Ideal Quicktime Export for dot Mac Pages?

[mikeyPotg]

hey guys,
I just got a doc mac website and I'm trying to figure out the best way to export movies for the website.
Of course I'd like some nice quality video, but I think the load times are a bit too long and I'm trying to find ways to make the website/videos load a lot faster.

My current export settings are as follows:
Export - Movie to Quicktime Movie

Video Options -
Compression: H.264
Quality: High
Key frame rate: 30
Bitrate: 3000 kbits/sec
Frame reordering: yes
Encoding mode: multi-pass
Dimensions: 640x480 (current)

Sound Options -
Format: AAC
Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
Bit rate: 128 kbps

Does anyone have different settings that you would recommend?

 

[Flore]

It depends on if you want the file to be played while still streaming, or if you are fine when it downloads before it starts playing.

That obviously also depends on the length and the overall size of the clip.

If the file is supposed to stream, let's say the average user gets a connection speed to your site of 300kbit/s, then you should avoid bitrates higher than that.
Obviously with 640 x 480, the quality will seriously go down, so maybe you should consider a lower resolution.

If you want to show off a nice self made movie, and most people who will see it have a faster connection or are willing to wait, you can use higher bitrates, generally 1000-2000 kbit/s is perfectly fine for your resolution I'd say.

Depending on the sound you also might want to consider 64kbit/s only.

Others might have different opinions on this obviously.
I suggest play around with the bitrates and resolution until you find a nice compromise that suits your need.
There is rarely a general solution!

 

[mikeyPotg]

thanks for the reply. I decided to try using Compressor again and used one of their QT compatible settings, which lowered the resolution to 320 x 240. I can see the quality difference, but I think the load times have been cut down by more than half.

 

[Flore]

In case you regularly plan to do this kind of things, you might want to read a little bit about bitrates and resolution.

Just take a look at wikipedia.

The following would be a good guideline, but is certainly not technically accurate and also, there is much more to video encoding than this.
Might give you an idea though.

In general, the resolution of a video does not change the size of the file.
It only determines how many pixels the video covers.

The bitrate however tells you how much information per second is used when the file is played.

So 300kbit/s is obviously less information than 3000kbit/s.
This information is then "distributed" among the pixels, so if you use 300kbit/s for a 320x240 video, it might look fine, since there is enough data for each pixel, but if use 300kbit/s for 640x480 video, then there are more pixels to be addressed by these 300kbit for each second, meaning the information per pixel will be less and quality will go down.

The overall file size for the two videos would be the same.

So that means the 320x240 video will look better than the 640x480 video, but is obviously smaller (in screen size, not file size)
If you want higher resolution with the same quality, you need a higher bitrate, and therefore get a bigger file.
Clear?

 

[mikeyPotg]

ahh yeah I think I gotcha, Flore. Didn't know about that. Thanks for that insight!