Compression to put feature cut online

Hello,

I've been asked to put our feature, shot on Standard Def DV at 720x480 Anamorphic, online for festival submissions. Apparently the DVDs are unreliable. Is the h264 compression setting enough? Even with all six reels compressed, altogether they are 2.6 to 3 gigs. Is there a way to further compress it to get it under a gig at least and not look and sound completely terrible? I find Compressor very difficult to use. ANy help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Scott

NOT really. you can tweak the bit rate or lower the res but at that size Not in h264.

You can try going from original to fv4/fla but i still think you will have about 1.5 gigs.

You will need to chapter it into say 5 parts to show it near efficiently on the web.

I think vimeo plus will take up to 5 gigs but maybe not as a single file.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I would do it as ten minute reels. All real reels used to be ten minutes anyway. Keep to tradition:
Reel 1, Reel 2-- average feature runs eight to ten.

These are doubled up for projection release, usually two cans of two 2000 foot reels... sorry, I digress. Nurse? Sugar for grapefruit.

Parse it out into ten minute reels.


- Loren

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Thanks so much for your input, but breaking the reels up is what I'm trying to avoid. Withoutabox.com has a deal with IMDB where you can put your festival screener online, but it doesn't say to break the reels up. And as there are MANY full features already uploaded, there simply MUST be a way to get it done. I'm just trying to figure it out. They say as long as the file is 2 gigs or under, it can work...just need to find the best settings to do that. Because the H.264 still renders each reel (they are more like 15 minutes each) about 700-800 mb.

Thanks!

storm666: Withoutabox or without your pants on.

H.264 is somewhat more efficient compression than the MPEG-2 of SD DVDs. So 2 GB is not terribly skimpy for a 90 min. SD video in H.264. In Compressor Inspector; Encoder pane; Video: Settings; Data Rate: Restrict to: X kbits/sec; X must be a little less than 4.4 times the number of minutes in your video. For best results do video noise reduction before the compression. Now enjoy your 2 GB H.264 but don't expect the Withoutabox screeners to look so good.

Look where you read about the 2 GB limit:

Quote

We recommend the following settings to optimize video quality on the IMDb site:
? File size: Less than 2GB
? Frame: 480 px by 360 px at 30 frames per second
? Format: Flash Video (Codec: Sorenson or VP6 codec) or Quicktime

Note the 480x360 pixel recommendation. I bet Withoutabox will recompress whatever you send them to suit their own server standards. Reelport is a similar outfit in Germany. After many emails they revealed that they recompress every 16:9 video received to 512x288. I couldn't get them to reveal the bitrate.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Download MPEG Streamclip and open your full resolution file in it. Choose H264 on the top drop down as your codec. (Actually I'd recommend downloading X264, as it encodes in the H264 codec but is much faster). See the box that says limit data rate? Check that and then start plugging in some numbers. Try about 1500 kbps as a start and see what it tells you the resulting file size will be. Adjust the numbers up or down to get your desired file size. If you compress the audio the number will go down a little more. In my experience IMA 4:1 usually works pretty well. Don't forget to Deinterlace if you shot your footage as interlaced.

MPEG Streamclip: [www.squared5.com]