[Ben Waggoner]

To answer both questions:

The QuickTime implementation is weak, since it only works when the file starts. You make a Master file, which contains URLs for each data rate file, and it only switches between them at the start of the session. However, that means that it can work off web servers for progressive download over HTTP. The SureStream and Intelligent Streaming solutions work much better for RTSP, since they can switch between data rates DURING the stream, but they only work with the RealServer or Windows Media Services, respectively.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Sounds like you’ve flagged the field order wrong in the deinterlace field. Try switching from/to upper/lower.

I honestly haven’t tested HDV with CM 3.1.2 yet, so I’m not sure what caveats there are for it.

[Ben Waggoner]

Compressor 2 can do a 320×240 MPEG-1. MPEG-2 doesn’t really give you much of an advantage for progressive low bitrate content, FWIW.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Yes, this is supported in all streaming formats one way or another.

For Windows Media, it’s called Intelligent Streaming

For RealMedia, it’s called SureStream

For QuickTime, it’s called QuickTime Movie Alternates

Any decent WM or RM encoding tool will offer you built in support for it. The QuickTime implementation isn’t as good and isn’t widely supported in modern authoring tools, alas.

[Ben Waggoner]

Cinemacraft isn’t bad at all, but I’m able to consistently beat its results with ProCoder for DVD authoring.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

ProCoder is one of the best MPEG-2 encoders on the market – what problems were you having? I’ve certainly NEVER seen anything CLOSE to tragic out of it.

As for WME with .MOV source files, perhaps you’ve got some kind of QT/DirectShow bridge installed like QuickTime Alternative?

As for metadata, what do you want to include? Title and that kind of thing? If so, yes it does.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

With Compressor 2, you’ll want to go into the Advanced Format Conversion presets, apply an appropriate preset, and then turn on the Frame Control features. Automatic isn’t a bad choice. But if you want to burn a LOT of CPU cycles for max quality, you’ll want something like:

Resize: Best
Output Fields: Same as source
Deinterlace: Best
Adapative Details on

Rate conversion: Best

I haven’t really gotten my head around Anti-alias and Details in practice yet. 0 for both seems to work reasonable well.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Windows Media Encoder doesn’t support QuickTIme source files.

Canopus’s ProCoder gives more of the twiddly features from WME than Squeeze, and has excellent support for QuickTime source files.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

How about MPEG-1?

The MS MPEG-4v2 codec was dropped some SDK releases ago. I think it was last included around 6.x. The last tool I remembered having that supported it was Media Cleaner 4!

Yep. Square pixel MPEG-1 would be a fine choice for file-based playback on that system.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

It’s possible. Basically you make a dummy movie that replaces itself with the actual movie, so users can’t sniff it out. You change the embed tag so that it loads only in the browser, etcetera. But all that said, I’ve yet to find a “protected” .mov I wasn’t able to extract myself in a few minutes with curl.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html