We recently updated all of our licenses to Build 763, in particular because of noted improvements in the 3D viewer. Specifically, I have a question/suggestion regarding the generation of digital video clips.

The changes with Build 763 include the switch to WMV format (from AVI). It seems as though there is also less control over video quality/file size. With the switch to WMV format, when generating digital video clips, we now only have "low", "medium", or "high".

Over the past few weeks, I've put together a couple Synchro networks real quick for some project interviews, with the intention being to show a short 3D video clip during the presentation.

Before we switched to Build 763 (using Build 761), I was able to create an AVI file, 1.5 minutes long, what we deemed "good" quality (i.e. not too grainy, etc...), and the file size was 33MB (very reasonable).

With the switch to Build 763, the "medium" quality setting isn't good enough. The video looks very grainy and is not something that I think is acceptable for a project interview. When we switched to "high" quality, the image quality was good, but now the file sizes are huge. we created a 3 min WMV file, and it's 475 MB. (for apples to apples comparison, a 3 minute AVI file from Build 761 would be approx 66 MB, or twice the file size of the 1.5 minute clip).

Is there anything that can be done. video files that are ~500 MB can be cumbersome to use and play. Can we get more quality choices between medium and high? Are there different video encoders that we could use? Any insight into the big change in file sizes?

Thanks,
Jason

I should add that in both cases, we have aerial photograph backgrounds behind the synchro network.

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the feedback on build 763 of the 3D Viewer. We really appreciate it. I spoke with the programmers on this will improve the control over the video output.

Thanks again,

John

John,

After having tried generating wmv files today for the first time using build 763, I concur with Jason's assessment of the quality degradation when compared with the output from the previous build.

Is there any word as to when the next build will be out?

Thanks,

-Matt