Saving for Vimeo

We encourage the use of the free video hosting service, vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/) for your video projects.  In fact, for the Digital Media Competition, uploading to vimeo is a requirement.

Having your project on vimeo has the advantage very good quality, taking the burden of file storage and bandwidth usage off of your own server, and allows you to easily embed your video into a web page if you desire. For example, you can see an embedded video hosted on vimeo on our “About” page.

If you haven’t done so already, you can create a free account on vimeo on the sign up page here:http://www.vimeo.com/sign_up you do not need a “PLUS” account. Using a free account, you can upload 500 MB a week.

Tips for Saving Movie files for Vimeo

There are many video editing software packages that are available. What follows are some general guidelines. Specific examples using Windows Movie Maker and Apple’s iMovie are here:

Important! When using your video editing software you are working a file that can only

Although vimeo can accept a large number of file formats including: asf, asx, avi, divx, dv, dvx, m4v, mov, mp4, mpeg, mpg, qt, wmv, 3g2, 3gp, 3ivx and 3vx, they recommend that for best results you should use the following settings.

  • Codec:
    For video use H.264
    For audio use ACC
  • Frame Rate:
    Use “current” if that is an option or 29.97 (since we use NTSC in North America)
  • Keyframes:
    Use every 30 frames
  • Data Rate:
    In general for standard definition use 1800 kbits/sec
    For widescreen and HD, try higher values such as 2500 and 5000
  • Size:
    In general you can set this to 640 x 480.
    For widescreen, you should use 872 x 480 and for HD use 1280 x 720.
  • Deinterlace:
    If your software has this option, you will find it very useful for removing the horizontal lines that can occur from capturing video.
  • Sound Sample Rate:
    44.100 kHz
  • Audio Quality:
    Use a bit rate of 128 kbps