[MacDV] Re: Which format?

[James Asherman]

On Thursday, May 6, 2004, at 08:55  AM, Steve Robertson wrote:

> Ever since I subscribed to this list, I've been hoping we would get 
> into a detailed discussion about how to keep the resolution as high as 
> possible - and the picture as sharp as possible - throughout the 
> process of shooting video and creating a finished product. Several 
> folks have recommended Sorenson 3, but I have had disappointing 
> results. How about some detailed examples of what can be accomplished 
> by digging deeply into the optional settings for Sorenson 3 or other 
> codecs? Or does anybody know of a good book on this subject?
>
> Steve R.

A huge subject. David Pogue's missing iMovie book at least explains 
some of the codecs.
  What I like to do is try to find out what the codec and settings are 
on movies I think look good on the web. Then I try to emulate those. 
For instance I just visited the Quicktime movie trailers page.  It is 
easy to download some of these movies.  I just downloaded "Chronicles 
of Riddick" (can't wait). Anyway it is sorenson3  480x260  millions of 
colors 24FPS.
The sound is QDesign music2 at 44.1.  It's also nearly 12 Mb.
That's just one but it's a good start.
Jim


>
> On Wednesday, May 5, 2004, at 06:35  PM, Bruce Pillman wrote:
>>
>> On Wednesday, May 5, 2004, at 09:13 AM, Lee Chapman wrote:
>>> When I exported my 11 minute film to QT at highest settings the end 
>>> result was still pretty awful.
>>
>> I certainly agree that QT is not a low quality format. The quality 
>> depends on the codec used, and the settings used. I'm not sure what 
>> you mean by highest settings. I found that iMovie's normal high 
>> quality settings were still awful by my standards. I've exported from 
>> iMovie to QT using the Sorensen codec, (Best, 29.97 fps, key frame 
>> 24, 500 KBytes/sec) and gotten pretty good results.
>