newbie questions - please read

[visconti]

Very simple newbie questions:

I just got a digital camcorder and want to record videos to put on a website. I think if I tried enough combinations of settings I could get what I want, but I thought I'd ask you guys (the experts) what you think I should look into:

I'm looking to record about 1 min of video with a size of about 640 x 480 (or close) and get the video file to be about 8 meg in size.

What is the best codec to use to compress a file and get it to be viewed by most people? I'm thinking Divx but how many "normal" users will this alienate?

What is the best file format to use? (I'm thinking mpeg)

When using Premier do you need to make an AVI file then convert it with another program to mpeg? (if so, what "other programs" are good?)

Is this statement true: AVI is to MPEG as WAV is to MP3? (ie AVI and WAV are the raw data formats)

If I was to digitize video to save to harddrive and then turn around and make a SVCD or later a DVD, what is the best format/size to use?

** I know these are very simple questions that may have many different opinionated answers but if you have some input into any of these questions I would greatly appreciate it. Or if you can point me to a place to find this information that would be just as well. **

[pathfindr]

...i'm surprised no one replied at all, not even one word/suggestion.

i think it's best to post your videos either as simple .avi or .mpg files on websites, because a lot of "average" users/visitors won't have the necessary fancy DivX codecs installed on their computers.

well, that's all i can say, can someone help out by answering these questions please?

[shiny#3]

welcome to the forum visconti

if you want to put it om the net
you should also decide if you want to have it as stream
format video o if you just want people to download it.

for highest compatibility to the greatest number of users
I would recommend that you use the windows media encoder
to compress your video to 8 mb of size.

this will most likley end up in an wma or asf stream
containing the video in mpeg4 v2 format and the audio
in windows media aoudio format.

for compressing it to use wit svcd you must need an mpeg2
format. note that you also will have to change resolution.
it is 480x576 for a PAL SVCD @ a framerate of 25 fps
and 480x480 for a Ntsc SVCD disk at a framerate of 29.97.

good luck