I am here in Final Cut Pro. I wouldn't care about the codec in question but everytime I am exporting something FCP use it as a default what actually suck because the render time in insanely slow what makes the work useless. I rather use DV Pro of course and Sorenson for internet if that is the case.
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Apple H.264, any body using that crap?
- Thread starter mymemory
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But you cant simply send h.264 to everyone like you could, say, divx.
h.264 is a hardy codec, worth the time to encode, but truly hard on your CPU.
h.264 is a hardy codec, worth the time to encode, but truly hard on your CPU.
mymemory said:
Well think of it as a new-age codec that needs amazing processing power. All apple did was improve your range of render options by introducing H.264. If you are in need of the quality, then use it. If you want speed, then dont use it. I wouldn't rag on it just because the rendering time is huge. It really is an amazing codec IMO.
phew! i was expecting a "H.264 suxxors! use WMV!!".
it is very slow using it. but the quality makes up for that. plus i can just sit here trying to get another medal on Kirby Canvas Curse so its all cool
of interest, if your interested. i made a vid some weeks back exported as plain old uncompressed DV AVI, there i exported the vid to H.264, DivX and WMV respectably. compared (at the same bitrate) DivX is terrible. i cant believe how terrible the quality is. WMV did a better job! H.264 though was untouchable. all the vid sizes were 8mb.
it is very slow using it. but the quality makes up for that. plus i can just sit here trying to get another medal on Kirby Canvas Curse so its all cool
of interest, if your interested. i made a vid some weeks back exported as plain old uncompressed DV AVI, there i exported the vid to H.264, DivX and WMV respectably. compared (at the same bitrate) DivX is terrible. i cant believe how terrible the quality is. WMV did a better job! H.264 though was untouchable. all the vid sizes were 8mb.
The horrible AWFUL truth about video encoding, is it is never fast.
I dont know of any "full frame" video that you can encode at less than 1x the actual length of the file. ANd in most cases, like MPG2, it takes 2-6x the length.
Video is a hard nut to crack, I recall years ago when in OS 7 or 8 i think that Quicktime could play (along with the hardware at the time) full frame video without jumpiness. I was floored back then. And today its only gotten better, but IMO only in quality for size aspects. When it comes down to it, every step forward in quality and size compression we take half a step back because it requires faster and faster hardware to run it.
Nature of the beast.
I dont know of any "full frame" video that you can encode at less than 1x the actual length of the file. ANd in most cases, like MPG2, it takes 2-6x the length.
Video is a hard nut to crack, I recall years ago when in OS 7 or 8 i think that Quicktime could play (along with the hardware at the time) full frame video without jumpiness. I was floored back then. And today its only gotten better, but IMO only in quality for size aspects. When it comes down to it, every step forward in quality and size compression we take half a step back because it requires faster and faster hardware to run it.
Nature of the beast.
I remember back when you complained about the dual-processor G5 (the one you bought and then returned). Well, now you know why a dual G5 is a good thing.mymemory said:
Here's a short sequence I threw together very quickly, shot and edited in 720p30 HDV and FCP 5, and "shared" from QT 7 using the "medium" email setting:
http://homepage.mac.com/tvwriter/.Movies/Streets2005.mov
Every GPU in today's Macs has hardware-accelerated MPEG2 decoding. However, the OS does not take advantage of it, so MPEG2 decoding is done entirely in software. I hope MPEG2 and H.264 decoding in the GPU will be supported soon.Eric5h5 said:
Rod Rod said:
Indeed. If I could buy a new video card to allow my 733 MHz G4 to actually watch H.264 (instead of the slideshow I get now), maybe I can squeeze a few more years of life out of this machine. Of course, Apple wants me to buy a shiny new G5, so why would they help me hang on to my current machine by supporting that function?
Rod Rod said:
I seem to remember a discussion about how an EyeTV 500 could take advantage of hardware accelerated MPEG2 decoding, but the OS won't let them do it. I don't understand why this isn't allowed, but maybe now that we're losing Altivec, things will change.
I've got to say, h.264 is an amazing codec; I've experimented with a wide variety of settings in XviD, DivX, Sorenson, and h.263 over the past couple years, and h.264 is so much better it's amazing. Sure, the encode times are monstrous, but name a distribution codec for which they're not (and nearline codecs like DV don't count--they're for an entirely different purpose).
On the positive side, I can encode at speeds roughly a quarter realtime on my DP2.0 G5, which isn't all that bad, particularly for 2-pass encoding (which is a must unless you're doing CBR streaming). I don't think it's much slower than a good-quality XviD encode using ffmpeg, for example.
One quality note: QT Pro, if that's what you're using, is terrible about properly deinterlacing video before recompressing, which may account for poor quality. If it's from a DVD Handbrake does AAC/h.264 .mp4 with little hassle, otherwise make sure to set the proper flags in the movie's properties flag, then set it to the correct size there (not in the export section), and finally to manually set the framerate in the h.264 properties; if you do all that, it should deinterlace the export.
[Edit: I totally forgot to mention this, but QT7 is available for both Windows and Mac now, and VLC (Win, Mac, Linux) plays .mov or .mp4 files with AAC sound and h.264 video just fine, so cross-platform support isn't that much of an issue at this point, so long as someone is up to date with their software and has a reasonably fast computer, both requisites of playing most video anyway--keep in mind that neither Windows nor the MacOS will play XviD video out of the box, either.]
On the positive side, I can encode at speeds roughly a quarter realtime on my DP2.0 G5, which isn't all that bad, particularly for 2-pass encoding (which is a must unless you're doing CBR streaming). I don't think it's much slower than a good-quality XviD encode using ffmpeg, for example.
One quality note: QT Pro, if that's what you're using, is terrible about properly deinterlacing video before recompressing, which may account for poor quality. If it's from a DVD Handbrake does AAC/h.264 .mp4 with little hassle, otherwise make sure to set the proper flags in the movie's properties flag, then set it to the correct size there (not in the export section), and finally to manually set the framerate in the h.264 properties; if you do all that, it should deinterlace the export.
[Edit: I totally forgot to mention this, but QT7 is available for both Windows and Mac now, and VLC (Win, Mac, Linux) plays .mov or .mp4 files with AAC sound and h.264 video just fine, so cross-platform support isn't that much of an issue at this point, so long as someone is up to date with their software and has a reasonably fast computer, both requisites of playing most video anyway--keep in mind that neither Windows nor the MacOS will play XviD video out of the box, either.]
on the topic of things then, whats a good setting to choose if I want to export a video out and just post it on my .Mac account or online so people can view it. I cant seem to figure out the right setting to put it on thats its both good quality and small.
All the video's i make are like 5min here and there and I export and they turn into 250mb, 100mb. I havent figured out the right setting yet
All the video's i make are like 5min here and there and I export and they turn into 250mb, 100mb. I havent figured out the right setting yet
Use one of the "share" presets. Take a look at the example in my previous post in this thread.illegalprelude said:
Rod Rod said:
holy dear lord, that quality for 7mb. INSANITY! FCP4.5 dosent have that shared one? atleast I havent seen.
do you go to File, export, Quicktime Conversion, then?
Come on, H.264 is great... I love it for being the standard that'd stop Microsoft's goal of world domination(tm) dead in its tracks.
Will probably never happen. With MacIntels coming soon, what incentive does ATI have to do that?
Besides they are slowly phasing out AGP cards too.
Eric5h5 said:
Will probably never happen. With MacIntels coming soon, what incentive does ATI have to do that?
Besides they are slowly phasing out AGP cards too.
From FCP, either render your whole sequence and export a reference movie or export a self-contained movie. Open that file in QT 7. In QT 7, use the Share command under the File menu. You'll see the presets there.illegalprelude said: