[Alan Okey]

Jakob,

I’m glad I was able to provide you with some helpful information. Let us know what codec ends up being a good choice for you for delivering files to clients. Good luck!

[Alan Okey]

[Jakob Mortensen] “Well i would assume that Apple has some possibility to offer a crossplatform codec rooted in the quicktime player if they really wanted to support cross platform portability, so I dont really buy that argument of yours. “

Animation
Apple Pixlet Video
Apple VC H.263
DV – PAL
DV/DVCPRO – NTSC
H.264
JPEG 2000
MPEG-4 Video
None
Photo – JPEG
PNG

All of these cross-platform codecs are included with Quicktime Player.

MPEG-1
MPEG-2 program stream
MPEG-2 transport stream

These options are available through Compressor.

The Apple ProRes 422 playback codec for Windows is available as a free download, as are AVID’s codecs. Panasonic may also offer DVCPRO HD codec as a free download (at least the playback component), but I’m not sure.

[Jakob Mortensen] “I have actually tried your suggestions before posting”

You failed to offer that fact in your post. In fact, your post contains almost no useful information about your problem to make it easy for this forum to offer useful suggestions. You could start by offering basic information such as what type of footage you are working with (format/codec/etc.), what type of Quicktime files you have tried creating that aren’t meeting your standards, and what the sub-standard footage looks like when you play it on a PC. Saying that “it looks terrible” offers no real information about what the problem might be. Is it too low of a bit rate in encoding, i.e. are you seeing compression artifacts? Is it gamma shift issues? Are green aliens showing up on your footage? You’re pretty much leaving it all up to our collective imagination by failing to include such basic details.

As for FCP not supporting Flash, that’s not accurate. Flash files can be payed back on a Mac just fine. Flash is proprietary Adobe technology, which Apple would have to license form Adobe in order to provide encoding capability. With the plethora of other open-standards-based codecs that Apple has chosen to offer, there’s little incentive for Apple to pay Adobe for their proprietary solution. Additionally, Flash itself is not a video codec – it’s a wrapper, similar to Quicktime. There is no magic Flash fairy dust that makes better videos than is possible with other tools. Flash is merely a delivery method. Some codecs that Flash uses include Sorenson Spark, On2 VP6 and H.264. YouTube’s HQ movies are actually Flash files encoded with H.264. In some cases, it’s possible to simply change the file extension on H.264-encoded Quicktime movies to .flv and have them play back in Flash player. There are free tools available to convert files to Flash.

[Jakob Mortensen] “What I need is a format that the end user can use to easily display the file via a standard pc in high quality. I have now relied on web hosting, but its not very convenient. “

If the codecs included with Quicktime Player by default are not good enough for your needs, you could include special codecs with your movie files that the end user could install on their PCs in order to view your files. Perhaps you could try ProRes 422 or DVCPRO HD. The downside is that files using these codecs are obviously far too large to post online, and would require physical delivery to the client in some form.

Have you tried using the Quicktime Animation codec? The file sizes are large, but the quality is visually lossless.

[Jakob Mortensen] “When that is said I dont realy get your kind of offended attitude. Its something often seen in web forums when newbies ask a question in groups where a close nitted community spends there coffee break. “How dares those newbies ask a basic question like that”. I imagine you with eyes rolling back, and that makes me smile a bit. “

If I were offended, I wouldn’t have bothered to answer your post. We were all newbies at some point, that’s not the issue here. The lack of useful information and the frustrated tone in your original post makes me wonder if you actually want help, or simply want to rant. It seems that you believe that Apple is at fault, despite the fact that many people are able to share high-quality Quicktime files with clients without issue. If the problem were really that endemic, I think we’d be haring a lot more about it on a regular basis than we do. There is something specific to your situation that is causing results that are not commonly reported as a problem. Allow us to help diagnose your issue by providing more detailed and relevant information.

[Alan Okey]

[Jakob Mortensen] “Now I can for the life of me not understand why Apple didnt make sure that quicktime movies made on a Mac can be played flawlessly on a pc ??? “

Apple has no control over what happens on Windows PCs beyond offering a Windows version of Quicktime Player.

You need to take some responsibility for this and educate yourself about what proper delivery codecs are. Make sure to choose a delivery codec that is supported on multiple platforms and doesn’t require the end user to download and install additional codecs that aren’t included in Quicktime Player in order to play properly. For instance, do not export Quicktime movies using DVCPRO HD or Apple ProRes 422 and expect that clients will be able to play them on a PC without first downloading and installing those codecs.

There are editing codecs and delivery codecs. Avoid sending people movie files that are encoded with editing codecs, as they are not likely to be installed by default on other systems, even other Macs that don’t have Final Cut Pro installed.

Proper delivery codecs include MPEG-4 (including variants like h.264), Sorenson, Windows Media (which requires third-party software to create on a Mac), etc.

Editing codecs that are not installed by default on PCs or included with Quicktime Player include DVCPRO HD, Apple ProRes 422, XDCAM EX, etc.

You’ve given us precious little information about your particular situation to be of much help to this forum in offering you reasonable solutions. Video compression is a very deep topic that can’t be adequately addressed in a few lines on a forum. Suffice it to say that you have the tools at your disposal (Apple Compressor) to create very high-quality cross-platform compatible videos for delivery. Instead of blaming Apple for your problems, perhaps you should take some initiative and start reading the Compressor manual for some guidance.

[Alan Okey]

Now that I think of it, I should add that I recently had another issue with Animation-codec supers in a recent project. The supers were simply a color bar graphic with a name that wiped in over interview subjects.

I noticed that after rendering, any supers placed over footage that contained the 3-way CC filter would alter the look of the CC slightly for the duration of the super (they knocked down the highlights slightly). The funny thing is, the shift wasn’t apparent until the sequence was rendered.

I’m starting to think that FCP just doesn’t like Quicktime Animation footage that contains an alpha channel.

[Alan Okey]

[Zeyat aden] “So does that still mean that I should export using Quicktime conversion and then compression? Do I not lose any resolution? Thanks – Z”

Of course you will lose resolution. The DVD format is SD only, so the resolution will be 720×480 regardless of your source footage.

Do not export a file from FCP using Quicktime Conversion. Simply export a Quicktime refrence movie (uncheck “make slef-contained”), then open the reference movie in Compressor and choose the appropriate DVD encoding profile for your footage. Make sure to choose an anamorphic profile. Encode your audio as .ac3.

Next, import the .ac3 and .m2v files into DVD Studio Pro and author your DVD.

DVD Studio Pro does not author Blu-Ray discs, so if you need to create an HD (Blu-Ray) disc, you’ll need to use other software.

[Alan Okey]

Combustion’s roto and paint tools put anything in AE to shame. Unfortunately, the Mac version is only certified to run properly on Tiger, and it will most likely never be updated to run properly on Leopard or Snow Leopard.

[Alan Okey]

What is the codec of your editing sequence in FCP?

Quicktime Uncompressed 10-bit or 8-bit would be perfect for a master file. The only issue is file size – a 2-hour file might be pretty unwieldy to transfer, depending on the speed of the hard drive interface (USB, Firewire, etc.). That’s why ProRes 422 is also a good option, as long as the post facility can work with it. ProRes 422 achieves much smaller file sizes, and it’s a visually lossless codec. Don’t use ProRes 422 (HQ), that’s reserved for special formats.

If the post facility is using an AVID system, they can suggest the proper AVID codec to use – AVID makes their codecs available for free download. If you need to export your master file for export on an AVID system, you can download and install the AVID codecs to accomplish this.

[Alan Okey]

Forgot to add:

Exporting a video project to a .png image sequence involves a YUV>RGB conversion that will have to be reversed and re-rendered in order to output to DigiBeta.

Am I misunderstanding your post?

[Alan Okey]

I think what David is asking is why are you exporting to PNG for a DigiBeta transfer? It’s an odd choice, and not standard in any way.

If you need to export your project in order to transfer it to another system for output to DigiBeta, a better choice would be to export a self-contained Quicktime movie of your project using Uncompressed 10-bit, Uncompressed 8-bit or ProRes 422 as the codec.

[Alan Okey]

[David Roth Weiss] “certainly should be able to handle video that’s only 35MB/s”

Actually, XDCAM EX is 35Mb/s, as in Megabits per second, not Megabytes per second, so there should not be any disk speed issues.

Just for kicks, try switching your sequence render settings to ProRes instead of XDCAM, re-render and see if the problem persists.