Codecs and Resoluton Question

[Venger]

Hello!
I have completed setting up and filming my first scene for my movie "It Scared me to Death" and I am ready to begin exporting video clips.

Please enlighten me on what might be suggested codec to use, and suggestions for resolution to get the best result. I realize some codecs are lossy, and bitrate is important and so is compression, but I do not know the details.

Specifically, if someone could tell me which codec to use, and compression, bitrate values that would help immensely.

I am using iClone and have a variety to choose from, however, I intend to shoot video clips only from iClone, and bring them into Premiere for final editing and export.

My intention is to host probably on YouTube since I already have an account, but I see many people here use Vimeo.

Any information is greatly appreciated

[stvndysn]

i would suggest using H264 i find it has the best quality

[Venger]

Thanks for the reply. Ok sounds good, I will try some renders with that one.
isn't that the standard youtube goes by?

[animagic]

I work in iClone too, and what I usually do is export from iClone as PNG image sequences, which are compressed, but lossless. Size is 1280x720. I then import those in Sony Vegas (but Premiere would give you the same option) and render to mp4 (which uses the H264 codec already mentioned). This is indeed the format currently used by YouTube, Vimeo, and probably others.

I split the movie into scenes, where a scene is a single location, and I devote one iClone project per scene on average. A scene is rarely more than a minute. I know some people like to do a whole film into one project, but I find that impractical. By splitting it up you don't have to rerender everything if you want to make a change in one scene.

Image sequences don't render the sound (for dialogs and such), so you either have to render also a low-res video and then extract the sound with something like VirtualDub (free), or, what I do, keep the sound separate. For example, if you have some dialog and the charactor starts talking 5 sceonds into the scene, I create an audio file that has 5 seconds of silence and then the speech wave. I use Audacity (free) to line up all dialog within a scene and then export separate files for the dialog of each character, which are then loaded into iClone for lipsynching. I also create a mixed version (usually with some reverb to simulate room acoustics) for use in Vegas.

I hope this helps!

[ArtificialArtist]

for the premiere material you can use lossless or mp4 AAC/AVC (H.264) (i personally use lossless, but only with 720p material, not 1080p, those files are huuge)
and youtube works best with mp4, if you use HD material. Same codec as the AAC/AVC above.
There are some video tutorials showing how to get the proper settings for best display on YT,
i`ll see if i can find one for Premiere, if i do i`ll edit it into the post.

[Venger]

Thanks for the replies
It helps!