Advice on Videos Needed

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Chris Coyier on

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That’s just a little teaser graphic there for ya’ll =)

Here is the scoop. I’m all set up to start doing some Video Screencasts for CSS-Tricks. I actually already sort of shot the first one. I am on a Mac, so I used iShowU to record the video at 1280×800 with the Apple Animation codec at as high of quality as I could. I also have a pretty decent condenser mic so the audio quality is pretty good. Actually, the audio was a little quiet for this first video but I figured that out for next time.

The 10 minute capture from iShowU was about 400MB.

I put it all into Final Cut Pro to do some post production on it. Basically some intro graphics and some pop-up style info-tidbits. Then I exported it uncompressed from FCP, trying to use the same codec. That file was 1.37 GB. Then I threw it in Stomp, again trying to use the same codec, to compress it down and actually pull the dimensions down as well. The best I could do was 51.2MB which looks kinda-sorta decent.

The Problems

  • 50MB is just too much data. I can’t release all of you onto them yet without seriously injuring my server. I’m just on the fairly cheapo Media Temple Grid Service. How can I handle distributing this video? Is there some kind of free or cheap service?
  • Does 50MB sound about right for a 10 minute 800×600 video? I bet if I actually shot at 800×600 I could get better compression, I just figured I might want it a bit bigger since there will be code in the videos and and I want it to be big enough and high quality enough to read easily. Can I do better? How much better?

Limited Preview

If anyone really wants to see it, just contact me through the contact form and I’ll send you the link. I’m just gonna ask you all to please please please not share the link yet until I work out some of this stuff. Mostly the bandwidth thing.