OT: Audio Codec for video tutorial

[soccerrprp]

Sorenson Squeeze!!! My brother has this and it does a VERY efficient job of compressing video! BUT IT IS PRICEY!

http://www.sorensonmedia.com/solutions/prod/comp_win.php

[mt_sabao]

Thanks soccerrprp for the answer,
the techsmith codec (that comes with camtasia) does a very good job. My problem is the audio compression...
Cheers
luis

[soccerrprp]

Sorry about that. Didn't read the thread carefully.

[tcastudios]

I think as with Sorenson Video for the picture, IMA 4:1 22.050kHz Mono for the sound would be a good choice/standard.

Cheers
Lennart

[NWoolridge]

Hi guys,
This is a bit offtopic, but for you guys out there that do video tuts, what audio codec do you use? I´m currently doing some tutorials using camtasia but i´m not managing to get a very good quality/size ratio. I´m using the mp3 compressor, but the one in camtasia gives a bad quality, whereas with the other compressors i´m getting big sizes. I want to put them online, so the size is important. What do you recommend?

Thanks,
Luis

AAC at low bit rates (32-64 bit, mono) usually sounds pretty good for voice... H.264 is great for video too, sometimes better than the techsmith codec...

Nick

[LucentDreams]

depends on your method of delivery, techsmith's codec is way too large for online delivery. Best way I've seen yet for online (depending on length) is Camtasia's flash output or sorenson squeeze for flash for the video, and then mp3 for the audio (aac is good too but not available for flash last time i checked) I've been able to get 1024x768, 22min video with audio into 9mb with no visual loss though the audio was a little iffy but then again the audio wasn't anywhere near as clean as the audio I record now.

Best advice i have for anyone doing video tutorials nowadays, is unless you have a really good studio and audio mixer system, use a USB mic rather then a regular one. USB has a huge advantage over anaolog mics in that it doesn't pic up interference along the cable meaning no tones and far less noise gets picked up along the cord, which is often troublesome when using a computer as the cable has to pass a computer box with several highfraquency fans and other electronic devices like monitor, modem, router etc. I was blown away at how much cleaner the audio is from the very start without any post work.

[mt_sabao]

Thanks guys for all the replys,
Is the AAC free for download, or is it comercial?

[NWoolridge]

Thanks guys for all the replys,
Is the AAC free for download, or is it comercial?

Its part of QuickTime 6 onward, but not exclusive to QT 6 (for instance, VLC and other media players on the PC will play it). H.264 is part of QuickTime 7, but again, is an open standard and other media software (on PC and Mac) will encode it and play it.

As an example, 3D Fluff's recent free video tut on hair is 37 minutes of excellent quality 25 fps 1024 x 768 video, and comes in at 80 MB. That's a large file, but it is astonishing for video of that quality, frame rate and duration. You could sacrifice a small amount of video quality and frame rate and get a smaller file still. They used H.264 and AAC.

Nick

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