>The Stuff of Life from Amnesty
>I’ve been advising Amnesty International UK on some video matter recently. They wanted to get a newly commissioned video The Stuff of Life on the web so it could be easily distributed and embedded by activists across the web. The film imitates a glossy TV advert, and so the perception of production values was essential. The issue was getting it in as high a quality as possible, while allowing as many people as possible to watch it. The most important thing from my perspective was that the film played fully without buffering as I believe that had a terribly detrimental effect on the impact of the film.
The final file ended up at a bit rate of around 700 to 800 kbps, which was around 200kbps higher than I had originally expected. But as always with web video it’s essential to try a test file and see. I’m on a standard BT broadband wireless connection and this file has played consistently well for me – the proof is in the pudding it seems.
Incidentally, the production company did a lot of testing with Blip.tv. I’d suggested Blip originally, as their player comes with lots of distribution benefits and good tracking which was important for AIUK. Following testing they felt that Blip performance varied considerably and files which would play fine one day buffered a lot the next. They also felt that the same file while performing well enough through another set up was not served as well by Blip. I can’t verify this for myself, but it seems if a really glossy high production values are essential for you, Blip may not be the solution.
Watch the The Stuff of Life and spread the word.
http://unsubscribe-me.org/films/blipesque-sof-sml.swf
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