Best way to get 18-minute film down to 60 megabytes

I'm hoping someone can help me with a little problem.

I have an 18 minute HD film (done in FCExp) that in QT format is about 280meg. I need to get it down to 60 meg or less to include on a multiple format CDR. It also needs to be of a useful quality. Is there any way this can be done? I'd be very grateful for any suggestions. Thanks! Belinda

Hi. I did a little forum cleanup to move your question to its own thread, and to get it what I hope is a fairly representative title.

Unfortunately, you're basically asking for something impossible. An eighteen-minute short at 60 megabytes would have to have a data rate of about 460 kilobits per second. The data rate for HD compressed with the best codec available is in the 5-8 megabit range.

Obviously you should try compressing your short down to 460 kilobits to see what you think of the results. Who knows; you might actually find it acceptable for your purposes.

But your best bet is to get the raster size down to something more in line with that data rate. You're probably going to have to go down to something less than SD; I've never gotten acceptable results on SD material from H.264 at less than around 800 kilobits per second or so, and frankly that was extreme.

The best solution is obviously to deliver your short in some other way; sixty megabytes is simply not a reasonable file size for an eighteen-minute film. But if that's just not an option, period, then you're going to have to do some experimenting with different raster sizes and data rates until you find something you can live with.

You're going to have to do some experimenting. H.264 is a codec where you need to hit a sweet spot, drop too far below that, and it falls apart pretty quickly. You will have to drop frame size to make up for the lack of bitrate, probably a third HD size (640x360) and see if it holds up at the bitrate that Jeff mentioned.



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