[girliedrinker]

Just wondering if anyone knows how mobile video content is produced. What compression is used? What data rates? Frame rates and size? What software do the phones use to play the clips? Does anyone do this for a living (or know anyone who does)?

Sorry about all the questions but I'm finding it difficult to get any information about the subject, it's such an infant industry.

[Quilgy]

My Nokia 6600 uses Real Player to play .3gp video files. By the way, the manual also lists .amr, .mp4, .rm, .ram, .ra, .rv as possible formats for playback.

It goes on to say that video for mobile phones must conform to the 3GPP standard. Look that one up on Google. If you have a copy of Quicktime Pro, you can encode content directly in that application. I am not sure of exact data rates, but it should have some presets for that kind of content and I would suspect you would be looking at very low rates.

The video I have watched so far on my 6600 (even live TV streams) is fairly bad quality in comparison to broadband (of course) and is more like 56K (modem) quality images.

It was good enough to watch Saddam getting captured on CNN last night though!

The only other advice I have is that when shooting for playback on small screen, bandwidth limited devices, don't do too many pans and avoid fast moving objects because it will compress badly, and try to keep to close and mid-shots of your subject, as long shots will just come out like an indistinguishable blob if anything is moving.

[girliedrinker]

Thanks for your comments, they are useful. The reason I've asked is due to a project I'm doing involving the creation of video content for mobiles. The production of the video is not a problem, I have some experience of shooting for the web, but wanted to know about formats and the like. I have found some great information on the Nokia website (for starters) aimed at developers of video content. Do you have any video production experience, it sounds like you may have a background in this field?

Cheers.