.mov format again

weaver wrote on 4/26/2010, 7:51 PM

I knew this would come to haunt me: I have to render to .mov. When I do - the result is stuttering video playback of the .mov file - together with a bit of static in the audio. I have quicktime V7.0.3 and I notice in numerous posts I need to find a proper matching version of QT. Since I have VMS V6.0a - which is kinda old - what is the best approach to make this happen? I've never been able to get the .mov format to work in about 6 years of working with VMS.

I need to produce .mov so that another guy with a Mac system will make a couple of edits and upload for a web based application.

If I need to upgrade to VMS 9 - then I will do so.

What do you recommend? Thanks
IW

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 4/26/2010, 8:32 PM

Try playing your video in VLC player. QT player for Windows is terrible, no matter what the version.

Post your delivery intentions and complete render specs here. Someone may have some suggestions.

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 4/26/2010, 10:41 PM

Version 6, if I remember correctly, comes only with low res mov templates. If somebody else still needs to edit your files, I'm afraid you'll have to upgrade to version 9 plat edition, which comes with hd mov templates to render to.
Why don't you download the trial? It is fully working for 30 days.

weaver wrote on 4/27/2010, 3:04 AM

thanks for the quick help and response and suggestions. Here is what I learned:
1) I messed up. Using the "quick time 6 (*.mov)" format and the default templet - a 7 sec test video was about 250MB in size and was probably overwhelming my old winxp machine.
- I changed the settings to good rendering, ntsc dv 720x480, none (prog scan), pixel aspect ration 1.00, sorenson video 3, 24 bpp color, quality 50.2, basic data rate, target 115, keystone every 15 frames. The resulting 7 sec .mov video was around 1MB in size. To my amazement it played properly in quicktime. This will work.

2) I tried the VLC player and it wouldn't play the 250MB version of the .mov file. It popped up a window with an obscure failure code and said it wasn't fixable. When I rendered the .mov format with reasonable settings, and tried again, the VLC player worked great ... with one interesting observation - the name of my project slowly flashed (about 3 sec display of project name) superimposed at the bottom of the video. Is that a VLC player "feature"?

3) I noticed that the audio for the .mov format wasn't quite as good (a bit tinnier) as my .wmv renderings. My .wmv templet uses 64Kbps, as opposed to the maximum 48Kbps for the .mov format. I assume VMS 9 has more options for the .mov audio?

4) I didn't try VMS 9 since the above worked.

IW

Chienworks wrote on 4/27/2010, 4:32 AM

Rendering with the default template results in an uncompressed file, which is simply huge. Uncompressed 720x480 will be about 40MB/second for a 32bit image. Very few hard drives can sustain this data rate and trying to play such a file will tax all but the fastest computers.

On the other hand, the 1MB file you got is very compressed. DV quality should be about 26MB for 7 seconds. Even DVD quality would be about 6MB. A 1MB file is more along the lines of scummy web video quality and will show a lot of artifacts and blocking.

What are you making the file for? What's the purpose and what will be done with it?

Quality is mostly about the bitrate. Higher bitrates are better quality with proportionately larger files.

Uncompressed = 237 to 316Mbps
DV = 25Mbps
DVD = 4 to 8Mbps
Web videos = 0.25 to 3Mbps
Your video = 1.14Mbps (note that QuickTime usually uses KBps instead of Mbps and there are 128KB in 1Mb, so 1.14Mbps = 146KBps)

Does your output have to be QuickTime?

weaver wrote on 4/27/2010, 10:57 AM

I had forgotten that on the PC ... each Byte (capital B) equals 8 bits (lowercase b) (as opposed to another processor I deal with at work where the convention is 16bits per byte.)

So - that is correct - around 1.14Mbps for my 7 sec quicktime video. If I want to increase the bitrate - do I just adjust the "quality" slider? Also, the sound was a bit thin. The option to increase audio fidelity isn't as extensive as for the .wmv format. Is there any way to improve the rendered audio within the .mov format?

At that bit rate - it looks pretty good to me -and is acceptable quality. I am producing piano/keyboard lessons for web use. I am creating the content - and another guy (who has a Mac computer) is getting it on the web. He asked for the video in .mov format.

IW