iMovie to Dreamweaver workflow

[vradesign]

Hi there...

I was wondering if anyone could share their current workflow for exporting web-optomized video out of iMovie and then importing that into Dreamweaver for distribution on the web.

I'm not really happy with the quality I'm getting and wondering if I'm missing a step.

Here's my current workflow:

1) Create a movie in iMovie '11
2) Share > Export Movie
3) Select LARGE (960x540), creates a .m4v file
4) Using Adobe CS5 Media Encoder...
5) Open .m4v file, and select the following options:
Format = .FLV | F4V
Preset = FLV - Match Source Attributes (High Quality)
6) This produces a .FLV file
7) In Dreamweaver I embed this in a web page Insert > Media > FLV
8) Upload all of the pages, assets and FLV to the server.

This process on average produces approximatley a 3 minute 60mb .FLV file.

The final FLV ALWAYS has more artifacts and seems to be a different frame rate (sorta jumpy) than the .m4v and source in iMovie. Occassionally there will be a "clicking" in the background audio.

I'm in no way a pro media developer but I do create a fair number of training videos for my organization and would like to produced the best quality, least bandwidth intense vids possible.

Anyway... hope someone out there is willing to share their expertise.

Thanks so much!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

How big is the .m4v file and is the quality as good as the source?
Does it need to be embedded into Flash?

 

[vradesign]

How big is the .m4v file and is the quality as good as the source?
Does it need to be embedded into Flash?

.M4V is about 88mb and the quality is much better than the resulting 64mb .FLV.

Clearly there's some sort of compression going on here. Is there a way to keep that down to a minimum when going from .m4v to .flv? Maybe I'm just using the wrong settings in Adobe Media Encoder.

The only reason I convert it to .FLV is because Dreamweaver CS5 makes it stupid simple to embed an .FLV with a nice player wrapper around it.

If there's a better way to do this, I'm all ears.

 

[vradesign]

Anyone else out there have an idea how I might be able to improve the quality of movies I export from iMovie into Dreamweaver?

 

[vradesign]

JW Player!

Well... I guess I got my answer! Not sure why I haven't come across this yet. The JW Player is amazing! No conversion necessary. Supports all sorts of file formats including .m4v!

http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/