So, you've finished filming and editing your juggling video, and you
want to show it to other jugglers. Nowadays, the easiest way to do
this (if you don't happen to have a bunch of jugglers lounging about
in your living room) is to put your video on the internet, on one of
the various video sites for jugglers[0].

To do this, you'll need to compress your video to a sensible size, to
make it easy for you to upload, and for others to download. This
article aims to address how to do that, and to answer the question
"But what's a sensible size?". Read on....

First of all, you need to start with the best quality you can get
before you compress it. After you've finished editing your video in
your editing program (Windows Movie Maker? iMovie? Final Cut?
Premiere?), find the "Export" (or "Share" or "Publish") command, and
export your video in the highest quality possible. Hopefully, this
will be "DV" ("DV-PAL" or "DV-NTSC" depending on which type of camera
you have). This will give you a really large file (somewhere around
1GB for 5 minutes), but that's ok, that's just the first step.

Now we need a program to compress your video. I recommend MPEG
Streamclip ( http://www.squared5.com ), which is free, and available
for both Windows (XP/Vista) and Mac OS X.

Open your large file in MPEG Streamclip, then go to the File menu,
where we find options to Export to Quicktime(Mov), AVI, DV, MP4 or
Other Formats. Windows users often don't like MOVs, AVIs can be flaky
on Macs, DV is too big, so that leaves us with MP4. So, choose Export
to MP4, and you'll then get another window with some more options....

Audio: Choose "MPEG-4 AAC", "Stereo", "Auto" and "96kpbs", which will
give you a perfectly 'listenable' quality soundtrack. If you are picky
about the quality of your sound/music, then you can bump it up to 128
or 160 kbps. If your audio is just speech, you'll probably be fine
with 64kbps.

Video: Probably the best codec around at the moment is H.264, so
choose that in the "Compression" box. If you are patient, and are
prepared to wait a little longer for your encode to complete, in order
to get slightly better quality, then tick[1] the "Multipass" box. Tick
the "Deinterlace Video" box. For the frame size, remember that
juggling videos tend to have lots of fast-moving objects in them, so
you don't want it to be so small that people have to squint at your
video to work out what's going on. Choosing the "unscaled" option will
probably be fine, but you can select any frame size you like in
"Other". I'd recommend a minimum of 320x240, but somewhere between
480x360 to 720x540 would be preferable (Choose a 4-3 ratio for PAL
video, or a 3-2 ratio for NTSC). Next, we have two options....

A) Set the  Quality slider to a nice high number, say 80% AND tick
'limit data rate' and set that to..... 1200Kbps should be fine. This
will give you a pretty good quality video at a reasonably decent size,
but you may find that a few frames here and there will be a bit
'blocky', because of the data limiting, so, if you're a perfectionist,
try B)....

or

B) Make a few test runs with the slider set at...... 32%, 35%, 39%,
42%..... until you get a result that gives you a movie with an overall
data rate somewhere between, say, 800Kbps and 1500Kbps. (And of course
looks 'good enough' to your eyes). As a very rough guide, you could
aim for no bigger than "10MB per minute" as a decent size/quality for
an internet download video. This method could be much more time
consuming, but may well end up cutting down your final file size by a
large chunk.

Confused? Too much information? OK, here's a really easy third option:

C) Open your original file in MPEG Streamclip. Go to File>Export to
MP4. Click the "iTunes" button. Click "iPod 640x480 (4:3). Tick
"Deinterlace video".

I can't really give you an exact series of settings, as the end result
depends on the source footage - for example, if your video is all
tripod shots, you will probably manage to get a pretty decent quality
video at well below the "10MB a minute" level. Unfortunately, there's
no absolute 'right' setting for video encoding - you usually have to
experiment a bit, but I hope you'll find these hints useful.

Once you've chosen A), B) or C) click "Make MP4", and wait a little
while for your file to encode.

Try to name your file helpfully. "Juggling.mp4", "my first juggling
movie.mp4", or "summer2007.mp4" might all sound reasonable enough, but
they won't exactly stand out in a list. Perhaps something like
"JaneK_number1.mp4", "BJC2008_by_Jonny.mp4", or "diabolotennis2.mp4"
would be clearer. It's probably a good idea to avoid punctuation marks
or spaces in your file names
unless%20you%20find%20this%20bit%20of%20the%23paragraph%21%20easy%20to%20read.
Just use letters, numbers and _underscores_.

Now you should have a good quality video clip, at a sensible size, but
before you rush off to upload it for the bedazzlement of all your
friends - WATCH IT! You never know, you might have made a silly
spelling error in the titles, or inadvertently cut the end of the
video off. It's best to spot any such mistakes now, before you put it
online!

There are of course, other settings, and other video compressing
programs, so do feel free to experiment until you find a method that
suits you.

Oh, and one last thing..... this article was written in 2007, and
technology moving as fast as it does, it might be out of date before
too long, so..... remember that massive file you exported at the
beginning? If it's less than 20 minutes long, you should be able to
back it up by burning it onto a data DVD. That way, in 2012 when
VidZap8.3[2] is released, you can dust off your masterpiece, and
re-compress it to a tenth of the size so it'll play on your
iPodfemto[2] ;-)

Happy compressing!

Juggling.tv

[0] You are most welcome to use http://www.juggling.tv/vaults
[1] or 'check', if you're American. :-)
[2] Not yet invented.