[Bill Kinkle]

What is the best way to compress a video? I recently finished a project and have a short 1 minute trailer i want to post online, but everytime I try to compress it it loks terrible. I am using FCP 2 and Cleaner 5. There is a 20 second intro with just white titles on black background and then a few short clips involved, I need the viewer to be able to read the clips, but don't want a huge file to download. Thanks in advance.

[Uncle Skeleton]

try installing 3ivx and compress with that

[k_munic]

Originally posted by Bill Kinkle:
What is the best way to compress a video? … Thanks in advance.

sorry to say that - ther is no best way.

sorenson is good (movie trailer at apples website)
mpeg4 is good (a very "apple" standard)
divx, from my point of view, is difficult.

using it on the web, sorenson is most used...- whatever this means.

you have lots of "knobs" to push for a good result...- just try.

[Uncle Skeleton]

the advantage of Sorenson is that it's included by default in QT5 (so people won't have to download anything). Other than that it is a poor performer (unless you pay lots for the pro version and for their encoding software and get very familiar with the settings).

MPEG-4 is included by default in QT6, but many people still don't have QT6, and 3ivx is better than Apple's codec, and if you wait for the impending release of 3ivx 4.1, Apple's codec will even play 3ivx-encoded content (but you can still tell people that if they download 3ivx it will look even better)

[teszeract]

Hi All

I was about to post a question about Sorenson 3 encoding, then found this thread. I am making video clips of my new son to pass on to family members who are using Windows.

I have decided to use Sorenson 3 encoding but, from my reading, there are numerous variables to consider: to wit - movie dimensions, FPS, key frames, data rate, processor speed of target machine...

*Does anyone know of tables/websites that explore these variables?*

I have tested out various permutations and it seems that if I try to produce a movie with large dimensions with Sorenson 3 encoding, very choppy playback results. I eventually used dimesnions of 480x360, 15fps, key frmae intervals of 150, and limited the data rate to 80. Comments?

Some articles that I have come accross suggest that your dimensions should be in multiples of 16; and key frame rates of 10 times the FPS.

OT: what are the default aspect ratios of PAL and NTSC?

[Nap]

Originally posted by teszeract:
Hi All




Some articles that I have come accross suggest that your dimensions should be in multiples of 16; and key frame rates of 10 times the FPS.

OT: what are the default aspect ratios of PAL and NTSC?

Quicktime for the Web (by Apple Computer) says to use height and width divisible by 4. Key frame interval of 10 times FPS works ok as an upper limit. Sorenson actually sets the key frame interval dynamically based on scene change detection so the large number just sets an upper limit for safety.
The default PAL frame size seems to be 352 x 288 while NTSC is 352 by 240. I say that based on the specifications for Video CDs, which should be close to the real aspect ratio. Those are close to 4:3 but I don't know what the exact figures ratios are. I guess you can figure it from those frame sizes if you are so inclined.