avi ---> quicktime?

[BabaG]

not sure where to post this so i guess i'll try general discussion.
i'd like to take some uncompressed avi's (possibly at non standard
aspect ratios - not crazy but maybe a little off) and compress them
down to sorenson quicktimes. these are for a friend's website, clips
of films she's made. the odd size is to crop out some things on the
periphery of the frame.

i've been able to take my edited dv and frameserve it to virtualdub
from premiere. in virtualdub i did the cropping and deinterlacing and
saved it as an uncompressed avi. i've tried to use quicktime pro to
export the avi as a quicktime sorenson 3 but can't get qtpro to open
the uncompressed avi. it's a one minute clip and is 1.5gb.

any suggestions on how to get to the desired .mov file? she's the
one who's made the call on the final format based on emails
exchanged with a director of photography who's site she admires.
he's working on a mac system so i don't have access to the same
software he's used as i'm pc based.

thanks,
BabaG

[foxyshadis]

If you can get her to reconsider, consider flv, the format of youtube, google, etc, which is embedded in flash (both easier to play than quicktime and an even larger install base), and there are several good compressors for it. You don't have to mention that Quicktime is the land of unmitigated video hell on PCs, although if it bolsters the argument, why not. :p On2's Flix (http://www.on2.com/technology/flix-features) is quite good at $40 (though you'll need to pricey pro for 2-pass), or for free you can export FLV from ffdshow vfw (set it to FLV1 and under output export to FLV), although ffdshow's encoding options always scared me, and Adobe Flash lets you export FLV/SWF.

But QT Pro is pretty much the only way I've found to create SVQ3 that doesn't have a jaw-dropping price, and on windows it's buggy as heck. Too bad lavc doesn't have a compressor, that would rock.

[smok3]

foxyshadis, BabaG; iam using x264 (for video) and itunes for audio part constantly to encode to mp4 that is qt compatible, you have to make sure that server mime types are correctly set though and that you use -hint option when muxing, any special reasons why not?

[check]

x264 != sorenson :P
Sorenson was the older codec they used to use, it's MPEG-4 SP from memory.
Quicktime h264 or x264 are the newer MPEG-4 AVC.
I tend to agree with foxyshadis - kill your boss :p

[smok3]

uhmm, and why would you have to use sorenson anyway?

[foxyshadis]

Presumably "because that's what the other guy recommended to her" and BabaG didn't know what to say to that. It could be worse, imagine if he'd used Cinepak...

Flash 7 has the highest market penetration of any streaming solution, 95%, and runs on every OS. =p QT and Real are on 40-60% (depending on which stats you read), WMP7+ probably 95% but 9/10 something like 85%. Hard to find reliable WMP stats though.

[smok3]

a. so if flash8 is vp6, what was flash7? (some sort of sorenson?)
b. is there a free php solution that would feed a certain swf player with the list of flv movies that one uploads (automagically)?

[foxyshadis]

a. FLV1, an h.263 derivative like ASP (divx, xvid, etc).
b. Likely, flv's pretty popular now, but I wouldn't know. The php side would be easy, you'd just have to parse it through the flash somehow, but I know lots of websites create flashes that do exactly that, for photos and such.

[BabaG]

she's aparently aiming the clips and site at some specific contacts whom
she knows to have and be comfortable with sv3qt. also she likes this dp's
site and that's what he's used. doesn't care about overall penetration by
flash format as she's aiming narrowly. i'm basically just trying to do what
i've been asked to do.

i made a second pass, taking the full size uncompressed avi and resizing it
down to the 480 width she (and the dp) gave me as a spec. kept this 480w
avi in uncompressed format. the smaller size led to a smaller filesize (around
770mb) which qtpro was able to open and compress to her desired sv3qt
spec. must be the larger than 1gb file size that prevented qtpro from
opening the file before.

this file is a test. there are ultimately 6-8 more and this was pretty much the
smallest. i'm trying to preserve the quality as much as i can but seem to be
painted into a corner. if this is the way to get qtpro to open the file (by
keeping it under 1gb) i have a problem since the coming files will likely exceed
that, even if i make a second pass to resize to 480w. at 480w uncompressed
most of these files will be too big for qtpro if i keep them uncompressed. i
don't like having to make multiple passes to begin with.

i certainly apreciate all the information so far. if it was my call i'd follow the
flv advice here but unfortunately it's not. any further tips or info welcomed.
especially as regards getting over the qtpro filesize limitation. also, is there a
better way, a way i could condense the two pass process (1. crop to full size
uncomp, 2. resize to 480w) into a single pass? the ideal, of course would be to
be able to do it all in vdub but seems out of the question with the delivery being
qt.

thanks again for all the input,
BabaG

[foxyshadis]

Try huffman or lagarith for the lossless input? (Making sure that "decode to rgb" options are all on.)

[BabaG]

do you have links for how i get these? oops. found it. lagarith
made the file slightly smaller than huffyuv, which is good, but
neither of those will open in qtpro. sigh.
thanks