Welcome! Log In Create A New Profile

disk cache setting for quicktime authoring

Posted by howard

howard

disk cache setting for quicktime authoring
August 11, 2001 02:46PM

<HTML>I read in march issue of dv world magazine that when using quicktime to author or edit (regardless of which codec) the disc cache in memory control panel should be set to custom with "lowest possible amount(128k with Mac OS 9). Also recommended is min memory:4697K and preferred memory: at least 16mb. These changes are to optimize quicktime's memory usage.

I have never heard this about the disk cache size before. If true, I assume it would hold true for both FCP and Cleaner 5 as both are integrated with Quicktime.

1. Has anyone else heard or tried these setting before? If so, did it make any difference?

2. Whic codec is best for capturing ?

3. What is the best quality setting within media cleaner for saving DV source files(without compression) that have only been cropped. Should I save as quicktime with either animation or none compression or should I just use DV setting or Radius DV or.... I have noticed that DV settings produce smaller file sizes than captured Quicktime files. Can someone recommend a setting and explain the differences?</HTML>

Reply Quote

Clifford VanMeter

Re: disk cache setting for quicktime authoring
August 15, 2001 11:19AM

<HTML>Here's what I know regarding this matter...

I haven't seen these specific settings before, but they are close to what I have on my own machine. My settings are based on my experimentation over the last couple of years trying to optimize QuickTime playback. I was told by another QuickTime author a while ago that having the disk cache set low only helps when you have "enough" RAM ...Well, like my Grandaddy used to say, "You can't be too pretty, have too much money, or ever have enough RAM." (Grandaddy was ahead of his time on that RAM thing) I do have the dick cache set to 128, though... and it does seem to help. The min memory I have set is the same as what's quoted in the article, though I have 24MB allocated as preferred... even for fairly large files I don't seem to be having any problems with that. I had noticed some playback degradation with RAM allocations that were too high (over 45 MBs) in QuickTime 4.1... but I haven't had time to check that in QT5.

Capturing and compressing are somehting of a black art and depend on a lot of factors. First, what's you final product going to? DVD, CD, web? The clarity of the image WILL be affected by using any compression when you capture. Obviously "NONE" covers you for everything, but its not always practical to save gigbytes of files. If you do decide to hit it, I'd recomend Animation Millions. This gives you just a ghost of compression, but (IMO) the least amount of artifacting is produced when re-compressing the output.

As far as final output...When I was at Sorenson, we'd do two passes on compression. In the first pass, we were looking to get the video as clean as possible and sized. So we'd scale, bump saturation and contrast, de-interlace... etc. in the first pass saving as "None" for audio and video. Then we'd make a second pass to compress using the Sorenson Video codec and IMA for audio.

Hope this helps...

______________________
Clifford VanMeter
Ursa Major Media
www.ursamajormedia.com
______________________
QuikTime Creative Developers Group Advisory Board
www.quicktimecreative.com
______________________</HTML>

Reply Quote

Forum List Message List New Topic

Newer Topic Older Topic

Print View RSS

Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.

Click here to login

Moderators: Ian Graham, derekmok, Andrew Kines, Graeme Nattress, Jeff Harrell, Christoph Vonrhein, Tom Wolsky, walterbiscardi, Jude Cotter, strypes, grafixjoe, Nick Meyers, Ben King, Shane Ross


	Web lafcpug.org