The Video Export Editor is a separate application to Samarium and works without affecting Samarium in any manner. It has an encoder which scans all installed encoding codes before making them available for selection. Video output size, frame rates, and compression setting can be adjusted. Only one instance of the editor may be run with Samarium and only a single file can be encoded at a time.
Samarium Video Editor window
To enable video export and for safety reasons, the first step is to create a project once the editor has been launched from Samarium or by itself. Project and global settings can be changed based on the user preferences. It is recommended that the "Create new folder" and "Save project before encoding" settings be used to save time in case of any changes required after encoding (for example, a smaller file size or a different output video size may be desired).
Frames can be added directly from Samarium or from the "get frame from master application" menu item. Frame properties can be individually controlled and some effects such as fade in and out can be inserted.
Editor window shown with several frames added and with transition effect
After addition of frames, several settings can be adjusted such as frame size and frame rate. Customized text with the filename or any other message can be optionally chosen. Samarium automatically adds the Samarium logo to the video, there is no option to prevent this addition. Once this is completed, the "Encode" button or menu item is clicked to bring up the encode options. The encoder checks for all available encoding codes available on your PC and allows selection of them. Samarium does not contain any encoding codecs and these have to obtained by the end user. There are several commercial and free encoding codecs available. Configuration of the selected encoder is also enabled.
Video compression and encoding codes available on a PC
Encode in progress
Once encoding has been completed, the output AVI file can be checked for quality and size. Any required changes can be made by changing the settings and encoding again. We hope that this feature proves to be useful for making animations easily that can be sent to other engineers, customers, and can be used during presentations.
Choosing video encoding options
Choosing size
Selecting appropriate size of video not only affects file size, but also whether particular playing device will be able to play it all.
Choose small size (between 176x144 and 352x288):
| • | if you intend the video to be playable on PDAs and mobile phones |
| • | if you need video to be of small size that can be transferred over Internet |
| • | if you just want to get a rough impression of eventually higher quality video |
Choose normal size (between 640x480 and 800x600):
| • | for most regular purposes like viewing on monitor and television screens, projectors, presentations |
| • | if you plan to record video to DVD |
Choose large size (between 1024x768 and 2048x1152):
| • | if you need high quality for viewing on high resolution computer monitors and projectors |
| • | if you plan to record video to high-definition formats (Blu-ray, HD DVD, WMV-HD) |
Choosing quality
Choose a codec capable of achieving reasonably high compression (DIVX, XVID, WMV9, ...):
| • | if you don't plan to do any further editing of video |
| • | if you want a good compromise between quality and file size |
Choose a codec not compressing highly, but maintaining higher overall quality (DV, H.264, ...):
| • | for higher quality purposes and optionally later editing |
Choose non-compressing codec ("Full frames", H.264 losless, ...):
| • | if you need to preserve original quality |
| • | if you need later editing |
Video Compression dialog box
Compressor
Lists all installed codecs. Note it is normal that some codecs, due to being still in development, would not work. It is recommended to select well-known codecs like XVID or ffdshow/WMV9.
"Full frames (uncompressed)" saves frames at highest quality, but with largest size, without applying any compression.
Compression quality
Drag the slider to select higher or lower quality. Higher quality also means larger file size.
Key frame every
Determines whether every x-th frame will be declared a key frame. Key frames are saved into output file in their entirety, while all the rest of the frames usually contain just differences from previous frame. Obviously, this is one way to compress data and get smaller resultant file.
Lower number of key frames leads to smaller file size, but it also means it will be more difficult for player application to navigate within the file (e.g. perform fast-forward action).
It is recommended to have a key frame at every scene change, and every few seconds. For short length videos, a reasonably value might be to have a key frame every second - this means sets a "key frame every" setting to be equal to number of frames per second.
Some codecs do not allow setting a key frame, or every frame is a key frame. This does not negatively influence video quality.
Data rate
Allows choosing of video data rate - how many bytes are, in average, needed to be transferred in one second, for the video to play.
Rough values for orientation are:
- 100 kB/s = video to play on mobile phones or heavily compressed video from Internet
- 1 MB/s = approximately standard-definition analogue television quality
- 10 MB/s = highest possible DVD quality
- 50 MB/s = high quality of high-definition media
Most reasonable default value would be around 1 MB/s.
Some codecs do not allow choosing the data rate.
Configure
This button opens the advanced settings dialog box for currently selected codec. It is normal that it is disabled for some codecs, as not all support this functionality.
The advanced settings dialog box is codec-specific.