New video sizes and formats?

I usually download everything I watch on Giantbomb and then pack it up on my Zune to watch somewhere else. I've been doing this for a few years and haven't had any problems.

It looks like the staff changed the sizes of certain videos though and maybe the format? Any video in the past month is a little lager in the "high" quality option and is taking forever to convert and sync. The old format for "high" would just transfer to my Zune in a few seconds, but now its having to convert it. Just wondering what was changed and if there's any way around the conversion?

Yeah, the high-quality videos tend to be closer to a gig now.

Yep, I'm in the exact same situation as you. Unfortunately I haven't found a workaround yet.

So it turns out the Mobile format doesn't have to be converted. Does anyone know if there's an actual difference in format between Mobile and Medium?

All the bit rates except "Low" has been increased. The HD bit rate is now 4000 k, up from 3500k.

Also see this:

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/bug-reporting-33/giant-bomb-video-faq-1425594/#0

@rchen: I'm ok with the bit rates changing with the times, however I've noticed that the compressor settings for Mobile seem to have changed to drastically lower the quality during motion, whereas they weren't before. If I was encoding them myself, I would think I switched it to 1-pass instead of 2.

I'm ok with upping my default RSS feed quality (I'm thrifty, so what) but the new Mobile quality settings are almost unwatchable for most videos. And again, it was pretty good before the site change. The SimCity QL is 1 hour and 188MB at Mobile quality. Here is a screenshot of it blown up to 1920x1080, on a frame static for several seconds.

Hmm...if you can provide me with specific details about what is optimal for you with specific encoding information (such as bit rate, 1 or 2 pass etc,) I can probably change the encoding settings.

A lot of people seem to be having problems with the new video encoding settings as well. I'll also head over to the video team tomorrow and ask them what can be changed for optimal video quality.

Thanks for your help!

I agree with the relatively un-watchable mobile videos. I only download them because of bandwidth issues and prior to the new site launch, they were great. Now, any movement on the screen renders the picture a blurry mess and un-viewable.

Thanks!

@rchen: Well I don't think I can advise you guys on the nitty gritty industrial strength encoder settings... all I can say is "what were the settings in January? Try those again." :)

Thanks to @horton84for the confirmation.

Ok I spoke to some people about this. Will get back to you guys with an update soon.

Changed some video encoding settings today (yesterday technically), specifically Key frames to 10s instead of 2...we'll see if that helps any