Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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Yes, the codec that comes with FCS is the QT MPEG-2 decoder. You can purchase this component from Apple’s website for $29 for systems that don’t have FCS installed. Also, there are free MPEG-2 playback options, such as using the VideoLan Client (videolan.org).
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MainConcept, Squeeze, ProCoder, Compression Master, Digigami, ffmpegX, all should allow you to export at your desired size.
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Do you really find a significant difference between WMV9 “standard” (main) and WMV9 AP in quality vs data rate and file size?
Not so much with the WMVA fourcc (at least not with MS’s encoder), but definitely when using the WVC1 fourcc will you see many advantages to the quality of an encode at low bit rates compared to the main profile options.“Intelligent Encoder” capable of variable frame rate. Haven’t seen that in software on the Mac side?
Compression Master can do half frame rate variable conversions depending on the frame rate for a particular time. I think Cleaner used to be able to do this as well, although I am not certain. Squeeze possibly can too.I also don’t think cutting the frame rate in half cuts the file size in half. The encoder may have to do “more work” since the change in movement from frame to frame is now greater (especially for sports).
Technically, for most encoders, if you leave the settings the same, it will not cut the file size in half, that is correct. What it will do is provide better end quality per frame than a full frame rate encode would receive at the same file size. However, changing the frame rate to something lower allows you to encode at a much lower target bit rate, because you need many less bits per second, thus giving you a much smaller file size. -
At the bit rates, size, overall length of the video he is shooting for, and the fact that this is for web distribution, halving the frame rate is a suitable option, even for sports IMO. Of course, he doesn’t need to use H.264 or WMV9 AP, but then he will need to almost double his target bit rate for other formats. Obviously its a tradeoff between quality and compatibility. And halving the frame rate could benefit in two ways; one method would be to apply the same total bits to less numbers of frames, resulting in better quality; the other method would be to apply the same rate of bits to less numbers of frames, resulting in the same quality with half the final file size. Also, it is here where using an intelligent encoder that can produce a variable frame rate at half the source (rather than a fixed-hard number frame rate from the source) would be more beneficial for the eye.
When you’re talking about progressive downloading of a 500MB file, other options that you wouldn’t normally consider should be taken into account to get that file as small as possible. As a user, when viewing something at 320×240 (on a computer inside a web browser; if this whole project is for iPod or something, then that would be different and I wouldn’t change the fps), I would care less about whether the fps is full or half the original, and a whole lot more on whether the file is 250MB or 500MB. Particularly, being a sport video, it would be very important to me to be able to scroll around the video as soon as possible, as I am sure there is plenty that went on in the game that the average viewer won’t care about. Most will only likely care about their son’s tackle or touchdown reception. 250MB sure does download a lot quicker than 500MB.
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MPEG StreamClip should be your defacto tool for this. I wouldn’t necessarily use it to compress with, but it is great for converting HD MPEGs with to more suitable and friendly QT editing formats. Also, there is DiVA from the 3ivx folks which works very well and is incredibly fast.
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For your web rates at 320×240, I would say you could get the following encoded data rates and still be very pleased with the outcome: H.264 Main Profile = 325kbps; WMV9 Advanced Profile = 450kbps; MPEG-4 Part 2 Simple Profile = 650kbps. For H.264, you have about 75kbps lower that you can go before quality really starts to get ugly; for WMV, you have about 125kbps; for MPEG-4, about 100kbps. Also, around these rates and considering it is for the web, I would seriously give thought to halving the frame rate of the encode. There could be great encoding benefit in going from 60 or 30 fps to 15fps or from 24fps to 12fps.
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First, you need to find out the resolution of the plasma as indicated by the Mac OS when the Powerbook is plugged into the display. So, if your display resolution is recognized as 848×477 in OS X, then you need to encode your material to a either that or a compatible resolution, like 852×480. QT should then play this out in full screen mode and eveything pixel should be filled. If QT is having trouble doing this however, then I would recommend a different player, like VLC.
VLC has many options for displaying play back of movies. There are options to force playback to 4:3 or 16:9 ratios, no matter what the original PAR or IAR is. There is also an option to distort and stretch fill every pixel of a display. In your case, this would work well as you could encode to 720×480 16:9, which would keep the original aspect ratio of the source. By doing this, you would be gaining the efficiency of an anamorphic encode while on play back, VLC would only very slightly have to stretch the picture to fill the screen, likely not enough to be noticable to the common eye.
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Sounds like you are seeing interlacing noise. Either you are discarding the wrong field (DV uses lower field, almost all other formats use upper) or you are not applying a deinterlace filter on the material. If the primary playback will be from a set-top box and TV, then I would suggest you not deinterlace, as you will lose valuable vertical resolution. If the primary playback is for desktop computers, then deinterlacing may be of more value, and you may be able to achieve better encoding results encoding to a resolution of 352×480, especially if targeting low bit rates.
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QT Pro will allow you to export directly to a WAV audio file. QT Pro also has an option for .AVI if that would help.
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Doesn’t youtube.com recompress the videos you upload? Hence the change in quality. For $3.95/month + $1.99/year at godaddy you can get your own hosted site that you can fully control and that has all the space and transfer capabilities you could likely want.