How to export great looking Quicktimes

[Jason]

Oh, and, I of course set it to “BEST” for the quality.

[Bill Willins]

I don’t think you’ll ever get good looking “clean” QuickTime movies with a data rate at 150 kb/sec. I normally set my data rate closer to 300 kb/sec before it looks good.

[Shane Ross]

The biggest difference is that those movies were compressed with the professional, PAID version of Sorenson 3. The Sorenson 3 codec they provide to Apple to include with QT has far less quality to it.

Want it to look like those trailers? Gonna have to buy Sorenson 3…or whatever is the new version of the Sorenson compression tool.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Shane Ross] “Want it to look like those trailers? Gonna have to buy Sorenson 3…or whatever is the new version of the Sorenson compression tool.”

It’s Sorenson Squeeze 4.1

The H.264 codec looks outstanding and I will soon be uploading all new clips to our website with that codec.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Chris Poisson]

Jason,

This will hel you do a fine job.

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/qt_movies_from_fcp.html

[David Robinson]

Jason, I think it may have just as much to do with your source material. The trailers you’re talking about are being compressed from source material of high quality film transfers.

[Jason]

Dang…nothing good is free I guess. $450 for Squeeze. I don’t suppose anyone out there would be game for donating a “squeeze”? It’s for a great cause….a doc on AIDS in Swaziland. We’re not making any money on it, so have no budget. Just trying to get it out there.

Lemme know: jason@chronicleproject.org
http://www.dearfrancis.org

[Charles Simonson]

As has been mentioned, the main reason the trailers you download look so good are because of the high quality source they are encoded from, and because the encoder used is the Sorenson Video 3 Professional encoder. The Pro SV3 encoder can be purchased without Squeeze, and I believe it only runs $199 (or maybe $299 if you are not upgrading). Sorenson does offer educational and NFP licenses, so maybe you can work something out with them. However, they don’t have a great reputation when it comes to responding to such calls.

Email me through my profile if you need additional help encoding your material.

[Glenn Chan]

If you can get an AVI file onto a PC, you can use Windows Media Encoder which will give really good quality (for free)- arguably better than Quicktime/sorenson3. It’s good to encode Windows Media anyways for compatibility, and let people pick and choose whatever’s appropriate for them and their bandwidth.

H.264 also looks really really good, although your audience will need QT7 to play it back (which most people won’t have, and windows users have the public preview).