Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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1) Compression Master will give you very good results with its MPEG-4 Part 2 and 10 encoding for QT. Also, if you already have the SV3 Pro codec, then it will give you the best single pass VBR SV3 encoding results of any app. The WMV encoder is very sharp and retains color accuracy better than most other WMV encoders out there. While not needed, CM3 also offers the best Real encoding on any platform IMO. And the MPEG2 encoding is nothing to laugh at either these days. It also does very nice Flash Video encoding, although it does not use the On2 codec at this time. Overall, CM can do some great encoding jobs for you and should have you covered.
You may also want to take a look at Squeeze as well. Its preprocessing features aren’t that great, and pale compared to CM’s, but it does include the SV3 Pro codec and can be directly integrated with the WMV exporter from Flip4Mac (which many people like) and the On2VP6 codec for Flash media. It should be noted that the WMV and On2 options are additional costs with Squeeze, although it does include its own Flash 8 video encoder which is very good as well. Squeeze’s MPEG-4 and Real encoders are OK but decidely a step below CM’s, and I wouldn’t use it at all for MPEG-2. But, the interface is easier to use and manage than CM’s.
You are correct that Compressor 2 should have you well handled for MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264) encoding. As long as you don’t need to scale or filter from your source to the encode with Compressor, then you will be fine. If you do need to do so, then you will find yourself in my situation where I often use Compression Master for the preprocessing and scaling to an uncompressed codec and then use that source in Compressor 2.
2)VP7 is a proprietary codec that none of the major desktop sw players support out of the box. VP6 had this same problem until Macromedia came along and licensed their codec and work for Flash 8. Maybe VP7 will gain some momentum in the future, but as of today, as far as current generation web and desktop codecs are concerned, it really isn’t a factor.
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If it has to be QT and you want the masses to be able to play the video without issue, then I would suggest either Sorenson Video 3 or MPEG-4 Part 2. For SV3 (compatible with QT5 and later), you should use Sorenson Squeeze 4. For MPEG-4 Part 2 (compatible with QT6 and later), you should use Compression Master 3. Both codecs will produce about the same quality and should be easily capable of giving you a good looking file under 1.2MB for 30 seconds of video at 240×192. Because of the scaling most likely required from the source file, I would recommend Compression Master, but you may find Squeeze more to your liking.
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Could you post a test file some where for us to take a look at? I don’t have any experience with the camera or mode you are talking about, so its hard to know where to begin with your issue.
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That is actually a pretty efficient way to achieve what you want to do. QT does support the use of images in PNG and other formats combined with video in a .mov wrapper. The easiest thing to do is encode your movie with the titles in tact. Then once the movie is encoded, save your original titles in .PNG format. Open the H.264 encode and PNG file in QT, and then select the timezone where the titles are in the timeline of the H.264 movie. Then copy the PNG timeline in QT, and go back to the H.264 and select Edit>Add Scaled to the video. The PNG should overlay on the H.264 video and no one would be the wiser that you are using a still graphic there instead of video. Do a Save As>self-contained and you should be good.
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The problem with that is that most DVDs are progressive, and most DV cameras are interlaced, so you would introduce a significant loss in quality with that method.
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Hardware encoded using a Tarari board? The Tarari board only accelerates Windows Media encoding libraries, but otherwise it does not do the “encoding” in the traditional sense. Maybe the company who OEM’d the board and put their software on top of it wrote some special version of WVC1. I imagine you might be using the FlipFactory product with the Tarari, which might explain why WVC1 encodes work well with their F4M QT decoder. In any case, could you post a file that works for me to test? I’d like to know what the encoder is doing to make the file compatible. Thanks.
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I have tried true WVC1 files from Microsoft’s reference encoder, and older WMVA files from both Flip4Mac 2.0 and older AP encoders, and neither have worked. WVC1 didn’t render in QT whether it was HD or SD, while all I was able to test for WMVA was an HD file, which didn’t render either.
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I did some short encodes last night using Squeeze 4.3 and Compressor 2 w/ QT 7.0.4. In my mind, Squeeze is still very much behind in terms of quality in encoding to H.264. Sorenson may have slightly optimized their H.264 encoder for better speed with 4.3, but I don’t think the core quality components of it were touched, at least not too much.
I used the default settings from Squeeze for H.264 at 720p and 1080p (normal). I then replicated those settings to match best I could with Compressor. The source I was using was a 1080i BlackMagic Uncompressed clip. Squeeze was only slightly slower with its 2pass encoding versus Apple’s multipass encoding now. Previously, it was much slower if I recall correctly. Also, Squeeze still has the deinterlacing bug (or is it not a bug and that it is just not good?) all the way from 4.0. It appears that Apple has fixed their deinterlacing issues however with the recent update to Compressor.
Overall though, with the updates to Flash encoding that 4.3 brings to Squeeze, this is a very nice update. What Squeeze has done well in the past, it does even better now. What it didn’t too well before, doesn’t appear to have been addressed with this release. And I’m fine with that.
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Could you post one? All of the WVC1 files I tested last night did not render video.
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Squeeze does use its own H.264 encoder, and it pales compared to Apple’s (haven’t tested 4.3’s encoder though). It does sound like BrAd would be best served by going with Squeeze, as its SV3 and FLV encoding tools are excellent. I would just stick with Compressor for both MPEG-2 and H.264. If you need to do high-quality Real, WMV-9 (Squeeze can do this also with separate purchase of one of the Flip4Mac products), or MPEG-4, then Compression Master would get my vote.