Hi Everyone,

I have a 10 minute film that I want to put online so that co-workers overseas can watch it. I can't post a DVD to them unfortunately.

I have tried experimenting with different H.264 settings, but so far no good.

Basically, I want to best quality, small file size, small resolution, file I can get.

I'm thinking maybe 488 x 274 or 640 x 360. It's 16:9.

Has anyone here shared footage to clients overseas using H.264? What settings did you use? Quality is my main concern, although hosting a huge file is also an issue, as is my clients spending hours downloading it.

I'm using Compressor.

Any advice you can give me would be great! I've had a look around this section of the forum, and have tried a few settings that others have used, but nothing really looks that good (ie. the footage is washed out, has nasty compression artefacts on darker scenes, etc.).

I'm currently exporting the BEST quality H.264 file I can just to see how big it will actually be and if it's quality is any good. Only trouble is it takes HOURS to do its thing...

Thanks in advance!

Chris!

Is your client on dial-up or something? It should not be taking hours to download a 10min clip.

Sorry, that was badly worded.

I haven't even got to the stage yet where someone can download it.

I'm still trying to work out the best way to "compress" it.

I've tried all different types of H.264 compression, except it all looks dodgy.

I have a lot of "high speed" footage in this film, so you can really notice the interlacing artefacts after compressor does it's thing.

I just tried converting to a Flash video, but that looked just as bad.

How can I get the best possible quality for showing my film online?

You can not get great-looking video and have it stream fast; something has to give. I use 512kbps myself at 640x360 and this is how it looks (http://olivebarrel.com/tfii/watch.php). WMV9, Flash 8 and H.264 are all good. I found that the key is decimating the frame rate. If you reduce it in half, each frame gets twice the number of bits. Think about it...

you need to use virtualdub and several filters to get a highly compressable master.
basically and this order i would use :
deinterlace
color smoother
sharpen
resize

then you can compress with your codec.

That is true... You need to minimize noise and shake in order to get the best results.

Thanks for your replies Emre and Giround.

I understand what your getting at by reducing the frame rate, but as I said, a lot of the footage is "speed up"; I think removing frames will make the footage look even worse.

I'm editing on a Mac so virtualdub is not an option unfortunately, but I get your logic.

For any FCP users out there, would I achieve the best results by:

1. Putting a Deinterlace filter over the timeline
2. Putting a Colour Smoother over the timeline
3. Put a Sharpen filter over the timeline
4. Export using QT Conversion to something like JPEG 2000, resizing the image to say 640 x 360
5. Dragging this newly created file into Compressor to convert to a H.264

Any problems with the above workflow?

I tried putting all the frame control options to best in compressor to see if that improves the image, however, after 24 hours of transcoding, I've still got 123 hours to go!

Thanks again for your assistance!

Chris!