlog.org/video/3ivx.mov
http://www.archive.org/download/iMovie_Compression/imovie_compress.mov

I'd concur with the original sentiment of H.264 as the ideal - its performance with low bit budgets is quite remarkable. One recent example: 320x240 25fps, one hour, wound up at just over 90MB, preserving nearly all the detail of the original image, as well as the subtitles burned during the transcoding. That's around 200kbps, 32kbps mono AAC audio included, which seems modest enough to fit within even 384kbps DSL connections, allowing for other out-of-game traffic and streaming overheads.

How well it'll actually work in game remains to be seen. ^_^

I digged a bit further around and found a nice collection of presets for megui with also 2 presets especially for H.264 encoding that ensure quicktime compatility.
It is here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=101813

Well since I've seen it work with mpegs before I was considering testing out OggTheora to see if it works. Maybe later.