Render settings for mobile phones?

[Ryan Holmes]

[Mike MacKenzie] ” I initially tried .m4v’s out of Quicktime 7, just because they had an iPhone preset, but those look like crap on an actual iphone. Tried rendering out .mp4s at 864×486, rate os 3.5 min/max. looks ok but 2 minute vid ends up being 56mb, which seems a bit heavy for phones.”

You’ve just summed up the challenge of compression! 🙂 You have to determine what are acceptable losses: (1) Visual quality (lower data rate) or (2) Big file sizes (higher data rate).

I’m not sure what version of Adobe Media Encoder you’re running. Adobe CC has some pretty good encoder presets for mobile. For our exports everything goes out as h.264 mp4’s. I think that hits the widest amount of devices (iPhone/iPad/Android/Window Phone). Depending on your target market and CDN you may be able to get away with a 56MB (I’m assuming you meant MB and not mb as you wrote…there is a substantial difference between the 2. With Wi-Fi, 4G, and LTE speeds a 56MB file can be handled by most modern smartphones.

Here’s some good reading on Compression that might help you find that sweet spot for file size vs data rate:
(1) https://www.vimeo.com/help/compression
(2) https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Mike Mackenzie]

Very helpful, thanks!

Motion Graphics Designer / Art Director
Boston, MA

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