Quicktime .mov files are poor quality

jimingo wrote on 1/19/2005, 10:20 AM
I'm delivering a 6.5 minute video on CD rom and I decided to go with quicktime because of the pc and mac compatability. Here's the problem though...I have Vegas 4 and I am rendering a Quicktime 5 file, using the 3 mbps template (best quality quicktime template) and it doesn't look that impressive when played in my quicktime player. The audio quality isn't all that great either. When I render this project out as a .wmv, it looks and sounds great, but I would prefer going with quicktime. I was wondering if it was worth upgrading to Vegas 5 because I was thinking there may be improvements to the quicktime templates or if maybe Vegas 5 has the option to render to Quicktime 6 (but I'm not sure if that would be any better anyway)
Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
-Jim

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 1/19/2005, 10:23 AM
Vegas 4 and 5 suck when it comes to QuickTime IMHO.

Get Quicktime Pro ($29) or Procoder ($264-$499).
jimingo wrote on 1/19/2005, 10:28 AM
If I get quicktime pro, can it convert an .avi to .mov?
Chienworks wrote on 1/19/2005, 11:11 AM
You might also want to consider MPEG-1 if you are looking for more universal compatability. At around 3.5Mbps this looks at least as good as VHS and seems to play back smoothly even straight from the disc. If you know your audience has faster CD-ROM drives you can up the bitrate much higher. This will also let your audience choose whatever player they wish instead of restricting them to QuickTime. As an added benefit, many newer DVD players will be able to play the video right from the same disc.
scdragracing wrote on 1/19/2005, 11:16 AM
you need to know what codecs you used in your quicktime file... qt is not a codec, it's a container for codecs.

the old way to do it was to use the qt cinepak codec for video... or, better yet, to simply make an mpeg1 file to put on the cd, which is more platform-compatible than anything you could do with quicktime.
jimingo wrote on 1/19/2005, 11:28 AM
thanks, gonna render to mpeg1 and see how that looks
Jsnkc wrote on 1/19/2005, 12:03 PM
There have been some problems reported though with QUicktime not being able to play MPEG files that were created in Vegas.
jimingo wrote on 1/19/2005, 12:26 PM
I rendered a 3.5 mbps mpeg1 file at best quality and it plays back in windows media player perfectly although it's a little choppy at parts when played back in my quicktime player. Is it possible to have the cd roms auto load the mpeg1 file into media player as long as the person watching the cd rom has media player already installed? Or will they have to choose what program to play the file?
soundvideo wrote on 1/20/2005, 8:45 AM
Proble is though, that's not a profession broadcast format. What then?
Chienworks wrote on 1/20/2005, 8:59 AM
Soundvideo: i'm not sure what your question is about. Why should it matter? The question here was about getting the video to and playing it back on various PCs.

If a professional broadcast version is required, render a new output file in that format.
jimingo wrote on 1/20/2005, 10:08 AM
I already made a DVD version of this project, now I'm making a more distributable version, that's why I was looking in to quicktime. I'll probably end up using mpeg-1 but does anybody know if this mpeg-1 file can auto run from a cd-rom?
Chienworks wrote on 1/20/2005, 11:41 AM
It can be, at least in Windows anyway. You can create an autorun.inf file that launches the file and hope the computer has an appropriate media player installed. You could also include a free media player that you know works on the CD and launch that to play the file. I don't know how you would set this up for a Mac though.

However, if you're looking for purely personal opinions .. i'm sick and tired of discs that automatically open something on my screen when i insert them. Even SONY's loop sample discs launch a web browser to show their catalog when you insert them. I've seen discs that automatically replace my browser with their branded version ... just by inserting the disc! I shut off autoplay on all my XP computers. Even when the autoplay is a benign function, it's still just as easy for me to explore the disc and launch whatever myself, and then i know i'm in control.

I see lots of commercial discs that have printed on them "Insert disc in drive, open drive D: (or the letter of your CD-ROM drive) and double-click on setup.exe". In your case it would be double-click on movie.mpg. Simple enough instructions. Even Mac users can follow the equivalent instruction for the Mac OS.