Need help outputting avi files from FC

Hi everyone -- Happy New Year!

I'm trying to create some high quality avi files to supply to a webmaster. I have seven 1-15 minute vidoes that are currently in FCP. I've tried outputting from FCP using QT conversion. (There is not an AVI option in Compressor). I've tried using no compression but the 10-15 minute videos wind up being around 27-30 GB. I then tried using the DV/DVC Pro codec setting and put the quality on high, audio is uncompressed and at 16 bit mono. The files wind up being 2-3 GB. When I play them back on the G5 from the hard drive they look and sound great. But then I saved them to a DVD and but when I open the file on the DVD just the first couple of frames play. I have also tried the Cinepak codec but the files look super crappy.

Does anyone have a formula for ouputting high quality AVI files from FCP that are small enough to fit on a DVD?

You're prompt response is much appreciated as I need to turn these over tonight.

Thanks,
ShelleyRae

Seven times 15 minutes!?!?

You're gonna be dooming yourself to crappy quality at that amount of video to fit on one DVD.

It's a concept frequently thrown around in here that AVIs look like crap unless you go with little to no compression, which results in giant files.

Does the webmaster only accept AVIs? I personally like QuickTime as a wrapper much more.

Also, you *should* compress the audio. If this stuff is intended for the web, you can knock the audio data rate down to 64kbps mono and it would still sound relatively decent. Fifteen minutes of audio, uncompressed, adds up to quite a bit. And did you reduce the frame size and/or frame rate? Those help a lot as well. As far as codecs go, I'd go with Sorenson 3, H.264 or MPEG-4.

My suggestion would be to deliver using a portable drive, or at least one DVD for every one or two files.

> When I play them back on the G5 from the hard drive they look and sound great. But then I
> saved them to a DVD and but when I open the file on the DVD just the first couple of frames
> play.

Video files of higher quality will not play properly from a data DVD. DVD is an optical medium and doesn't have nearly the transfer speed needed to keep up with, say, DV-quality movie files. You have to copy the files to a hard drive first.


www.derekmok.com

"...When I play them back on the G5 from the hard drive they look and sound great. But then I saved them to a DVD and but when I open the file on the DVD just the first couple of frames play..."

how are you burning those files to DVD? with a DVD software (iDVD, Toast, DVDSP) or by draging and droping the .avi into the DVD media on the desktop and then burning?

if you use software to burn a DVD with menus etc, the file will be compressed - but if you treat that DVD as a "media" and drag and drop it (which by the way will only give you 4.7GB of space) the files will be raw, which sounds like what you want

Yes, the webmaster only accepts AVIs

>>Seven times 15 minutes!?!? >>
I'm only putting one file on each DVD

>>As far as codecs go, I'd go with Sorenson 3, H.264 or MPEG-4.>>

I'm on Final Cut Pro 5.0.4. Mac OSX 10.4.8. I'm "Export Using Quicktime Conversion" , then choosing AVI the under the video options I have these choices: BMP, Cinepak, DVPal, DV/DVCPro NTSC, DVCPro050-NTSC, DVCPRO50-Pal, None.

I have all the other compression settings you mention only if I save as a Quicktime File.

Yes, I dragged and dropped to the DVD. What I'm hearing from you and Derek is that these will not play back properly unless they are first copied to a hard drive. So maybe I continue making the AVIs and drag/dropping them to DVDs -- then hopefully the Webmaster will be able to save them to her hard drive and work with them.

I will also make Quicktime files using the H264 or Sorensen 3 codec with the settings Derek suggested and provide those as well and hopefully she'll have something she can work with.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

you know....if these files are for Web and are only 1 minute...they should be way smaller than 100MB....a 1 or 2 GB file for web is just too big and will take too long to download. - I would talk to you webmaster and see if WMV or QT would work -
wait..I think derek sair the same thing

Are you also reducing the physcial size - the frame size - of the files, and maybe dropping the frame rate? These are common ways of reducing the file size. So, instead of providing a TV sized picture (which in my world is 720 x 576) you can divide that by two or three, making a much smaller picture on the screen and saving gigs of space. So, I would end up with, say, a 240 x 192 frame size, and maybe drop the frame rate to 15 fps.

I'm with everyone else that AVIs are not that great. Very outmoded. I would look into WMV (for which you will need Flip4Mac) or quicktimes like the other guys suggested.

Thanks everyone.

The webmaster wanted large files because she does compression on her end.

I supplied her with both the requested AVI files and also gave her a QT with H.263 codec per your suggestions to see if she could work with that.

I thought the H.264 looked much better than the AVIs even though it was more than half the size of the AVI!