Hi - I want to export a video in X2a to a wmv format, with a frame size of 720x480.

There are a zillion profiles to pick from, but none seem to offer that size.  I am trying to balance quality and file size for streaming this video.  In the original AVI format, the video is over 10 GB. 

Apparently, per the Sonar doc, I could download some sort of media encoder kit from MS, where I could author my own profile, but I am hoping someone has done this before.

Anyone?

Bob Bone

My advice is to do your audio in sonar and export your final mix to wav.

Then use vegas pro to put the movie together.  You can download a trial version. Drag the avi file in then your wav file. RtClick on avi audio, unlink. Delete the avi audio.

Save the project and export to wmv. Plenty of templates.

Now the video will look good and the audio will be too.

It's probably more helpful to select a codec rather than a display size.

The codec you choose will sort of come with an implication that there is a native display size (or a couple) associated with that codec.

Whats your end goal?

Youtube?

A DVD?

Quicktime for your iPhone?




Now, to somewhat answer your question "DV25" is a codec that commonly uses 720x480. "Mpeg2" for DVD does as well.

That's an old standard def display size associated with "601" digital video descriptions.


I'm not in SONAR right now but you would do something like find the .AVI choice and then within that select a codec for output. The AVI wrapper can have any one of dozens of codecs running inside. If you get that far select Mpeg 2 or DV25 and see what happens. If you can't it is because SONAR doesn't think you have those codecs... which is what the help stuff you say you read is speaking about.


At this point, I'd work towards using some form of HD format as even our mobile phones capture with that.

720p or 1080p is the way to go from here on out.


Which brings me to the first question that should have been asked; What was the source footage format?


best regards,
mike

Thanks for the responses.

The original source is an HD video camera, and the footage is of my son's high school varsity basketball games.  He plays for the team and I volunteered to tape the games.

The school never provided anywhere for me to upload the games, so I just built a quick and dirty web page on a site I am building, and uploaded them to the site.

The issue is that the files are too massive to stream without endless buffering, so I want to cut down the quality to a reasonable level, where the kids and coaches can stream the games without having to buffer too much.

I strung the clips for each game together into AVI files - but each game is over 10 GB in size.  So, I import them into Sonar, mute the audio (crowd noise), and output to WMV format - but the WMV profiles are either 320x240 or 1024x768 or larger, and I found that a 720x480 size with good quality streams OK.

Anyways, that is what I am trying to end up with - files that are small enough to stream without a lot of buffering, yet sufficient quality to be worth watching when expanded to full screen on a TV.

Bob Bone

My guess is that you are starting with video using one of the AVCHD codecs.

If you can use that in SONAR then I would.

AVHCD codecs are cpu intensive so it is routine to convert them to an intermediary codec for editing.

In any case, the practical solution for exporting the final video is to export a nice HD example and upload it top YouTube.

Youtube is the leader for making streams actually work. They'll handle all the heavy lifting and scale the quality to what people can enjoy as best quality.

WMV was on the forefront of desktop HD but these days I'd just use Windows or Quicktime mp4 as the format for export. 

It takes a long time to upload HD to YouTube but once it's there it actually works.

The other YouTube competitors work well too... but YouTube is the leader at making it easy.


Good luck.


best regards,
mike

I see now that YouTube has a limit I can raise that would allow larger videos to get uploaded - I will try that.  

Bob Bone

Are you actually editing any audio on the clips? if not, probably no reason to bring into SOnar to begin with. Grab one of the many free converters like Any Video Converter and convert to the preset you desire

Yeah, I would say it's best to use youtube. Like Mike said, it will handle everything and deliver it in a format that everyone can watch (i.e., non-Flash for Apple Devices, etc.). Plus they have real streaming unlike a lot of standard Web servers, which are  really just faking it and won't be able to keep up. And of course you can embed the youtube video on a regular Web site too.

Or use Adobe Media Encoder.....

That will happily convert to You Tube or vimeo.....

Or as someone said above, any media converter is great.

Deffo dont use Sonar to convert Video, its awful for that.