Hi, folks. I have already posted this message in the Director's Cut forum, but there are so many experienced and knowledgeable people who read this forum, I hope the admins will allow me to post it here too. I am really in need of help. I need to take a VHS tape and convert it to a web-readable format (WMV, RealVideo, etc.). My client is concerned with both size and video quality, but mostly video quality, since they're a video production house and what they want to showcase is the quality of their work. Thus far they are displeased with my efforts, saying the video is too grainy. (Before, when it was cleaner, they claimed it took too long to download). So, basically I want to know is, based on all of your experiences, what is the best video format, video image size, and clip length to use for web-clips that will load fairly quickly (within a couple seconds), and be as close to broadcast quality as possible? Unfortunately, I'm stuck using a VHS master and RCA cables to go from tape to the computer. I have two different capture systems to choose from, a Dazzle Viceo Creator and a Pinnacle Linx cable (I'd prefer to use the latter, it's easier). Also, if anyone knows any coding tips to optimize for faster downloading (such as the EMBED commands, which I'm already using), I'd appreciate knowing about it. Many thanks in advance for any assistance or advice you can offer.

If you use "streaming" technology then the video starts playing before it is fully downloaded, but that usually requires having a streaming server (special software on the web server). Quicktime can do that, Real does that, and some others do too. But they require server software to do it. In general the limits are what you saw. Fast, small files are grainy. Better quality is slower. Better codecs do help. Software like Cleaner 5 can convert between different formats and codecs, and improve the quality and the speed of download.

Attached Link: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tools_tips/

Well, converting video for the web is sad but true hard ond costly work. It stands and falls with the video master, in your case VHS which has not the best quality as it is kind of grainy. If you could get DV or DVcam your chances grow to produce a web video without too many compression artefacts. As for the web video standart I recommend Apples Quicktime Sorenson 3, 320 x 240 px, 15 fps. For the sound you should use the QDesign Music Pro 2 codec. As for compression tool I highly recommend Cleaner as it provides lot of settings in order to enlarge image quality. Apples Quicktime Pro 6 also includes the MPEG4 standart which produces an amazing image quality considering the file size. But here you should read Apples licence carefully. Using Quicktimes software "MakeRefMovie" you can create alternate movies for various internet connection speeds, CPU's, languages, and more. But this software only works on Mac. Hope this helps somehow:-)

Mpeg is great and if windows user, I have been playing with Huffyuv 2.1.1 at http://math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html and have cut file size down by up to half and for working with flash have been playing with FLIXPRO at http://www.wildform.com. They have a demo version so you can check and see if it works for you.

Good luck as I got a client with same problems I know how frustrating it can be to webitize movies.