Need to provide client with an FCP file small enough to email'

Mac OS 10.6.8
FCP 5.1.4

I need to provide client with an FCP file small enough to email while retaing the aspect ratio of 1440x1080. I rendered a file, however, it did not retain proper aspect even though I marked it to do so.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

export the file as-is,
take it into compressor, and away you go.

forget about 1440x1080
your export will be square pixels, so you need 1920 x1080, or 1280x720
or most likely a lot smaller for email.

EMAIL?!? at 1440x1080? Many email programs have an attachement file size limit of 10MB...some 20MB. That won't get you very much time, at that size. Might be able to do :30 or 1:00


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Hiker forgot to give the length. For each length there is the question: at what resolution to make the compression?

If length is X minutes, and the email attachment limit is 15 MB, the bitrate must be kept under 2000/X kbps. No choice there.
I checked three examples: 8 minutes, 20 minutes, and 40 minutes.
For 8 minutes the bitrate must be kept under 250 kbps. For 20 minutes it's 100 kbps. For 40 minutes it's 50 kbps.

250 kbps H.264 can look half-decent if you choose the right resolution. Even 640x360 is too many pixels for 250 kbps to describe. H.264 makes a blocky mess of it! On the other hand 192x108 is unnecessarily few pixels for that bit rate. The picture is very weak. To my eyes, at 25p, the best is choice at around 384 x 216.

Note that Compressor's H.264 encoder won't allow such high resolutions as 1920x1080 at just 250 kbps. It forces it up to 1300 kbps and it still looks awful.

100 kbps H.264 is more challenging. Made at 192x108 it might be worth emailing. The client can see what's going on, at least in the slow parts.

50 kbps H.264 is hopeless. Compressor's encoder can make it, but the result hardly resembles the HD original.

If you have a video you must make into a very small file, do a few tests at different resolutions. The nature of the video, especially of its action, will affect your choice.

Compressor's H.264 encoder seems to prefer resolutions in which both numbers are divisible by 4: 192x108, 256x144, 320x180, 384x216, 448x252, etc.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

"Compressor's H.264 encoder seems to prefer resolutions in which both numbers are divisible by 4: 192x108, 256x144, 320x180, 384x216, 448x252, etc. "

is that particular to Compressor?
I thought it was the nature of compression


nick

It's in the nature of H.264 compression that 4x4 blocks are handled efficiently, but how inefficiently the left-overs are handled can be due to the particular encoder.

Not all codecs handle 4x4 blocks efficiently. If the codec wants 8x8 blocks then the puniest 16:9 resolutions are 128x72, 256x144, 384x216, 512x288, ... If the codec wants 16x16 blocks, they're 256x144, 512x288, ...

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany