I have been experimenting with Compressor and different methods of exporting a full quality clip about 5 minutes long into a smaller file (about 20 meg) for use as embedded progressive quicktime from a website. I was amazed how Apple gets their movie trailers to look so good and wanted to get close with my HDV clips.

So far I seem to be falling a bit short on quality of a 320X180 clip or perhaps the Apple trailer files are just that much bigger in size - hard to tell because it plays in the browser and I do not know how big they are. Does anyone have any suggestions or the best compression settings they have used for exporting from either FCP or Compressor? Or is 20 meg just not big enough for a clip of this size?

Bitrate, Codec, other setting suggestions would be helpful. I have had the best luck with mp4 exports at 320X180 at a constant bitrate of about 300-400 Kbps (from Compressor).

I have a link you can look at for an example if you can stand waiting for it to load.

http://my.suthard.com/MovieStreams/Sani2004.html

Thanks,

Bryan

Bryan,

Sorenson has always been good to me for online clips.

Cute kids!


Frederic

Bryan,

Here's some insight for you.

A good way to assess the best codec/settings for online is to take a look at the Apple movies in the QuickTime trailers or their latest itunes movie.

You can download them to your HD with QT Pro.

Here's some interesting specs they used:

TOTAL MOVIE
Duration: 02:58.08
Size: 480 X 360
Encoded with cleaner
Data Size: 22.9 MB
Data Rate: 132.1 K bytes/sec

VIDEO TRACK
Colors: Millions
Data Format: MPEG-4 Video
FPS: 15 (Important...lower frame rate tremendously lowers file size)
Data Size: 20.3 MB
Data Rate: 116.7 K bytes/sec

SOUND TRACK
Sample Rate: 44100 Hz
Channels: Stereo
Compression: MPEG-4 Audio
Data Size: 2.6 MB
Data Rate: 15.4 K bytes/sec

The key here I think is Cleaner. It does a great job at optimizing video for web publishing.

I hope this helps a bit.

Frederic

Frederic,

Thanks for the info. I'll have to get QT Pro and save these that way. I figured they must have been 15 fps.

Bryan