Optimal settings for a crystal-clear ASL vlog

Posted on November 20, 2006

After you create a video clip and are ready for the compression for a vlog on the web, there are many settings that you can choose with your video editing software for the final file saving.

Below is a list of settings that you should pay close attention to in order to produce the best possible web video containing American Sign Language:

320×240 (good viewing size for the web)

384k bps (the quality is high enough but still easily downloaded with high speed internet)

Two-pass VBR (makes the animation of ASL more clear)

24 frames per second (smooth animation, not choppy)

Key frame every 50 frames (animation stays up to date every 1.5 seconds)

There are two ways to show your video on the web.

  1. If you want to show top-notch quality, you will need to host them locally with your ISP.  This is how Joey Baer is able to show crystal clear video. This is not free, it will have a monthly fee as part of your ISP plan.
  2. If you upload to youTube or Google Video, they will re-encode it to lower quality but it’s still pretty good even for viewing ASL. These services are free and you get the benefit that users are able to search and find your video clip more easily.  Google Video also makes it very easy for you to add subtitles to your video if you feel it’s important to increase your potential audience of viewers.

This particular vlog was saved with the above settings.

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  • http://signcasts.com brein

    Sounds good, but I wanted to make a few comments.
    You give suggestions for settings, but for WHICH format? some of these options might not be available for specific formats, and the format itself does affect viewability.

    Also, you mention that quality works best when hosted locally. This is not neccessarily true. (another site might have better bandwidth, for one). While some remote hosts like youtube will re-encode your video, there are some exceptions that will post your video without conversion. (blip.tv for one)

  • http://banjosworld.blogspot.com Banjo

    When I made my vlogs, I encoded them using the Divx codec in iMovie. This way, it won’t take so long to upload the video without heavily compromising the video quality.

    Google Video has handled the DIVX-encoded avi files quite well for me so far.

  • http://profile.typekey.com/jarednevans/ Jared Evans

    brein: it doesn’t matter which format. It’s the codec that handles all this. I like to use the Sorenson codec since it gives off very good quality at low file size. Quicktime, Windows Media, Flash Video, etc has all these settings that I mentioned above.

    Banjo: DIVX codec is commonly used to shrink large DVD files into files with more manageable size without much loss in quality. I’m not sure about how well they are applicable to “web” videos.

  • http://signcasts.com Brein

    Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was using format colloqually. Codec and format are sometimes used interchangably even though they are not.
    To clarify the technical terminology usually used for those who are not aware:
    codec = the specific technology used to encode AND decode the the data (compress)
    video format = container format = holds different codecs (such as one for audio, and another for video)

    BUT some codecs are only available through specific file formats. Sorenson used to be specifically for quicktime, although I’m not sure this is true any longer. When I said the choice of format affects viewability, that refered to the fact that some media formats (such as windows media) do not play nice on all systems. Of course, theres other issues, too.