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All MPEG 4 compressions not alike?
Recently did an edit in FCPX and shared it out to an h.264 file. Because our in-house FTP has a hard 2 gig limit, I had to shrink the H.264 video down a bit more to jam that goat down the snake, as it were. Two easy ways we do this in our shop use MPEG Streamclip or FLV Crunch. I chose MPEG Streamclip this time, made an MPEG4 encode and sent it to the client. Never before have we had any issues….
…Until yesterday when the client downloaded the file and complained of artifacts, thin horizontal red lines, randomly peppered all over the video, when viewed on a PC with Windows Media Player.
I re-did the MPEG compression using standard settings in FLV Crunch, starting with the same source media, and the problem seems solved.
What I wish I knew was what made the difference between the two encodes, and why the artifacting only seems to happen in Windows Media, which I’ve described as having an “allergy” to encodes made with MPEG Streamclip. I’ve suggested the client get MPEG Streamclip or VLC Media player instead of using Windows Media, but that’s not an optimal solution for many reasons I won’t get into here.
Your thoughts?
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5 Replies
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My suggestion would be to create a private version on Vimeo so they can see the content is fine. Decoders can choke badly.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training -
Thanks. Makes sense. But this is one of those times when the client dictates the workflow and the tools used. Never said I liked it that way, it’s just the reality constraints I have to work with. A LOT of our clients use Windows media by default and by in-house rules, so my solutions have to adapt to their situation. I’ll have to try a test with Compressor and MPEG4 some time, when the heat’s off.
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I would suggest a 2-gig hard limit on your internal FTP is the real issue here. That would have been ok 10 years ago but at this point that’s incredibly restrictive. I just uploaded a bunch of 10 minute clips to YouTube that ranged from 2-8GB each compressed.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training -
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Turbo.264 Software Edition does a good job of retaining quality at lower bit rates. It’s also fast.
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Brett Sherman
One Man Band (If it\’s video related I\’ll do it!)
I work for an institution that probably does not want to be associated with my babblings here.
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