We recently did some work for a Canadian marketing company whose client was in need of a kiosk for a resort selling Time Shares.

The work involved lighting and shooting actors getting the royal treatment for seeing what the resort had to offer, and in turn, having a free weekend stay at the resort. The video was edited, graphics and logos added, and then exported as a file for the server to be played at various computer stations assisted by their salesman. The computers were located at various key locations throughout the New York, New York Casino on the Las Vegas strip.

The file was exported to Cleaner off the timeline, then compressed as a MPEG-1 file. Because of the type of file used, at full screen, the picture had quite a few artifacts. I then suggested to the client to change their codec standard to MPEG-4 on the server. This would raise the ratio of quality vs. file size be quite a margin.

After showing them a few examples loaded on their server, they agreed. Future work and revisions were then uploaded to them via Cox Cable modem as MPEG-4 files. Dailies and approvals as well as uploads/downloads times were quicker. The overall video played better and looked cleaner with MPEG-4 vs. MPEG-1. Knowing what your clients needs are, and having a good understanding of their best options, will be a win-win situation for both you and the customer.