Recomended configurations for creating video for the web

Question

I'm working on a project creating video segments for the web (no plans for broadcast of DVD) and I'm looking for opinions on the most efficient way to use FCP to do this. We are shooting with an HD camera with a green screen and composting a couple of additional layers of Motion graphics and we found that the render times were really long. I'm looking for ways to mitigate this, on thing we did was switch from shooting in 1080p to 720p. We also tried shooting at 24fps instead of the broadcast 60fps and that cut our render time by a good percentage. Since the final product is going to be 640 by 360 at 15fps it seems like a good trade off but are there any down sides I'm not thinking of.
I was also wondering if there might be an advantage to working at the size of the final product, if the FCP sequence were 640 by 360 would there be any advantages in terms of render times and what might the disadvantages would be.
This is my first semi-professional project, just been a hobbyist up until now so any advice is appreciated.

Answer 1

MoSaT wrote:
We are shooting with an HD camera with a green screen and composting a couple of additional layers of Motion graphics and we found that the render times were really long. I'm looking for ways to mitigate this, on thing we did was switch from shooting in 1080p to 720p. We also tried shooting at 24fps instead of the broadcast 60fps and that cut our render time by a good percentage.
those simple steps reduced the number of pixels in each frame from about a million to 750,00, about 25%; and you reduced the number of frames from 30 or 60 to 24 or 48. So, yeah, your rendering times are going down. If your Motion project has ten HD layers you're saving tons of processing.
MoSaT wrote:
This is my first semi-professional project, just been a hobbyist up until now so any advice is appreciated.
Since the final product is going to be 640 by 360 at 15fps it seems like a good trade off but are there any down sides I'm not thinking of.
Absolutely. But you engaged the project without knowing how you were going to accomplish anything; implies your plans for improving workflow will be similarly incomplete. We all got by with NTSC and plan ol' DV for decades. The web is a low end distribution system, not a theatrical viewing experience. You can force your viewers to download a huge file and watch it on their TVs or you can open it up in weensy teeny window on their iPhones.
MoSaT wrote:
I was also wondering if there might be an advantage to working at the size of the final product, if the FCP sequence were 640 by 360 would there be any advantages in terms of render times and what might the disadvantages would be.
Purists will be correct in telling you better source footage results in better uploads. I will tell you that's true but it's academic. Your realworld needs are based on your web upload, not your plans to archive high def footage for future exploitation.
Here's what I'd do: Work backwards. Figure out what your upload needs are--exactly. Research Compressor and other compression systems to determine how you are going to process your project to get the target output. Now decide what format that software wants to process to create the best results. then figure out how you want to provide that input for the compression application. then figure out what the tradeoffs are for your original footage in terms of your camera resources, your skills with the camera, and your mistaken impression that effects and chromakey should be fast.
bogiesan