FLV compression settings

There is an "art" to balancing quality vs size. The trick is to minimize the overall file size so that the file will transfer as quickly as possible, while at the same time keeping the quality relatively decent.

When creating an FLV file, you may have to sacrifice quality so that the file size remains low. This prevents choppy playback and ensures that the end user doesn't have to wait for data to "buffer" or download before the video starts to play.

Wimpy uses the progressive download approach to streaming, which means that as soon as enough data has been received, Wimpy will start to play the video. In other words, the entire video does not have to download before the video will start to play. Click here for more information on streaming.

When creating FLV videos using the Adobe FLV converter tool (which is included with Adobe Flash MX 2004 Professional), we recommend focusing on Quality.

With the video import tool, we recommend that you create your own "Profile" then adjust "quality" to a value of 70. A good rule of thumb for setting "keyframes" is to set "keyframes" to the frame rate of your video, which is usually 24 frames per second.

We arrived at these "general" settings after many tests and evaluations weighing file size and quality.

See Also:

FLV video quality

What does streaming mean?

How does Wimpy stream audio and video?