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Workflow question
I’m looking for advice on how to improve my workflow. Here’s the skinny:
I was emailed a :15 video that I want to add some music to. The video is a 2MB mp4, with a res of 720×404. That’s all I know about the video. I don’t know how it was compressed or anything, but they must’ve done some serious compression to get it down to 2MB. (I posted something earlier about this video, but for different reasons)
I drop the video onto a timeline and add the jingle. That’s it for the editing.
I go to export, select H.264/Match source-high bitrate up at the top (figuring this would be best quality), name the file, ignore the estimated file size of 18MB down at the bottom, and export it. The file size actually shows up as 8MB. Better, but still 4x the original size.
I open this new file in Compressor, assign it the mp4 preset, and run it. File size is now 1.6MB, however, it looks like I’ve lost some clarity. The dude’s face doesn’t look as sharp. Something is wrong. I’ve tried different Compressor presets, but none seem to do any better. Workflow fail. Would appreciate anything, thanks.
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7 Replies
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So you’ve been handed a highly compressed file, asked to add music to it, and you do, highly compressing it again to get it back to a similar file size. Yeah, it’s bound to lose clarity and resolution. YOu are stepping on an already stepped on video file.
What they need to do is supply you with the original. But I guess they aren’t doing that as they were supplied this final by another production entity, and that entity most likely has it, but they don’t want to go back to them for some reason.
There SHOULD be a way to simply add audio to that QT file, and leave the video alone. QT Pro might do this. But, is there already audio on the clip? Doing this you might either wipe out that audio, or add tracks.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Yeah, there is audio on it already (a VO). I hear what you’re saying, and since it seems like you’re right about not getting the original video, how would your workflow differ from mine? Thanks.
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Well, I would let the client know about the technical issues…that adding audio to an already compressed video file means that I might need to recompress it again, and that no matter what, the quality of that video will decrease, as I’m compressing already compressed video. And that to get a similar file size, it might look worse.
WARN them of that possibility, because that might be what you might end up doing.
BUT…maybe you can just take the VO…so drop the clip onto a timeline, but only the audio part of it. Add your music. Export an audio file…MP3 or AAC. And then see if you can replace the audio on the original video clip with your new audio. QT 7 Pro might be able to do this. I’ll have to see what I can do when I’m done working…see if it’s possible.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Heyyyy, I see what you’re saying here. While I don’t have QT 7 Pro (yet), should your results prove favorable this sounds like the ticket. Color me anxious. I hope to hear from you soon, thanks a bunch.
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OK, I was able to do this with QT 7 Pro…which unfortunately is no longer available to buy. The only way to get it is to have FCP Studio installed…the old legacy version. I wonder if another app will allow you to do this.
ANYWAY….what I did was import the original movie into Premiere, add a music track, and then export ONLY audio…as an AAC 44.1 128mbits. This matched the audio that already existed. I then duplicated the original video, opened the duplicate, opened the MOVIE PROPERTIES. And then opened the audio file in QT. I adjusted the In and OUT points of teh clip to include the full clip, COPIED the audio (CMD-C), parked the playhead at the head of the video in the copied file, and chose EDIT>ADD TO MOVIE. Now I had TWO audio tracks listed. I deleted the existing one, and only kept the one I modified. I then saved the movie (It made a new file). Bammo.
The original file was 64MB (a video I downloaded from YouTube) and the new file was 69MB. Zero video quality loss.
There has to be another app out there that allows for editing of QT files like this…
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
You might be able to replace the audio track with FFMPEG.
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Thanks for the legwork there, Shane. I’ll keep all of this in mind the next time I’m given an already crunched video clip. Cheers.
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