Otohiko wrote:My current plan for the final release is still the same. I've been thinking about compression options, but unless people are strongly (and vocally in favour) of a fancy h264 release - I plan a conventional, 640x480 24fps XviD for the final.
I say it all depends on size. If the xvid is say 100 meg and the h264 is 80 meg well, who really cares? If the xvid is 200 meg and the h264 is 150 meg then we're starting to talk where it makes sense to do h264. Given the length of the project I suspect we're getting into the area where the size savings actually make a difference. OTOH h264 is, currently at least, harder to play back for most people. Ideal would be to have both although that'd require external hosting.
Now, there was ONE nasty problem (there always is one, huh): Zaphod Beeblebrox has disappeared off the face of the .org and has not responded to messages since early october. I do not have his final track, and his beta was not even complete - forget quality concerns. The current plan for that is "oto to the rescue!", where I plan to take the same anime he used and pull a similar idea. I think that would be more than fair.
Be honest. Use what you have and just pop up a short 'We could not get a final copy from this user. Here is the beta that was used to generate lines for the segment after it'. You might want to openly mock him for abandoning things as well but that's up to you.