.mov files rendered as MPEG-4 Video extremely big

Hussayn wrote on 10/22/2008, 3:08 AM

Hi;

As i was informed mp4 is supposed to give very good quality and very low size. So i rendered a 2 minutes video (800*600) as .mov with following configuraiton parameters:

width/height: 800 / 600
Frame Rate: 25 (PAL)
Field order: (None)
Pixel aspect ratio: 1
Video Format: MPEG-4 Video
Compressed depth: 15 bpp color
Quality: 70%
Data rate: Unconstrained
keyframe every(frames): 15

I end up with a 50 MBytes file. But i expected by far less size. To compare, the same video rendered as .wmv was only 19 MBytes in length with better quality when using these settings:

Mode: Quality VBR
Format: Windows Media Video 9
Width / Height : 800 / 600Pixel aspect ratio: 1
Frame Rate (fps): 15
seconds per keyframe: 3
Quality: 93 %

I guess, that i have not choosen the correct settings for the .mp4 rendering ?
So what am i doing wrong ? (Maybe it is important to know, that my film has no fast moving elements and maybe something could be optimized for size ?

thanks for any response,
regards,
hussayn

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/22/2008, 4:49 AM

You don't mention bitrates anywhere, so you probably didn't consider them. The ONLY thing that matters in determining the output file size is the duration and the bitrate. None of the settings you do mention matter at all. Lower bitrates result in smaller files; higher bitrates result in larger files.

Hussayn wrote on 10/22/2008, 5:15 AM

Hi, Chienworks;
Thanks for your reply. I have to clearify your point about bitrate:

I did not mention bitrates, because i didn't get any direct information about bitrates.
But i think, the bitrate is hidden behind the "quality" parameter which i mentioned.
So for the .mov file i used 70% and for the .wmv file i used 90%.

Furthermore it looks like i can get nearly the same file sizes, when i lower the
quality for the .mov . But the result looks like in draft mode and that's not what i
expect for quicktime movies. Just from comparison: A 2 minutes .mov of size 20
MBytes is typically of fairly good quality.

So...

Which settings would be "typical settings" for production files with .mov ?
I know, it also depends somewhat on the content, but let's say,
for a movie without fast scenes, what would be a typical setting ?
Or would you recommend to use the .mp4(h264) format instead .mov ?
And would that be more standard ? At least with h264 the
compression rate seems similar compared to what i see with .wmv with
comparable quality.

Let me know any further details, if needed to explain, what makes me suffer...

regards, hussayn