Digital Workshop

I know this topic has been discussed many times before, but most of those threads are several years old now and none of the advice in them has worked for me.

I'm trying to create a tutorial in Opus Pro 6 which has roughly two hours of video (with audio) in it. Currently all of the videos are in MPEG-1 format and the functionality is fine within Opus, although the video quality isn't incredible. The main problem however is the publication exe file is 1.3gb, which is too much as we want to send out the tutorial on CDs.

WMV produces better quality videos at a much lower filesize, but Opus crashes everytime I pause the video and then try to resume it. I've tried every version of WMV format Sony Vegas can render, I've tried using Windows Media Encoder, I've tried looking for codecs on the Internet; nothing will make it work.

I tried MPEG-4 and that was a lower filesize and did work in Opus, but we can't use a format which isn't widespread yet; we need a format which will work on the most basic XP business machines with no codecs or other installs needed for playback within Opus.

If anyone could give me any advice whatsoever, I'd be extremely grateful.

What you've not mentioned is the video dimensions. But based on the other criteria, notably the need for XP default compatibility - you'll need to use MPG1 and for 2 hours of video 1.2gb is not bad.

A VCD is designed to hold about 74mins of VHS quality MPG1 video on a 650mb disc therefore depending on what resolution you've chosen, this seem reasonable. Personally, I've also found that the settings in Vegas cause both MPG1&2 to produce better, but larger video than some other programs.

MPG1 and WMV9 (?) are the only two default codecs in XP and the latter is too new, at the time, to be much good. MPG1 is well establish and does it's job well as many here will contest for decent reasonable sized video.

If you have other video formats playing under Opus, then you must have additional codecs installed and many of these 'packs' can cause the crashing errors associated with pause, seek, etc of video control.

Regards,

Mack

The video dimensions are 640 x 480.

Based on what you've said, it looks like we will have to go down the DVD route, but I guess it was worth a try asking.