Hi,
  my father made a movie with his digital camera and played with iMovie
to make a final edition of it.  Now, it is 17 minutes long and takes
about 4 Gb of disk, he would like to fit this movie on a CD with the
best quality possible.  With the possibility to pass the CD to someone
with Mac or PC with no problems.

He tried using codec Sorenson 3 and the result, in my opinon, was
disgusting.  I tried to find out about MPEG-4 and sound compression in
iMovie doesn't seem to be pretty nice.

So, I was wondering if there were any very good compressors out there
for the mac that could compress a Quicktime movie (.mov) or an AVI or
anything uncompressed, with sound, into an MPEG?

I checked on pov's links and couldn't find much downloads for the mac.

If you know something that could help me, please tell me!

Thanks for any help!
  Simon

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In article <3DF39421.274001F9@no_spam.com> , Simon Lemieux 
<no_### [at] no_spamcom>  wrote:

> He tried using codec Sorenson 3 and the result, in my opinon, was
> disgusting.

You have to adjust the default settings.  This is much easier with the
advanced commercial version rather than the basic version that comes with
QuickTime for free.

>  I tried to find out about MPEG-4 and sound compression in
> iMovie doesn't seem to be pretty nice.

I am not sure what you what to say with this sentence and I don't use
iMovie, but if you just have problems using it, I suggest to export as DV in
iMovie and play with the compression in the Movie Player (aka QuickTime
player).

> So, I was wondering if there were any very good compressors out there
> for the mac that could compress a Quicktime movie (.mov) or an AVI or
> anything uncompressed, with sound, into an MPEG?

MPEG-4 will create the best quality available if the result should fit on a
CD.  Of course for MPEG-4 you should not use the default settings but the
maximum video datarate (1.5 Mbit iirc) and for stereo at least 256 Kbit
audio datarate.

Your other option is to use iDVD and put the result on a DVD.  Then you get
MPEG-2 and full DVD quality.  Of course that requires a DVD-R drive...

MPEG-1, while most compatible with i.e. consumer DVD players, will create
worse quality than Sorenson 3 (which proper settings).  Some CD burning
programs support QuickTime to MPEG-1 conversion it as far as I recall.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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> > He tried using codec Sorenson 3 and the result, in my opinon, was
> > disgusting.
> 
> You have to adjust the default settings.  This is much easier with the
> advanced commercial version rather than the basic version that comes with
> QuickTime for free.

I'm not sure, but I think he has a commercial copy of it.  There is
indeed some settings, like the bitrate, key frame, and fps.  But that's
about it...

> >  I tried to find out about MPEG-4 and sound compression in
> > iMovie doesn't seem to be pretty nice.
> 
> I am not sure what you what to say with this sentence and I don't use
> iMovie, but if you just have problems using it, I suggest to export as DV in
> iMovie and play with the compression in the Movie Player (aka QuickTime
> player).

Well, I meant that sound compression doesn't seem to keep a very good
quality, the best bitrate is 48 kbit/s.  But I have to say it is enough
for our needs.

Exporting to DV and playing with the compression;  you mean QuickTime
player can compress the DV better than iMovie? (iMovie uses quicktime to
compress its movies)

> MPEG-4 will create the best quality available if the result should fit on a
> CD.  Of course for MPEG-4 you should not use the default settings but the
> maximum video datarate (1.5 Mbit iirc) and for stereo at least 256 Kbit
> audio datarate.

Well, he told me there were some documents also on the CD and there is
only about 200Mbytes left on the CD.  In MPEG-4 compression, setting the
bitrate higher than 512kbit/s result in lagged playback.  And setting
the keyframe higher makes lots of artifacts...  As for audio, it can not
be set higher than 48kbit/s.

> Your other option is to use iDVD and put the result on a DVD.  Then you get
> MPEG-2 and full DVD quality.  Of course that requires a DVD-R drive...

Don't have such hardware...  

> MPEG-1, while most compatible with i.e. consumer DVD players, will create
> worse quality than Sorenson 3 (which proper settings).  Some CD burning
> programs support QuickTime to MPEG-1 conversion it as far as I recall.

For a good quality movie, MPEG-1 would be much too big for my use, so I
think my best option is to stay with MPEG-4 and play with the bitrate
and keyframe settings until I get a good quality and good speed movie.

Thanks for your answers!
  Simon

Post a reply to this message

In article <3DF3E7E9.D57DFA5E@no_spam.com> , Simon Lemieux 
<no_### [at] no_spamcom>  wrote:

>> You have to adjust the default settings.  This is much easier with the
>> advanced commercial version rather than the basic version that comes with
>> QuickTime for free.
>
> I'm not sure, but I think he has a commercial copy of it.  There is
> indeed some settings, like the bitrate, key frame, and fps.  But that's
> about it...

That is not the commercial version, that are the normal QuickTime settings
every Codec offers...

>> I am not sure what you what to say with this sentence and I don't use
>> iMovie, but if you just have problems using it, I suggest to export as DV in
>> iMovie and play with the compression in the Movie Player (aka QuickTime
>> player).
>
> Well, I meant that sound compression doesn't seem to keep a very good
> quality, the best bitrate is 48 kbit/s.  But I have to say it is enough
> for our needs.

We are talking about creating MEPG-4 with QuickTime 6, right?

> Exporting to DV and playing with the compression;  you mean QuickTime
> player can compress the DV better than iMovie? (iMovie uses quicktime to
> compress its movies)

No, the export is provided by iMovie is simply incomplete and does not even
allow you to export to anyothing but QuickTime.  In reality QuickTime allows
itself to export to different formats which have nothing to do with
QuickTime.  iMovie only allows you to export as QuickTime movie from its
internal DV format.  So you export in its native format, as QuickTime DV and
the process it in QuickTime Player.

So, open that movie in QuickTime Player.  You need QuickTime Pro (the US$30
registration thingy) for this, btw!

Now go to the menu File:Export.  The export window shows up.  Select "Movie
to MPEG-4".  Press the "Options..." button.  Now you see five tabs: General,
Video, Audio, Streaming, Compatibility.  If you know the other viewers will
have QuickTime you can ignore the settings in the Compatibility tab.  In the
Video tab, for the video track use "Improved" and for the audio track (in
the Audio tab) use "Music" as quality setting.

> As for audio, it can not
> be set higher than 48kbit/s.

Because you didn't create MPEG-4 movie, iMovie just lets you use MEPG-4
video compression but create plain MPEG-4 files.

If you have playback problems the reason is simple: MEPG-4 demands a lot of
resources.  A 800 MHz PowerMac G4 is the minimum for a half PAL site
(384*288) movbie.  Framesizes above 384*288 will only make sense if you use
MPEG-2.

> For a good quality movie, MPEG-1 would be much too big for my use, so I
> think my best option is to stay with MPEG-4 and play with the bitrate
> and keyframe settings until I get a good quality and good speed movie.

Well, with MPEG-1 you should have no problem fitting 17 minutes on 200 MB...

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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