Best Output/Compression for Web viewing, 16:9 -> 4:3 Letterbox?

J

janusz

Well-known member
A short shot on HD (1080p/24p) and cut with FCP 5.1.2 needs to be exported for web viewing. The size must be at least 320 x 240 and under 200mb.

What is the best compressor for me to use to keep the highest possible quality? And how do I export my 16:9 aspect so it becomes letterboxed within a 4:3 frame?

Thanks.
 
not an expert here, but wanted to keep this question going

I use quicktime and export a short clip many different ways until I find an image quality and sound quality that satisfies me. It is possible to move through the settings for datarate on some codecs and this really changes the way the movie comes out as much as the size.

it becomes a balance between how large you want the movie, how high frame rate you want to preserve, if you want the movie to start playing right away (fast start) or if you prefer a larger size that a viewer must download completely first

some computers have difficulty to play the larger sizes if it is too complex of a codec and will keep dropping frames even if it downloads fast

one solution that appeals to me is to embed a movie into a flash swf file as it is playable by such a vast number of computers, but have not tried enough of that yet

the only way to letterbox that I know is to change the settings of your sequence to be different than the image, so you could make the image 1920x1080 in a sequence that is 1920x1440 and then compress it to any size you want
 
Alot of times what I'll do is import the sequence into a 4:3 DV composition, and have it crop off the edges with a digital zoom. Then i'll watch the sequence and move certain scenes, with a zoomer tool to make sure everything is in frame properly, then export from the NLE as a 640x480 master file. From there I'll take that file into my compression programs and create the 320x240 compressed internet files of my choice (usually Flash video)

I have no idea how to do that in FCP but its pretty easy to do in Adobe Ppro2 so I can't imagine it being that hard to do.
 
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