Express Yourself

Otherwise, the presets were standard best practice, with CBR for files destined for streaming servers and VBR for standard web servers. The 256Kbps preset dropped to 15fps, while all others used the source frame rate. For those of you messing with the buffer size of your streaming files, note that Ben used a 5-second buffer in all streaming presets.

Let the Customization Begin
After choosing a preset, you can click a small white arrow beneath the preset to expose most relevant encoding controls. Interestingly, the Expression Encoder calls all video codecs "VC-1," while the Windows Media Encoder calls the same codecs "Windows Media Video" codecs:

"There’s been some confusion on the relationship between the Windows Media Video codecs and the SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) VC-1 spec. VC-1 is the SMPTE designation for their standardization of WMV 9. In essence, you can now think of Windows Media Video 9 as Microsoft’s brand for our implementation of VC-1, as implemented for advanced streaming format (ASF) files."

"Basically, just think of ‘WMV 9’ and ‘VC-1’ in a WMV file as synonymous. Using WMV 9 and using VC-1 have the same MPEG-LA implications, since they’re the same thing (and have virtually the same implications as H.264). But bear in mind that anyone with fewer than 50K customers/year or producing clips under 12 minutes doesn’t have to deal with MPEG LA at all. Its terms are crafted to only apply to big commercial content publishing companies."



<>Variable Bitrate Encoding
With variable bitrate video, the only VBR option is VBR peak constrained, and though you can set peak bitrate values, you can’t set minimums. I didn’t see any degradation in the low motion video that I tested, but it’s always a concern when you can’t set a minimum. Interestingly, all presets use a peak video bitrate roughly 2X the average bitrate. My rule of thumb has always been a peak rate of 1.5X (and minimum rate of .5X) and I’ve seen these numbers as high as 4X/.4X (Sorenson Squeeze). Again, you should use VBR only when distributing progressive video via a regular web server, but if your viewers complain about streamus interruptus during high motion sequences, you may want to lower the peak rate value.
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