Help Compressing for Fest

M

mtd2007

Active member
I'm going to grumble and tinker on my own while anxiously awaiting more expert advice, but here's the compression situation I'm facing this morning (when I should be working on my new script!). Any advice or insight, as usual, would be greatly appreciated.

My featurette is playing at a low-key short film festival run by my alma mater. They're asking for a hi-res QT file, which probably is no big deal for the other shorts, but my TRT is 42+ mins. I have a "master" QT file that I've used successfully for a few self-run screenings in the past, but it's saved with the original DVCPRO HD settings (720p60 codec) and comes in at a whoppin' 13+ GB. They're cool with me swinging by in person with a QT file saved to a data DVD...but that means I need to squeeze my master (or compress a new file from my timeline) that'll fit...

Any recommendations for maximizing quality during compression? I'm hesistant to use the H264 codec because I've lately been disappointed by what it's done to my color settings (washed-out and faded and etc.) but if someone can recommend how to adjust for that phenomenon before applying the compression, I'm all ears.

I'm not really dealing with typical festival people here, and my own experience prepping files is pretty limited...but I do want to hand over the best quality file that I can before they do whatever they're going to do to get it ready for the screening.

Working in FCP Studio (FCP 5.14), don't have any other compression software available other than what's available in that suite of programs, and my timeline is 720p24p, shot on HVX200. The venue for the screening is a small screening room with what looks to be high-end capabilities from an image quality standpoint...but I don't know what their final format is going to be, or how they're planning to play the program of films.

Just figured I'd share the particulars to see if anyone had an insights into the solution or has run into something similar (unlikely?) in the past.

Featurettes be frustrating.
 
your h.264 encoding is washed out because you are using apple software to encode with, it's a well-known problem.

but there are some alternatives, search some of the back posts for specifics.
 
Thanks...should have remembered that there were earlier threads. I recognized one of them after I performed a more thorough search.

I won't know for sure for another few days, however I compressed a new file (still using H.264), compared it with a file that I know works (very pleased when I used it for some screenings a few months ago) and realized that the issue was probably exactly what was described in those other threads: it's just something with the way the file is being played in QT on the Mac.

Thanks for the reply! Sometimes I just need to chill out.
 
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