1.

Whichever approach you take Super© takes several moments to start. That gives you time to take a deep breath ... because when it does the window that appears seems daunting:

2.

DON'T PANIC !

This panel offers  lots of choices but we examine each option later on the page. The program stores your choices and after the first time you use Super© it will all seem much less daunting.

We will examine each section of the panel in turn.

By the way you should always use the most up-to-date version of the program. Yours may be later than this one and show a different date on the top line.

Basics

Life isn't simple. Nor are video files. Each file consists of:

• a wrapper (identified for example as AVI, MP4, MOV and so on)
  
• a type of compression (identified by the name of the codec - coder/decoder - which did the job)
  
• a sound element (e.g. AAC, WAV) with various criteria like mono/stereo, frequency of sampling and channel.
  
• A video element with various criteria like frame size, aspect, number of frames-per-second.

Luckily we only need make the settings once and Super© will remember them for future use.

By the way, that M at top right opens the menu and right-clicking anywhere on the panel has the same effect. One menu option is "Output File Saving Management" - which lets you navigate to the folder where you want to store the results of your processing.

3.

Select the Output Container

Here we choose the type of wrapper.

Near top left are two circles. Make sure the green dot is in the top one.

Click the triangle at the right of the "Select the Output Container" box and an enormous list of options appears. (We have shown only the first part of it here.) Click on "MP4" to select that.

If your eyes are sharp you may notice that when you choose a wrapper format the other options on the panel change slightly. Changes also happen in the drop-down selections you make next.  Super© tries to help by offering choices appropriate to the chosen wrapper.

Manufacturers often use the description "MP4" loosely. The official description is in ISO/IEC 14496-14:2003. It is a wrapper which can contain digital audio and digital video streams, but also still images, subtitles and other data.

4.

Select the Output Video Codec

Here you choose the Codec (type of compression) to apply.

Clicking the triangle at the right of the "Select the Output Video Codec" box and a list of viable options is presented.

Many items on the list seem tempting, but for our purpose choose "H.264/AVC".

The H.264/AVC standard was agreed in 2003. It offers good video quality at substantially lower bitrates than previous standards (e.g. half or less the bit rate of MPEG-2, H.263, or MPEG-4 Part 2). There are later, even better codecs, but as yet few video hosting websites handle these. 

5.

Select the Output Audio Codec

Here we choose the type of audio to use. Clicking the triangle at the right of the "Select the Output Audio Codec" box and a list of viable options is presented. For our purposes choose "AAC LC."

AAC=Advanced Audio Coding and LC=Low Complexity.

6.

Internal Encoders

The "Direct Show Decode" provides an option to use the coding tools provided with Windows Media Player. These can be faster than the other options, but results are variable and not guaranteed on Windows 98 or Windows ME systems.

7.

Video Qualities

The next row lets us specify the size, shape and quality of the video output. We will take each part of it in turn:We can safely ignore the first choices. Leave these boxes unticked.

Disable Video is an option for those who want to extract only the soundtrack from a movie.
Stream Copy does not change the input video and may be used by people who want to keep the same video format but change the sound format.

Click the box beside the word "More" and another list appears which includes sizes we want. A second click in the box puts a tick in it and offers custom aspect ratios. If that happens by accident just click again on the tick and it vanishes.

The "More" option allows custom rates to be entered. Generally you should choose the same frame rate as your original video. Some of the rates offered were used when people tried to watch video on dial-up connections and some flicker was accepted in order to keep file sizes small.

Start as shown with the highest bitrate which will give best quality. The catch is that it may also make the file too big to fit DailyMotion's 2Gb limit. If that happens, try again but with a smaller bitrate. Even the lowest figure in the DailyMotion range (1200Kbps) gives acceptable results.

You can tick various options here. We suggest you click in the box beside "Top Quality" to place a tick there.

8.

Audio Qualities

We can safely ignore the first choices. Leave these boxes unticked. Disable Audio is an option for those who want to extract only the video from a movie.

Sampling Frequency - DailyMotion recommend 44.1KHz = 44100Hz.

Channels - click in an empty circle of you want  to select it. 1 is mono, 2 is stereo and 6 is for 5.1 surround sound. We suggest 2.

Bitrate - DailyMotion recommend 256 Kilobytes per second for stereo AAC. (We suggested AAC  at step 5.)

DVD Language - not relevant if you are uploading files shot on your camcorder. DVDs have provision for soundtracks in different languages, commentaries and so on. Each of those is numbered so you could choose (say) the French language track.

9.

Output

10.

Input

After  processing the size of the output file will appear on the right of this panel.

11.

Playback etc

Encode (Active Files) - active files are those with a tick beside their name in the Input panel. This button starts the encoding process. Processing can take some time, but you will see a report on progress just above the Input Panel.

Play (Active Files |Streams) - uses Super©'s built-in video player to show you what your input file looks like.

Player Options - lets you adjust brightness, contrast and so on.

After encoding the Play The Last Rendered File button uses the built-in player to show you what the output looks like.

An ERROR has occurred. Click to read more... lights up if something goes wrong. Clicking it brings up a report which may reveal what went wrong. Common problems are settings which are not compatible with the original file.

Cancel All - er ... cancels all processing!

Note: By default Super© stores the output files in a slightly odd place: C:/Program Files/eRightSoft/SUPER/OutPut
You can change that by right-clicking on Super© and from the menu which appears choosing "Output File Saving Management". This opens a dialog box which lets you choose a different folder anywhere on your computer. It offers a few more options, which you can safely ignore.

12.

Start

Click Encode (Active Files) and let the program work. It likes to hog as much computer power as possible, so it is helpful to close other programs and wait while it works.

If the output file is still too big for your video host's limits, try amending the settings. Reducing the video bitrate to 1,200 drops the file size to about 87%. The biggest difference is to change the video size from 640x480 to 320x240 which results in about 37%.

Remember that the aim is to get just under the top file size allowed by your video host, which gives the best possible quality.

Don't worry too much about this. By the time the film is seen by users this difference in quality will not be all that evident!