(no subject)

[rivkat]

Argh!

I've made my first vid, yay me, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get it small enough to reasonably ask any of you to look at it. When I try to compress, it's unwatchable until it hits 50MB, yet I know people make them smaller. Are there Final Cut Pro secrets to compression? Actually, they're probably not all that secret. FCP is virtually idiot-proof, but I am busily building a better idiot.

Comments

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

What's your frame rate? 15 fps is about all you need for online viewing, and it cuts your size a good deal.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

True - and if there isn't an insane amount of movement or rendering, you can even drop to 12fps.

What are you using to compress, R?

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Now I'm at work, but I'm pretty sure it was 15 fps, and 240x whatever. I will check, though--anything could happen when it comes to me & technology. I may be missing some box to check that would magically compress it more than I've yet done.

[barkley.livejournal.com]

What codec are you using?

The mp4 one works well for me. Other people really like sorenson. The Hsomethingorother codec will get it really small, but it also turns it very dark.

Another thing that will lower the size is restricting the bitrate. I play around with it until I reach the compromise between quality and size, and it's different for each vid depending on the action.

Something I just read recently, but haven't had a chance to apply is doing it in two passes:

http://www.quicktiming.org/tutorials/compression.php

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Interesting reading. I'm using mp4, I think, but I could be wrong. I'm like a novice with a blindfold being held upside down with all this. I used what I think is pretty good source, which should help with what that guy was talking about.

Trial and error, right?