QT encoding questions

nebagakidnebagakid
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Hi, I want to encode Star Wars Episode into something suitable for two CDs, maybe one?



Right now the thing is in DV, i taped it off FOX, and I was wondering what format would be the best?



I thought MPEG-4 might be the best, or Sorenson, or Something else? Well, thanks! <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> :confused:



EDIT:::: Oh, yeah, I would like to be able to watch it full screen? Is that too much to ask for?



[ 06-09-2002: Message edited by: Nebagakid ]</p>

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    [quote]Originally posted by Nebagakid:

    <strong>Hi, I want to encode Star Wars Episode into something suitable for two CDs, maybe one?



    Right now the thing is in DV, i taped it off FOX, and I was wondering what format would be the best?



    I thought MPEG-4 might be the best, or Sorenson, or Something else? Well, thanks! <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> :confused:



    EDIT:::: Oh, yeah, I would like to be able to watch it full screen? Is that too much to ask for?



    [ 06-09-2002: Message edited by: Nebagakid ]</strong><hr></blockquote>





    I've been playing with Qt 6 for a week now nonstop. MPEG 4 is quite simply awesome. It's really your only choice.



    It's amazing the quality it gets at the datarate.



    It'll easily encode at 640 x 480 or whatever your source material is. Use a good high datarate. 800K/sec seemed to work very well for video but you could go higher. maybe 1000.



    audio 96K with MPEG 4 audio is very good. I do 128 just to get that extra bit out of it
  • Reply 2 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    1000 K/s for a 2+ hour movie on one or two CDs? Okay...Someone is smoking crack. First of all, that's approaching DVD-Video size MPEG-2, which is just under 10 Mbit/s.



    Let's take a look at an example...



    The Star Wars Episode 2: AotC trailer is 640x272 pixels. It's 24 FPS and uses Sorenson 3 and QDesign Music 2. The movie is 31 MB and 144 seconds long...



    In other words, a breathtakingly good looking somewhat large video only needs a data rate of ~215 K/s... approx 12 K/s is for audio...



    Now assume the video is 640x480 and 30 FPS...the video track should be ~450 K/s (3.6 Mbit/s,) maybe a bit more... Add another 16 K/s for 128 kbit mp3 audio and the total data rate is going to be around 500 K/s or less. It should easily be less with MPEG-4.
  • Reply 3 of 14
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>1000 K/s for a 2+ hour movie on one or two CDs? Okay...Someone is smoking crack. First of all, that's approaching DVD-Video size MPEG-2, which is just under 10 Mbit/s.



    Let's take a look at an example...



    The Star Wars Episode 2: AotC trailer is 640x272 pixels. It's 24 FPS and uses Sorenson 3 and QDesign Music 2. The movie is 31 MB and 144 seconds long...



    In other words, a breathtakingly good looking somewhat large video only needs a data rate of ~215 K/s... approx 12 K/s is for audio...



    Now assume the video is 640x480 and 30 FPS...the video track should be ~450 K/s (3.6 Mbit/s,) maybe a bit more... Add another 16 K/s for 128 kbit mp3 audio and the total data rate is going to be around 500 K/s or less. It should easily be less with MPEG-4.</strong><hr></blockquote>





    you are correct. I'm smoking crack, and lots of it.



    you're right. my original statement would result in a massive file. not sure what I was thinking. I'll attempt you're settings with a high quality source file I have here and see what I get out of it.
  • Reply 4 of 14
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    wait a minute. you do know I was talking kilobits right, not kilobytes because using the settings that I stated in my original post I have a 25.6MB MPEG 4 file at 640 x 480 that is 3 minutes and 43 seconds long. that's about 8.7 seconds per MB if my calculations are correct.



    That would be 620.68 MB for a 1.5 hour video.



    I do believe that is well within the range of what the original poster was looking for
  • Reply 5 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Well, either way... 800-1000 KBytes/s is overkill and 800-1000 Kbits/s is not nearly enough.







    [ 06-10-2002: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
  • Reply 6 of 14
    king chung huangking chung huang Posts: 343member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>Well, either way... 800-1000 KBytes/s is overkill and 800-1000 Kbits/s is not nearly enough.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    If you're looking for the quality that Apple's QT Trailers page has, then 800-1000 Kbits/s is definitely not enough. Take a look at <a href="http://commons.ucalgary.ca/king/6_Learn.4R.mov"; target="_blank">this movie</a> that I compressed back in February. It's intended for CD-ROM delivery, and plays "full screen". I compresssed about 40 of these of varying length, with an average datarate around 330-340 KBytes/s.



    However, you can get away with lower datarates if you use fewer keyframes. I had a keyframe every 24 frames for the example above to improve scrubbing performance. If you're encoding hour long movies, the chances of you scrubbing through it all the time is pretty low. For <a href="http://commons.ucalgary.ca/king/CPS_intro6.mov"; target="_blank">this movie</a>, the datarate's around 275 KBytes/s, with about a keyframe every 3 seconds.



    The datarates that I quoted above, include a 16-bit, 44-Khz mono/stereo (depends on video) audio track, which is lightly compressed with IMA 4:1. For the second movie (the 275KB/s one), the audio takes up 45.7 KB/s. You could significantly reduce that by using QDesign, or the new AAC audio codec in QuickTime 6.
  • Reply 7 of 14
    michael greymichael grey Posts: 384member
    applenut! Where ya been? Playing ball, I figured.



    Anyway, glad you're still around, and now that I see you've been using QT6, maybe you can answer a question for me. I read where someone was using QT6 to encode songs as MPEG4 files, then importing them into iTunes (just by changing the file extension to ".mov") and putting them on his iPod. She/he said that there was no loss in quality but the result was a much smaller file.



    If you get a chance, could you try this? I'd like to know if (1) there really isn't any quality loss and (2) if the files are really substantially smaller.



    Thanks if you can.
  • Reply 8 of 14
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    [quote]Originally posted by Michael Grey:

    <strong>applenut! Where ya been? Playing ball, I figured.



    Anyway, glad you're still around, and now that I see you've been using QT6, maybe you can answer a question for me. I read where someone was using QT6 to encode songs as MPEG4 files, then importing them into iTunes (just by changing the file extension to ".mov") and putting them on his iPod. She/he said that there was no loss in quality but the result was a much smaller file.



    If you get a chance, could you try this? I'd like to know if (1) there really isn't any quality loss and (2) if the files are really substantially smaller.



    Thanks if you can.</strong><hr></blockquote>





    1.) have compressed and compared a MPEG 4 AAC audio source (Santana- Ya leo) in 96, 128, and 192. and then in MP3 at 128 and 192. the 96K MPEG 4 sounded as good as te 128, maybe a slight bit better. 128 MPEg 4 sounded great and likely on par with 192MP3 and the 192 MPEG4 blew the 192MP3 away.



    So if you encode at 192MP3 like I do you'll easily get by with 128MPEG4



    2.) So far MPEG 4 files work in iTunes for me without a problem. Just imported them. didn't even chance extension



    3.) Don't have an iPod.. yet. so I can't try the iPod thing but I do not believe they play back on the iPod.





    P.S. Yep, playing ball. CITY CHAMPIONS TODAY. Played at Shea Stadium. 5-2 win!
  • Reply 9 of 14
    michael greymichael grey Posts: 384member
    That's good news all around. Maybe I can squeeze an extra 100 songs on my iPod when QT6 comes out.



    And congrats on the win! What's your record this year?
  • Reply 10 of 14
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    Well, I encoded SW episode One, which is 2 hours and 8 minutes in length, and I used OnP2 and Uncompressed audio. I really care about the audio because when I am lying 15 feet away from the monitor in bed, the only thing that is really gonna get me is the Audio (My Stereo Speakers Are Hooked UP) It was the right size I think (I have split the movie up into two hour long tapes, but this expresses the whole movie encoded), but here are the speks:



    When I do it again and split it up, I think I am going to go for MPEG-4 audio, do y'all think that is a safe bet?



    Also, mesa have da' iPod, okeday? I will try it wit the MPEG-er 4
  • Reply 11 of 14
    michael greymichael grey Posts: 384member
    Thanks NK. I don't think the iPod will currently play MP4 files. But I'd like to believe Apple saw this coming so maybe a software or firmware update would be all it takes.
  • Reply 12 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    [quote]1.) have compressed and compared a MPEG 4 AAC audio source (Santana- Ya leo) in 96, 128, and 192. and then in MP3 at 128 and 192. the 96K MPEG 4 sounded as good as te 128, maybe a slight bit better. 128 MPEg 4 sounded great and likely on par with 192MP3 and the 192 MPEG4 blew the 192MP3 away.



    So if you encode at 192MP3 like I do you'll easily get by with 128MPEG4<hr></blockquote>



    Sorry, but I have to burst your bubble. Read my reader report on xlr8yourmac. It should be in last week's news somewhere.



    The site is down right now, but the gist is:

    AAC is immature as far as codecs go.

    AAC in QT Preview only supports Low-Complexity Profile encoding.

    AAC cannot encode beyond 32 KHz at 96 kbit or lower

    LAME 3.92 is more refined



    [quote]2.) So far MPEG 4 files work in iTunes for me without a problem. Just imported them. didn't even chance extension<hr></blockquote>



    Ah, I couldn't figure out how you were doing it, but I just realized. You're encoding these wrapped in .mov files, right? That's cool. It doesn't work with .mp4 files though...which I suppose it will the next major release.



    EDIT: I just noticed visualizations don't really work with these files...



    [ 06-12-2002: Message edited by: Eugene ]</p>
  • Reply 13 of 14
    michael greymichael grey Posts: 384member
    [quote]AAC is immature as far as codecs go.<hr></blockquote>

    So, what does this mean?

    [quote]AAC in QT Preview only supports Low-Complexity Profile encoding.<hr></blockquote>

    So, what does this mean?

    [quote]AAC cannot encode beyond 32 KHz at 96 kbit or lower<hr></blockquote>

    So, what does this mean?

    [quote]LAME 3.92 is more refined <hr></blockquote>

    So what?



    I appreciate how much you know about audio and all, but like, nothing you said helps me. My question is just this. Will QT6/MPEG4 mean that I can get a few more songs on my iPod (provided that Apple comes up with a software/firmware update)?
  • Reply 14 of 14
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    It means Apple's implementation will not sound any better than mp3 at this point in many situations. Wait a few months...
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