Compressing the film into 50MB

[chchaisson]

How do you do it and maintain reasonable quality? Especially if it's 6 minutes or longer...

I use Apple Compressor, but am not too familiar with creating custom settings. I'm shooting in 16:9...what frame size would you guys recommend? Compression settings? Quality? Bit rate? ...

Thanks.

[Ben Sliker]

Well, if you are using compressor, that means you have Final Cut Studio, which also means you should have quicktime Pro. If not, it's the easiest way to accomplish compressing for this fest. go buy it. it's only $30. Also, Visualhub is a great compressing tool. Buy that too. It's only $23.

Either export your video in FCP and open it in QT or export out of FCP using Quicktime conversion.

Either way, export as a quicktime movie, click options and use these settings. (main window and pop ups included)

http://www.benjaminsliker.com/film/HAROLD/DVXUSER/Picture4.png
http://www.benjaminsliker.com/film/HAROLD/DVXUSER/Picture1.png
http://www.benjaminsliker.com/film/HAROLD/DVXUSER/Picture2.png
http://www.benjaminsliker.com/film/HAROLD/DVXUSER/Picture3.png

these are starter settings, that should get you under 50 mb for a 6 min movie.

A lot of people like to see how far they can stretch compression, heck i think we had a 720p movie in the last fest. I believe my entry was 800x450, but it also looked washed out when compared to the original. Also remember that good audio compression can save you A LOT of space. the AAC encoder is probably the best space saver, but i've seen good results with apple lossless and IMA 4:1 as well. It's one big process of trial and error.

PLEASE have a file that is at least 640x360 (480x270 is even getting small these days). I will tell you right now anything that if you submit a file that is like 320x240 letterbox, hardly anyone will watch your film and the ones who do will comment "I wish it was bigger, i couldn't really see anything to make sufficient judgement."

Regards and good luck,
Ben

[chchaisson]

Thanks! That was extremely helpful...I'll test out those settings.

Any difference between exporting with FCP and QT Pro? Only thing I can think of is that render times might be better with QT...

I do remember that HD entry last year, with crystal clear picture (Matty g's film, maybe?). And I was wondering how he managed to fit all that into such a small package. But I'd understand if he wanted to keep that to himself :)

What frame size is considered 480p?

[Ben Sliker]

QT Pro will go faster, but you'd have export out a movie from FCP regardless, like an HD master first and then encoded for the fest using QT. FCP will take longer cause it has to process what's on the timeline first, and then encode, vs. QT just encoding.

actually, i don't think matty_g's entry was quite that big, there was one in timefest that was HUGE. Matty's was also shot on RED, which if you make a 4k picture 480p ... it's gonna look good.

well, 480p is kinda funky, but if you are talking about the DV spec, it's either 720x480 (4x3) or 720x480 (16x9) ... yeah i know, they are the same number. But played back the actual resolutions are 640x480 for 4x3 and 853x480 for 16x9.

[Horncastle]

Just to chime in on this, here attached is a pdf of instructions I wrote up for another user in Timefest based on my experience outputting Red Shoes. I'm no expert so take it with a pinch of salt, but hopefully someone may find it useful.

Jason

[krestofre]

My Timefest entry was in 720p. I talk a little bit about the encoding in the film's thread.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=130243&page=5

It's more theory than mechanics though. Maybe it will help.