• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Best client review compression?

  Posted by Max Frank on July 14, 2009 at 3:03 pm

  Hi there,

  At least once a week I need to send my clients drafts of the film I’m working on.

  My source footage the vanilla flavor of DV NTSC 4:3.

  I’m currently sending them .mp4’s set at the ‘Medium Broadband H.264’ preset.

  This gives me an ok quality at an ok file size [approx 100MB p/hour] – the screen size is small [320×240].

  I’d love to hear what you’re sending your clients. Ideally I’d be happy with around 200-250MB per/hour and a larger screen-size – whatever is the sweetspot.

  If you’re able to send me a droplet all the better.

  Thanks in advance,

  Wayne

  Max Frank replied 17 years, 1 month ago 6 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Bill Dewald

  July 14, 2009 at 3:07 pm

  Broadband – High?

  Personally, I always use medium. But I’m never having clients use this to judge the visual quality – which you can’t really do on any web video anyway.
• 

  Max Frank

  July 14, 2009 at 3:10 pm

  Hi Bill,

  I’ve found that, although ‘High’ is a larger file size, the quality isn’t that much of an improvement and not worth the extra bandwidth at all.

  Hence the appeal to the pasture.

  Tx,

  W

  osx 10.4.8 G5 2.0DP, 3.5GB RAM, FCP 5.1.2
• 

  Aaron Neitz

  July 14, 2009 at 3:23 pm

  Best thing to do is invent something you’re happy with. I detest most of the compressor presets:

  export 1 minute of footage. Take it into QT player and Export it. Play around with size, bitrate and audio codec until you get something that looks good and has the proper file size. (so about 20-25MB so that an hour will be 200-250)

  Then duplicate those settings in a new Compressor droplet. Plus you’ll probably want to add a de-interlace (with better quality)? Nothing worse than scanlines in a posting.
• 

  David Roth weiss

  July 14, 2009 at 3:33 pm

  Wayne,

  This is why Vimeo is so very useful. You can simply upload the SD video at full resolution and their encoder will automatically create a very high res Flash encode that streams beautifully from their dedicated servers without any file size concerns. And, you can easily password protect the video so that only selected people can see it, and because it can handle HD at 1280×720 with excellent results, your SD video will stream at very high res that you would be hard pressed to match when trying to send video files over the Internet.

  David

  David Roth Weiss
  Director/Editor
  David Weiss Productions, Inc.
  Los Angeles

  POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

  A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
• 

  Tom Matthies

  July 14, 2009 at 3:55 pm

  I send out lots of .wmv’s, H264 & even some Sorenson 3 files yet. Just depends on the client and what he has on his end and what he’s comfortable with.
  Tom

  Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.–Ferris Bueller
• 

  David Kulawick

  July 15, 2009 at 4:06 pm

  I use similar H.264 settings but use Adobe Media Encoder to wrap a .MOV in a PDF file. The client can mark that up and return a very light-weight xml document as an .xfdf file. I find this so useful I do so when using other application to do the editing. A QT reference movie out of the editor writes very quickly and serves as the input to AME.

  I should add that I’m running OSX and clients are various.
• 

  Max Frank

  July 16, 2009 at 12:56 pm

  Thanks all for taking the time to reply.

  Wayne

  osx 10.4.8 G5 2.0DP, 3.5GB RAM, FCP 5.1.2

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