Which codec to use with QT?

farss wrote on 6/6/2005, 6:00 AM
Just trying to render out some WMV files to .MOVs for a Macolite. Plan was to burn them onto a CD so he could easily drop them into his FCP 3 system. But after I rendered out the first one, shock, horror, humongeously large file.
So it seems the default QT template gives me an uncompressed file, yipes. Given the crud I started with this is serious overkill.
So I guess I should chose a codec, but which one is the standard DV codec for Macs?
I know these Mac things are supposed to be 'the industry standard' but if so why are they always so non standard!
Bob.

PS, maybe I should just give up and put it on tape?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 6/6/2005, 7:26 AM
I just tried Default Template / Custom / Video / Video Format / DV/DVCPRO - NTSC and got what appears to be a standard DV in an MOV file. Odd though, the file is about 29% smaller than using SONY's DV codec. Vegas loads and plays it fine though.
John_Cline wrote on 6/6/2005, 9:40 AM
An Type 2 .AVI file has two copies of the audio for compatibility reasons. The DV .MOV file doesn't have the second copy of the audio track and, therefore, is smaller.

John
B_JM wrote on 6/6/2005, 10:18 AM
why not just give him the wmv file -- macs can read windows media files
Coursedesign wrote on 6/6/2005, 10:33 AM
I ran up against this when sending a QT of my work to a student at a major school. The guy I sent it to was using the school computers, which didn't have a WMP installed, and he didn't have admin privileges.

Other Mac users are "conscientious objectors" when it comes to WMP.

I did a QT with the Sorenson 3 codec (the "standard" Mac QT codec, a bit long in the tooth), and a Flash video, also with Sorenson, which of course plays nicely on all platforms.
Chienworks wrote on 6/6/2005, 11:13 AM
There's no way that the second copy of the PCM audio would have used 20MB in 15 seconds. There must be some other difference too. If it was just a second copy of the audio track then the difference would have been maybe 4% or so, but certainly not 29%. For that matter, my original AVI file didn't even contain an audio track and the MOV version did.
Coursedesign wrote on 6/6/2005, 11:17 AM
Beware also that QT files can have many soundtracks, each with a different starting point.

This is not so much fun when importing (you have to export each track from QT separately, and note the start time of each).
farss wrote on 6/6/2005, 3:01 PM
It's OK, the answer (I hope) was the DV - PAL template.
Bob.