Video Optimisation Techniques

Course Description:

This one day course is designed to introduce the concepts and techniques required for efficient video streaming and downloading. You will cover how to correctly prepare video for disk-based media such as DVD or CD-ROM.

Whether you are a web designer, a video producer or editor, a graphic designer or simply have an interest in presenting video content, this course covers the areas the software manuals leave out and will allow you to optimise video and audio for trouble-free playback.

This course includes the following modules:

Introduction

• Why do you need to prepare video for multimedia and streaming?
• Working with data rates
• Downloading vs streaming

Compressing video and audio

• Compression fundamentals
• Downsizing video
• Using different CODECs
• Looking at keyframes
• Compressing audio
• Target bit rates
• Variable bit rates
• Using different software to compress video and audio
• Working out data transfer rates

Different media standards

• Quicktime, Real and Windows Media Player
• The MPEG family
• Flash video
• Different formats for different applications

Downloading media

• Setting up media on an HTTP server
• Issues to consider with downloaded video
• Accessibility issues

Streaming media

• What are the essentials of streaming media?
• Streaming vs download
• The streaming server
• Firewall issues
• Advantages and disadvantages of Quicktime, Real and Windows Media server technology
• RTP and RTSP
• Audio streaming

Disk media

• Working with CDs and DVDs
• Outline of DVD standard
• Tools for creating DVDs
• Overview of High Definition DVDs

Questions and answers