Compressing Quicktime

[Ed Dooley]

Of course. I am compressing a 65 gig movie right now for DVD. I recently compressed a 120 gig movie to DVD.
Nothing unusual about file sizes that big. What tools do you have? Are you on PC or Mac? Compressor, Squeeze,
ProCoder, ffmpegX, all kinds of apps will compress it.
Ed

[Mark Dershowitz]

Im not compressing for A DVD. I was able to compress to mpeg2. I got it down, to like 2.69gigs, but I need a quicktime movie, Audio and video together. Im on a Mac, and using Final cut pro, and compressor 2. I dont undersatand why, Mpeg2 is smaller then regular quicktime?

[Ed Dooley]

That’s why it pays to be clear in your questions. You could mean you’re compressing *from* a QT to a DVD, or *to* a QT (as it turns out,
is what you’re trying to do). The simple answer is *yes*, it’s easy to compress a file that size down to 4.3 gigs, or way smaller. What else
do you want to know? You can use H.264 if viewers have the latest QT Player, or use the QT6 compatible settings in Compressor if you
need broader compatability. You set a data rate that will make it the total maximum size you need.
Ed

[theguybehindtheguy] “Im not compressing for A DVD. I was able to compress to mpeg2. I got it down, to like 2.69gigs, but I need a quicktime movie, Audio and video together. Im on a Mac, and using Final cut pro, and compressor 2. I dont undersatand why, Mpeg2 is smaller then regular quicktime?”

[Mark Dershowitz]

Your right Ed I should have been more specific. I think the reason Im having the problem, is that I need the the movie to maintain 720×480 Which I dont think its possible. Is it?

[Ed Dooley]

Well, it’s definitely possible, but you may not be happy with the quality. A frame size that big will use up a lot of
the data rate to maintain quality. A question and possible suggestion. You mentioned that you need the audio
with the video (a program stream), and that you want QT. Is that because someone’s going to edit it further?
If it’s only because you want someone to view it, you could create an MPEG2 (which will look better than QT
compressed that much) with the audio embedded (again, a program stream). In Compressor under the Extras tab
in the Inspector, you have the option to choose Multiplexed MPEG1 audio. That will give you an MPEG2 for your DVD
with the audio in the stream, and at a decent quality. If that’s not an option you can break up your movie into segments
that will all fit on a DVD, and can be stitched together later. If you go the DVD route, you can use something like mpegstreamclip
to get it back to a QT.
Ed

[Theguybehindtheguy] “Your right Ed I should have been more specific. I think the reason Im having the problem, is that I need the the movie to maintain 720×480 Which I dont think its possible. Is it?”