File Formats

[galla47]

This isn't a question specific to Smugmug, but I have a general video question.

I know the rule on bitrates, is that there is no specific bitrate that is good for all situations. That being said:

I have Panasonic fx35 point-and-shoot that takes MJPEG videos. At 640x480 30fps, the videos are HUGE. I'm talking 14 megs for a 10 second video. Even bigger if I go HD. I can use Super, Nero, or any number of other programs to convert to h.264 video.

I'd rather just keep the smaller (file size) version so that I'm not killing disk space unnecessarily. Are there any good rules of thumb for an h.264 bitrate for a 640x480 30fps video? I'm thinking more for playing off my hard drive... If I want to send it over the internet, I can just use Smugmug :-)

Thanks,


Kevin

[galla47]

For anyone interested, I found this guidance on Apple's h.264 website:


For a frame size of 1920 x 1080 (full high definition), choose a data rate of 7,000-8,000 Kbps.
For a frame size of 1280 x 720 (commonly-used high definition), choose a data rate of 5,000-6,000 Kbps.
For a frame size of 640 x 480 (standard definition), choose a data rate of 1,000-2,000 Kbps.
For a frame size of 320 x 240 (Internet-size content), choose a data rate of 300-500 Kbps.
For a frame size of 176 x 144 (3G), choose a data rate of 50-60 Kbps for 10-15 fps content, or up to 150-200 Kbps for 24-30 fps content.