[Ed Dooley]

Not very long if it’s checking out something. If a client asks me to view something I’ll wait as long as I have to. 🙂
Keeping up with connection speed is very important to me in my business.
Ed

[Jeffrey Buras] “But again, I’m looking for subjective answers. With the computer you are using right now, how long are you willing to wait for a video to load?”

[Ed Dooley]

Daniel asked you all the right questions. But I do have a general rule of thumb these days. Most broad-band can handle much higher data rates than even a couple of years ago. For example, my local internet provider (the only game in town) used to offer 3 DL speeds 384, 700, and 1,500kbps. The price for the highest speed was way too high. Then they upgraded 2-3 years ago and now every customer now gets up to 6Mbps. Having said that, there are still bottlenecks within companies, etc. so I generally provide a 700kbps file, 650 for video, and 48 mono (unless it’s got music) for audio.
Size depends on 4:3 or 16:9, but might be 480×360, 384×288 or 448×336 for 4:3 and 512×288, or 384×216 for 16:9. You could also offer 2 sizes for viewers, one at 700kbps and one at a much higher data rate for power users.
Here’s a frame size chart to help:
https://blog.influxis.com/influxis/?p=14
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

I disagree about using FCP. It does it in a fraction of the time because it’s just throwing away half the resolution. I wouldn’t ever do it that way unless it’s an emergency and you need it “now”. If you don’t have access to hardware (as Walter suggested), then Compressor (using Frame Controls) is the way to go from interlaced to Progressive, and it’s agonizingly slow! If you have a 4 or 8 core MacPro, you should look into QMaster, which is part of FCS, and assigning rendering to all the cores.
Ed

[Rafael Amador] “Hi Larissa,
FC can do a very good downsizing if you set it properly.
Just drop your 1080i in a 720p sequence and apply a deinterlacer.
In the Sequence Setting, set “Render all YUV in High Precisio” and Motion Render> BEST.
FC will do it in a fraction of time than Compressor and nobody will tell the difference.
Going from 720p to 1080i will be a bit more complicated if you want the picture look as been shoot interlaced.
Rafael”

[Ed Dooley]

I think you’ve answered your own question. If you have the space your so-called “raw” file is the best.
(Liked the “dripping with blood” part too). H.264 is a delivery codec. Here’s a thread on Apple’s site that might help a bit:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1443727
Ed

[Adam Hofmann] “My first post…here it goes,

My boss wants to start archiving all our projects in H264 instead of our standard raw FCP Quicktime format. His argument is it will save space on our DVD and Hard drive backups. I’m not bothered by saving space considering how cheap DVD’s and external hardrives are…but whatever.

However, we are both wondering if there is a real quality loss in H264, or if the info that the raw FCP file is losing is merely “readible” data used by FCP.

Obviously archiving is used in case we need the file again for editing, so if there is a quality loss then I would not want to use the H264 format. I like my backed up files RAW, dripping with blood!!! To tell you the truth I don’t want to use H264 for archiving at all, considering how hard it seems to work with in FCP. It’s a great delivery codec…but that’s it!

Anyway, is it wisdom to go to the H264 or not?
“

[Ed Dooley]

Joel suggested to send them to Sony. If that works it’s $40 per tape, which you think is expensive because it’s a charity. You want a plug-in or software that will do it instead. How much do you think plug-ins and software cost? Chances are, Joel’s suggestion is the cheapest idea (if you only have a couple of tapes). CHV makes a plug-in that includes a drop-out remover. The guys who put the first 5 years of Saturday Night Live to DVD from 1″ tape used it a lot (it’s $95):
https://www.chv-plugins.com/cms/FxPlug/QC-Integration/QC-Integration.php?navanchor=1010038
Ed

[Tim Herrold] “We are thinking of sending the tapes to sony to see if they can fix them, however that seems like a lot of expense for this project because we are doing it as a charity case for a minimal charge. What we are really looking for is a plug-in or software that can make these problems less evident (we have pretty much given up on a total fix). “

[Ed Dooley]

Flip4Mac, the plug-in for FCP that allows exporting to Windows Media, is commonly used. It’s a plug-in for applications that use QT and shows up as an option in FCP QT conversion (Windows Media).
https://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm

There are other products, like Episode and Squeeze, that also do it, but cost a bunch more. The cheapest, high-quality thing is to ask your client to open QT on his machine and look at About QuickTime. The version is right there for anyone to see. If he has version 7, you should be able to give him a high-quality H.264 QT, if he has v6, give him an MP4 or Sorenson V3 QT instead.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

And does your client have the latest QT update, or an old version? What kind of QT did you try to give them, H.264, Sorenson, MP4? You need QT7 for example, to play H.264. What about encoding to Windows Media for a PC client?
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

If you read the posts above, you will see that David was talking about Compressor 3.
There isn’t a comparable option in Compressor 2. read my post and you’ll see that you can
only go to 9Mbps with SD material.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

It’s OK David, I’m not keeping score. 🙂 (When will you ever learn, indeed!)
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

I guess I’ll never learn. 🙂
But…. He is talking about Compressor 2. I only have the on-line manual for Compressor 2 and there’s nothing called Stream Usage anywhere in the index or from a search (page 185 in the C2 manual is about filters). The only option I’ve ever found about Transport Streams is the button for muxing. Am I totally missing it, or are you talking about Compressor 3 (which he isn’t)?
Ed

[David Roth Weiss] “d Dooley] “I’d love to be proven wrong though. 🙂 ”

Come on Ed, when will you ever learn, I’m always up for that challenge.

See page 185 in the Compressor manual, re: stream usage (i.e. creating an MPEG2 transport stream).

Stream Usage
Choosing a setting from the Stream Usage pop-up menu ensures the encoded MPEG-2
stream will be suitable for how you intend to use it. The options in the Stream Usage
pop-up menu include:

Generic: The Generic option allows you complete access to all the MPEG-2 settings.
This is the only option that supports the MPEG-2 640 x 480 video format in addition
to the SD and HD video formats. It is also the only option that supports creating
transport and program streams. It supports the complete bit rate range of 2.0 Mbps
to 40.0 Mbps. “