making .mov & .mpg files display onsite also conection speeds and media players

[Dominic]

I've been given the original tv commercials in .mpg and .mov for an actress's site.

1. How do I offer them for slow and fast net connections
2. How do I offer them for different media players

Cheers.

[danimal]

mpg is a horrible web format... do you know the details of these files? mpeg1, mpeg2, bitrate, etc... the .mov is what codec(cinepak, mpeg4, etc.), and what bitrate? hopefully you can re-encode this stuff to something modern and efficient, that will load fast and not take up too much bandwidth.

[Dominic]

I could ask them to send it to me in a different format, what should I ask for?

[mystikmedia]

Ask them to send in WMV.

[Dominic]

Thanks, here is his reply:
I’m running QuickTime Player 7 Pro. It doesn’t seem to let me export it as a wmv file. My only options are to save it as an AVI file or a mpeg-4. I tried to open the files in Windows Media Player, but it didn’t work.
(I’m not much of a tech guy, I’m afraid.)

Any tips on how he can get it to me as a WMV file?

[mystikmedia]

Ask him to send it to you as AVI, and then use a WMV converter (http://www.blazemp.com/wmv_converter_software.htm) to get it into WMV.

[Dominic]

Ask him to send it to you as AVI, and then use a WMV converter (http://www.blazemp.com/wmv_converter_software.htm) to get it into WMV.

Cheers.

Weird asking questions at DP like someone 'new to it all' - but just goes to show DP is the place to ask. Thanks again.

[danimal]

whatever wmv encoder you use, be sure and do two-pass encoding, windows media 9 format, probably vbr as well... i would not entrust that to someone else, do it yourself from the original files.

microsoft has a free downloadable wmv encoder that'll pretty much do it all, no need to use anything else... you'll take a hit on quality because you are using mpeg source files, you really want to get the original footage to encode directly to wmv... mpeg sucks as a source format to encode wmv from.