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Ideas for making the smallest decompressed AVCHD files possible
I’m working on a project where I need to send someone a lot of decompressed footage to do translation. I need to conserve space on the hard drive, and since the image quality isn’t important for the translator, I want to decompress the files to be as small as possible.
What are my options?
I decompressed using the intermediate pro res codec with FCP – what I assume is the smallest decompression AVCHD can do – but the files were still too large to fit everything I want on it.
The other alternative I have considered is decompressing with the intermediate codec and then running it through Quicktime 7 or Handbrake, some program that can let me further compress QT video.
Anyone have any other thoughts? Ideally, I can cut out the middleman and make smaller files through just Log and Transfer.
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3 Replies
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Use QT Player and make some H264 with reduced size (320×180) Make them “One Pass”. Data-rate 200Kbps and “Key-frames: AUTO”.
rafael -
Rafeael’s settings sound pretty solid.
Remember that you are doing two things here:
1) Transcoding the AVCHD media to a viewable/editable format.
2) Compressing for small file sizes and an easy send.
Since you already transcoded to prores (and I assume you are going to edit with that footage), you should use the .mov files created form the first transcode to compress to h.264.
I wouldn’t recommend Quicktime for the compression, since it doesn’t allow for easy batches. I would use Compressor or MPEG Streamclip.Also, don’t forget to convert the audio to the AAC codec. You will be amazed at how much space that will save.
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VIDEO: you can also cut your frame rate in half
AUDIO: as Olin says, dont forget to compress your audio.
make it mono,
and experiment with qualitynick
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