VIDEO ENCODING & WIDESCREEN

One of the questions I'm asked the most is about video encoding. Which codecs to employ to get the best results when the videos are posted to the web, specifically places like Youtube. I must be in the minority because I don't really judge online video content by the quality of the resolution but I digress. The Best DVD Editing Software webpage has a blog up about video encoding and has all the numbers and technical crap you need to hog bandwidth. Nevermind that I think that the widescreen format doesn't work cinematically with most online videos. But its what the people want, and what the people want, they get. If you know your cinema history, and know why the widescreen format was invented then you know what its used for as a visual storytelling tool. If you don't, then you are probably just happy that your camera shoots in 16 x 9 and think its better to shoot widescreen than it is to shoot 4 x 3. Here is a hint, the aspect ratio or aperture should be in direct proportion to how many eyeballs are gonna be in the frame at one time and how to maintain the rule of thirds when keeping the eyeballs in the frame. If you have 2 eyeballs in most of your frames, shoot 4 x 3. If there are gonna be 4 eyeballs, shoot widescreen. Of course that leaves us with that to do with horses and western vistas.