H.264 ?

[Chris Poisson]

Eric,

I recently re-did all the movies on my site in H.264, they originated in SD but I used a half-sized setting at 15 fps and they are small and just beautiful. Highly recommend you look into it.

[Vladislav]

But is it not true that Windows population still has problems with H.264? and since most computers out there are PCs using windows, you limiting who is going to see your movies? I agree, files encoded in H.264 look awesome, but how compatible are they with the rest of the world?

Vladislav Ponomarov
Post Production Supervisor / Producer
CAV Media Corporation
(707) 255-9467
vladislav@cavmedia.com

[Dan Riley]

Any PC owner that downloads iTunes 6 will automatically download
and install Quicktime 7 which plays h.264. If people want to see
the best quality videos, either WMV or Quicktime, they need to
download and install the latest players from both camps.

I have a question for the previous guy from his encoding knowledge:
If I encode using h.264 and it’s half size (320-240) it looks
fantastic. But if I encode at 640-480, I get jaggies on people
and opjects when they move. Looks like interlacing problem.
But I don’t seen any way to get rid of it.
Anyone know how to encode an SD timeline using h.264
at medium quality and 640 by 480, and not have those jaggies?

Thanks,
Dan

[Chris Poisson]

Vladislav,

If you’re on a PC and you go to my site, you will see that there are Windows media files there too.

[Chris Poisson]

Dan,

RE: size issue, later today I will do a test.

[Chris Poisson]

Dan,

I did a test from a 720×486 uncompressed 8bit spot with these settings:

15 fps, keyframe every 24 frames, quality medium, audio at 48,000 size 640×480. There is a fair amount of pans which strobe slightly, but notably less with QT’s high quality turned on. (command J)

But I have a couple questions, why do you want this size? In what are you viewing it? QT? Browser? Does it flicker in all of those?

[Eric Klassen]

When I viewed the Apple trailers, I had a choice to download three different sizes. The smallest seemed really big and the biggest, the Batman trailer, wouldn’t fit on my 21″ monitor because it was so wide. I don’t know exactly what those size settings would be, but it seems like the smallest setting was around 640X480 which I could watch immediately without interruption being on a widely shared T1 line. There certainly were no 320X240 sizes. I am sitting on the other side of seeing all this in disbelief that this size-quality could have downloaded so quickly. So without getting into actually doing this and testing it, is there anything I need to be aware of other than putting a Download-Quicktime 7 link on my site?

Thanks,
Eric

[Dan Riley]

Chris,

We are spending way too much on FedEx for clients to view our
roughcuts etc. Sometimes we send out 7 DVDs or VHS reels
at a time and it’s just crazy to do that these days. So we are
transitioning to having clients view stuff on your computer.
Most of them use PCs, so I have to work with them to get
it to work for them. Our shows are 28:30 in length.

I can post to a .mac account a 320/240 h.264
(or mpeg4 if they don’t have the latest quicktime on their PC) and it’s ok.
But these are people who are used to watching stuff on a
TV set, not on their computer screen. So if I encode at
640 by 480, the larger viewing size is less of a problem.
Also, they need to clearly see the supers and titles for
approval.

Like I said, when I encode the 320/240 size, it looks very good
but needs to be bigger. And that’s when the strobing/jaggies
start to show up, with the 640/480 size. I use 29.97 frames.
15 frames does not work for our stuff. Too jerky.
Even so, at 15 frames I still see the strobing on the larger size.

I’ve tried various settings, even Sorensen3, and it’s still strobing
on the larger size. Interestingly, if you take a 320/240 encode
and ask the quicktime player to double the size, there is no
strobing in the picture (just a smeary picture),
But if you take a 640/480 encode (which you see the
strobing/jaggies on) and you ask Quicktime player
to show half size, there is no strobing in that picture.

Dan