How to make h.264 videos

[Cody Miller]

So, we've been pushing for h.264 here on HSH, in part because a properly encoded video can be played just about anywhere, and because the compression is very good, enabling either smaller videos at the same frame size, or a larger frame size at the same datarate as the videos on the site now.

Head on over to http://www.squared5.com/ and download MPEG Streamclip for Mac OS X or for Windows.

Open it up, and drag your speedrun into the window. You can set the in and out point for the encode if you want, by hitting the 'I' or 'O' key, and it will set the point to wherever the playhead is. You can even do this while your run is playing.

From the file menu, choose 'Export to MPEG-4'. Select h.264 from the compression pulldown menu. Move the slider to 100% quality, and check limit data rate, and Use-B frames. If you'd like higher quality video at the expense of encoding time, check multipass.

If your video is interlaced, check the interlaced scalign and de-interlace checkbox. If the source is DV, be sure to choose lower field dominance. For framerate, enter 29.97 for NTSC, and 25 for PAL.

For 320 x 240 video, 256-320kbps should be good. For 480 x 360 video, 500-600 will work well. Audio should be either 96kbps or 128kbps AAC.

Check out the results!

22 seconds, and only 956 K @ 320 x 240! This would make the uprising run about 3.5 megs!
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This is more in line with the datarates we've been using for the Sorenson 3 movies, but the framesize is much bigger!
Click

Feel free to ask questions or offer other suggestions.