[macbain80]

I can't imagine what forum to put this in, because it's such a general question. So here we go... I've got a Canon digital camera. Shoot a short clip on it, comes out as an .avi file. Bring it into Final Cut, or Quicktime or whatever, edit it, save as Quicktime Movie...

Only problem is, a thirty second movie goes in at 19 MB, comes out at 250MB!!!

I've searched every forum in gol darn internet land, and what would seem to be an incredibly common question seems never to have been asked!

So here it is, does anyone EVER edit movies taken on a digital camera and keep them a size you don't have to buy a new hard drive for? Is it physically possible?

P.S., I'm a professional Final Cut editor, and I can't figure the f'r out...

[GSixZero]

Originally Posted by macbain80

I can't imagine what forum to put this in, because it's such a general question.

Try the Digital Video & Audio forum.

[PurpleGiant]

It all depends on the compression you save your quicktime movie with. Try this. Open movie clip in Quicktime Pro - cut it up, rotate, do what you like with it. Now go to 'Export' instead of 'Save'.

Choose 'Movie to Quicktime Movie' as the format and click options. For the video codec, try using H.264. Only works in QT7, but is very good at keeping good quality at small sizes. For audio, use the AAC codec. Don't bother setting the audio bitrate very high, since the audio from your digital camera will be poor quality anyway.

This should give you very nice file sizes when you are finished.

[macbain80]

PurpleGiant, good idea with the H.264, I'll give it a shot, thanks!