• Avid Media Composer

  Best Export Format for Download

  Posted by Ken Evans on October 1, 2012 at 11:43 am

  I’ve got a 2 hour programme I’ve been working on for a customer who wants to make it available online.

  Not sure what the best option is for quality and download speed. At h.264 we can get it down to 6GB at 720p but I think it can be made smaller with minimal quality affect. What about MKV and how can I encode to this on a Mac? Want to keep it HD obviously.

  Any suggestions as to the best format that will also be the format the customer uses so it needs to be something universal regards platform and as playable as possible on older machines.

  Many thanks!

  Kenny.

  Senior Technician, Moving Image Department – Kingston University London.

  Ken Evans replied 13 years, 7 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  John Pale

  October 1, 2012 at 12:25 pm

  Your Avid MC purchase probably included Sorenson Squeeze. Send your sequence to it and try one of the H264 presets there. You should be able to get it compressed more efficiently , and with better quality than a direct Avid export.

  MKV is actually a container (just like QuickTime). In many cases, the file compression is H264 as well. Though it is actually pretty cool, I think the general public is fairly clueless about it and it will end up causing you grief if you use it.
• 

  Ken Evans

  October 3, 2012 at 9:52 am

  I’ve just been trying this out, cheers for the heads up. Using VP8 in an MKV container I got the file down to under a gig with virtually no quality degradation.

  It’s insane but it really does appear to work.

  Senior Technician, Moving Image Department – Kingston University London.

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