Compressing Video for the Web

[stoid]

I want to put a portion of a video that I edited together onto the web. Edited in FCP, compressing using QT Pro. After playing around with numerous different compression, all looking like crap, I finally decided that I'd download a trailer from Apple.com/trailers, and duplicate those settings. I matched the settings as best I could, and even though I'm compressing at a lower resolution 320x186 (compared to 480x272) at similar bit rates of Sorenson 3, I'm still getting very blocky compressed video, and certainly nothing like the video I've downloaded. I've played with setting the keyframe interval with varied success, but again nothing like what the downloaded movie looks like.

Do they have special compression software that uses a different Sorenson 3 than QT Pro converts to? I'm starting to get exceedingly frustrated!

 

[AliensAreFuzzy]

Did you try using compressor, the compression software that comes with FCP?

 

[superbovine]

what resolution is the original video starting at?

 

[stoid]

I originally edited letter-boxed DV-NTSC 720x480. I scaled to square-pixels and truncated the black bars so that I have a 640x372 video encoded in DV-PRO and looks great.

I am using FCP 3 for this, so I don't have Compressor. Furthermore, compressor is only for MPEG encoding, and it seems that Sorenson 3 is the standard for Apple's trailers.

 

[Hoef]

I originally edited letter-boxed DV-NTSC 720x480. I scaled to square-pixels and truncated the black bars so that I have a 640x372 video encoded in DV-PRO and looks great.

I am using FCP 3 for this, so I don't have Compressor. Furthermore, compressor is only for MPEG encoding, and it seems that Sorenson 3 is the standard for Apple's trailers.

Also play with "Limit data limit" and uncheck "key frame at ...". I had some crappy results until I boosted the data limit. Also, what is your quality setting?

BTW ... oddly enough in one project I had better results rendering my clip directly in After Effects to Sorenson 3. I usually export in lossless animation and than do compression in QT or compressor.

 

[wrc fan]

Do they have special compression software that uses a different Sorenson 3 than QT Pro converts to? I'm starting to get exceedingly frustrated!

Yes, they use Sorenson Video Pro 3. So unless you want to spend $450 to publish this one video, I'd recommend that you use either Apple's mpeg4 or use a divx encoder (like ffmpegx), as I've found both to result in a higher quality video at the same filesize than the standard Sorenson video that ships with Quicktime.

 

[LordRPI]

Yes, they use Sorenson Video Pro 3. So unless you want to spend $450 to publish this one video, I'd recommend that you use either Apple's mpeg4 or use a divx encoder (like ffmpegx), as I've found both to result in a higher quality video at the same filesize than the standard Sorenson video that ships with Quicktime.

If you want to go right from Final Cut Pro to DivX without using anothe routside application, you can use the DivX QuickTime component that will allow FCP export. This stuff will look better than anything Sorenson3 can handle. You can find the codec here and here.

 

[7on]

you could always drag it into iMovie and use the "Export to Web" function. Pretty quick and dirty but it gets the job done.

 

[LordRPI]

you could always drag it into iMovie and use the "Export to Web" function. Pretty quick and dirty but it gets the job done.

The PSNR of DivX compared to the PSNR of Apple MPEG-4 makes Apple's version look like child's play. Although, their H.264 codec should be promising.

 

[AmigoMac]

I remember the first thing I did when I published our first video on the web was:

go to http://homepage.mac.com/steve and see what settings that video had (More than 1 year ago), after that I started to play with frame rates and, as posted before, that "Key frame" thing is better to have it unchecked, MPEG4 compression is really fine, I don't know about divx compression but I'd to try it as well...