I have some flash videos that I am streaming on my clients site. For right now, there is 10 videos on the server and is averaging about 256MB in file size. All the videos are 600 x 450. Furthermore, I will be transferring my clients site to a dedicated server this upcoming weekend as they are on a VPS right now. The problem is that it buffers up a tiny bit of the video, stream it, buffers the video, stream it, ect... You see, these videos are the core foundation of the site. So its very important for the videos to load up in a very decent time frame. I just was reading that the video bit rate has a huge roll in how fast the video loads, but it didn't state what a good video bit rate was. So, what is a good video bit rate?
What format are the videos? AVI videos are huge, while FLV are small. If the videos are averaging 256 megs - that is WAY too big. With that size, are they MPEG or something? Anyway, make the video at about a 2 meg biterate - avi or mpeg, and then convert it to FLV format. That should give you a good quality video but at a small file size. Anything less then 1.0 - 1.5 meg bitrate and the quality starts to go way down.
Well, what my client has done is given me MPEG videos which are around 2 - 3GB in size. I have already converted them to flash and thats the size its running about... which is about 256MB in size. When I am converting from MPEG to FLASH, I have the video bit rate set as 800 kpbs.
flash? or flv do you convert mpeg to? flv has small file size for web video. what tool do you use? Vidoe bir rate set as 800 is good for web delivery, change frame rate to try again, or you can set your video play until loading finished. Following is a step by step guide: http://www.flash-video-soft.com/blog/?p=196 maybe it can help you get a little idea.
With the file size you said, in FLV, that would be about right. Another option is to break the videos apart into sections, or reduce them to 320X240 instead of 600X480. Which is an oddball size anyway. Its usually 640X480, or something like 700X480. I would not suggest reducing the bitrate anymore, you will probably start losing a lot of quality. You might be able to convert them from MPEG 600X480 to 320X240 WMV and reduce the size a whole lot. I can take an AVI 1 gig video file, 640X480, convert it to 320X240 WMV and make it into about a 20 meg file - instead of 1 gig.