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Best Quicktime Codec For Web-Streaming? (Part 2)
By Frey | October 25, 2007
If you missed out on the first half of this discussion, check out the Best Quicktime Codec For Web-Streaming? (Part 1) article, posted last week, where I talked about the best quicktime codec for webstreaming and compared MP4 to both H.264 and DiVX.
You can export MP4 out of Quicktime Pro (or FCP, Compressor, Adobe Premiere, Avid, etc) - with usually the same results (unless I miss a setting). I don’t use the newer Sorenson or other codecs that aren’t a standard inside Quicktime 6 (see the first half of this post for more info there). The older sorenson codecs seem to be more widespread, but are not optimal. The newer stuff is more optimal, but not widespread. Either way, I don’t use Sorenson codecs. Btw, 3ivx, which seems to be faster at exporting, but also results in a much smaller file, costs $99.95 and has to be purchased separate of Quicktime Pro - but, more importantly, the file can be played by all QT6 and QT7 players without additional downloads.
You pretty much have to play around with each film - sometimes one compression works for one video, but not for another. I’ve found a good starting point is 320×240 at 800kbps, and then I work on it from there in 50kbps increments (both up and down) to find the best quality and smallest size that I can live with (usually never gets bigger than 1000kbps). I use the MP4 settings only.
Audio is something to watch out for as well. I usually use AAC stereo at 24khz. The Audio doesn’t have to be high quality when you’re showing off your camera work…
I use 320×240, since it is half the standard TV screen resolution, and can usually double if someone needs to see it bigger (make sure the compression is right for this if you think it necessary). You’re really just trying to get someone’s interest enough to ask for a better copy on DVD or at least to call and talk to you.
For optimum quality, I’ve found the commercials and other films/videos I’ve posted to be a bit bigger than I’d prefer, but it’s better to be a tad bigger than to not be seen at all. I usually post 30 second commercials spots at about 3MB in size.
Not that I have this down to a science, but my reference formula for 320×240 Quicktime MP4 encoding and size is roughly:
10 seconds (with audio) = 1 Megabyte
It’s not written in stone, but it usually helps to get a general idea of how large a file should be. So, if your Quicktime MP4 demo reel is 5 minutes long, it should be around 30 Megabytes in size.
btw: make sure to encode it as a Quicktime *.mov file and not as a *.mp4 file. Even though Quicktime will open both extensions, I’ve had problems with the .mp4 extension in the past with certain web-browsers for some reason.
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