Chapter 2 ■ an IntroduCtIon to Content CreatIon: 2d new MedIa asset FundaMentalsThe reason for this is because once these bits travel through a data pipe, they also need to be processed
and displayed onto the device screen. Thus, bit rates for digital video assets need to be optimized not only
for bandwidth but in anticipation of variances in CPU processing power. Some single-core CPUs may not
be able to decode high-resolution, high-bit-rate digital video assets without dropping frames. Make sure to
optimize low-bit-rate video assets if you are going to target older, or less expensive, consumer electronics
devices, like those used in third-world nations.
Digital Video Data Footprint Optimization: Important Settings for
Video Codecs
As you have learned in the previous section, digital video assets are compressed using software utilities
called codecs. There are two “sides” to the video codec: one that encodes the video data stream and the other
that decodes the video data stream. The video decoder will be part of your OS, platform (JavaFX), or browser
that uses it. The decoder is primarily optimized for speed, as smoothness of playback is a key issue, and the
encoder is optimized to reduce the data footprint for the digital video asset it is generating. For this reason,
the encoding process can take a longer time and depends on how many processing cores a workstation
contains. Most digital video content production workstations should support eight processor cores, like my
64-bit AMD OctaCore workstation.
Codecs (the encoder side) are like plug-ins, in the sense that they can be installed into different digital
video editing software packages in order to enable them to encode different digital video asset file formats.
Since Java and JavaFX 9 support the ON2 VP6 format natively and MPEG4, if it’s installed, you’ll need to
make sure you’re using one of the digital video packages that supports encoding digital video using one of
these digital video file formats.
It’s important to note that more than one software manufacturer makes MPEG4 encoding software, so
there will be different MPEG4 H.264 AVC codecs that will yield different (better or worse) results, as far as
encoding speeds and file size go. I prefer the MainConcept H.264 codec. A professional solution, which I
highly recommend that you secure if you want to produce digital video professionally, is called Sorenson
Squeeze Pro, and it supports ON2 VP6.
I will show you the digital video compression setting (Presets) dialog for Sorenson Squeeze Pro in
Figure 2-6, and then we will go over some of these important settings during the remainder of this section of
the chapter.