[Craig Seeman]

[Shawn Miller] “Why wait for Apple, you can get this from Amazon today. ☺”

Why heck, I can order the Mac, the TV, the snacks, the dishes to serve them in, while I watch the movies and listen to music… all from the same Prime account.

With Apple I have to figure out which service entitles me to what through a very fragmented iTunes store.

iTunes is a real mess.

And what’s with all the separate Apple App Stores.

Oh and if I want books, I got to go to iBooks. News? Down the block and to left in another part of cyberspace.

Does Apple not understand the problem?

[Craig Seeman]

Apple seems to be fragmenting and remixing in some odd configurations.
There’s iTunes movies which are rentals or purchases.
There’s the ability to buy songs.
There’s the music subscriptions.
Now they’ll be original video content with the music subscriptions.
Then there’s AppleTV where you can get a pot-pourri of other services.
This is a very messy ecosystem IMHO.
Granted there’s probably seriously contract issues to sort through.

I’d really want a single elegant subscription service at least for all Apple’s services.

[Craig Seeman]

If you have a recent version of PPro CC then MXF would work in that as well.

FCP7 was discontinued in 2011 (coming up on 7 years) so if codec compatibility is important you should move to any modern NLE.

If you have to start converting files that’s going to slow you down tremendously. If you have to go do a lower resolution file (I believe the X70 even shoots in DV) then the quality is going to suffer (IMHO not acceptable for professional corporate work).

If NLE cost is a factor, it might be interesting to try the free version of Da Vinci Resolve.

[Craig Seeman]

If you have FCPX (current version is 10.3.1), the MXF files will import directly (although I recommend using FCXP to make a Camera Archive first and importing from that). There’s no need to convert the files.

I also don’t have any problem playing MXF files in Quicktime directly but you really shouldn’t go into the card file structure to do that.

[Craig Seeman]

Sorry but that’s not enough information to troubleshoot. If Switch fails it gives you messages explaining the failure.

[Craig Seeman]

[Neil Orman] “For some of these videos the audio is actually primary and the visual isn’t as important – it’s usually some kind of static graphic. “

Are they going to YouTube? Do you need them to be legible? Keep in mind YouTube will crush them again so what you produce might look good on your desktop but look horrible once YouTube compresses them again. You’re going to have to test. Best to avoid serifed fonts, thin lines in graphics, use solid colors instead of gradients.

[Neil Orman] “the internal ones for which the visual is somewhat secondary, that I was originally asking the question about reducing the file sizes.”

But that depends on how they are viewed and on what. 10 year old Windows XP computers? Quad i7 computers? Android devices. Played over your LAN or on desktop.

What’s the best car? Are you driving off terrain? The Autobahn, small streets Europe, the Indy 500, is mileage important?
Sorry but “internal” doesn’t describe the technological requirements.

Sorry to be a bug about this but in ANY client delivery situation (and “internal” is a client) you MUST consider all variables and assume the client may not even be aware of them.

[Craig Seeman]

[Neil Orman] “Everything is uploaded to our Youtube channel.”

YouTube has recommended specs for uploaded videos. Keep in mind they will recompress them so their specs are designed to give the best results for their encoders.

[Craig Seeman]

That’s really small frame size (240p) and also looks like a low data rate. Encoding for web use is lossy and, in this case, incredibly lossy. Loss is irretrievable When you throw out that much information, it’s hard to even fake improving it.

I assume you can’t get the original source material but that would be the direction I’d go if you’re using this professionally.

If you’re using it in a video, you may have to run it small in a frame or do something “artsy” to mask the low quality, like make it black and white and other creative techniques.

[Craig Seeman]

[Neil Orman] ” hear you and usually don’t try to reduce file size”

I do for web use or for sending clients screening copies via Dropbox or some equivalent.

[Neil Orman] “I can get file sizes of 10+ gigbytes. So that starts to fill up my external hard-drive pretty fast”

You could make proxies. On Mac I’d use Apple ProRes Proxy. On Windows it may depend on the NLE but low quality DNxHD or maybe MJPEG… something an NLE can handle more easily than H.264.

You mention “viewers” but it’s unclear how you are delivering to them. That might be web (and delivery specs may vary by CDN) or it may be handing out USB Thumb Drives.

If a CDN is delivering them they will usually recompress them so you actually want to give them much larger higher quality files.

If you’re delivering thumb drives you have to consider the broad range of computers.

BTW some deliver “mobile” files for iOS or Android playback and that may be another spec depending on the range of devices.

If you look at the top of this forum you’ll see a sticky post I made. How to get FASTEST compression help – PLEASE READ it includes all the things you need to consider including the Target.

[Craig Seeman]

Reducing the size means losing quality. That’s the nature of lossy compression. One hopes it’s not noticeable though. Throwing out data/information is just that though.

In order to solve a problem you must describe the goal. WHY do you want to reduce the file size? If smaller isn’t required, avoid it. Hard drives are cheap. Quality loss, on the other hand, is irretrievable.

Without explaining WHY you could be heading in a wrong and destructive direction.