Looking for best H264 QT and H264 MPEG4 settings

[Bill Ravens]

unless your clips are very short…like on the order of a few seconds…you’ll not have much joy sending any video files via email. Most email servers limit attachments to less than 1 Mb.

[Rob Ray]

Actually,we’re talking about :30 and :60 SD and HD Avid sequences. I’ve been charged with finding optimal QT export settings to send these sequences via email. I realize the size of the seqs make this prohibitive.For some reason the powers that be would rather use email than an ftp site. Long story.
So I’m wondering if there are any optimal QT settings to send sequences through email.

[Rob Ray]

I realize the size of the seqs make this prohibitive.Still,I’m wondering if there are any optimal QT settings to send sequences through email.

[Ed Cilley]

[rob ray] “what are the optimal QT/H.264 export settings to use”

Rob, this is one of those questions that has been posted on the Cow many times. We are all looking for the optimal file type/settings.

Regarding file size. Many corporations I have worked with do have a limit on file size, but almost any good size company will allow a file of at least 5MB. Other email servers (yahoo, google) will allow much larger files. I have sent files as large as 10MB through email – but I made sure the client could handle that.

So, depending on how you make your files, you will have to run some tests of clips and find a good “default” for your product. Start with some basic settings and make several versions, tweaking as you go.

There are also some encoding programs (Telestream Episode, Squeeze) that will allow you to set up watch folders and whenever a file lands in the folder it does x, y and z.

I know that isn’t the exact answer you are looking for, but I’m not sure optimal settings exist for every project.

Ed

Avid and FCP Preditor
_________________________________________________
Anything worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
– Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

[Rob Ray]

POint taken,Ed. Thanks for the advice. I”ll be testing on and off so that our editors have a setting that we all use…that is the aim of my testing. Everyone seems to be using different settings. One thing for certain is that,for some reason,the receivers of our QT files dont want to use our ftp site anymore…they simply want the promos e-mailed to them. THey’re basically all 30 or 60 SD (some HD) Avid sequences.
WE dont have a lot of room….I know the size usually cant be more than 10 MB,and is almost always larger than 1 MB.