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MOV to MPEG-4

Hi guys,

Do any of you have video compression software, specifically .mov files to possibly mpeg-4? Or compression to anything that would be small enough to fit on a website? I'm not sure what the best format to use is. My current iphoto slideshow exported to a .mov at the lowest resolution is at >100MB which is too big. I did some searching and people are recommending quicktime pro to convert to mpeg-4. But I don't have that. You guys have anything similar that can do the job?

I like to get my slideshow on the web so people can watch it again since some of the pictures got cut off during presentation.

CCC
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:15:32 +0000

The free MPEG Streamclip tool presented in the "MOV to AVI Conversion" TrackBack below could do it. Although the title is for MOV to AVI conversion, the tool could actually output MPEG-4.

Chieh Cheng
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:45:26 +0000

You can use ffmpegX for OS X and SUPER for Windows, both are free.

http://www.ffmpegx.com
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html (see http://www.erightsoft.com/dlhelp.html on how to download)

For your website, you can embed the converted video using JW FLV Media Player.

http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/
http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/wiki/FlashFormats

gnowk
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:47:18 +0000

I tried isquint that someone suggested and it converted it to mpeg-4 which turned my 640x480 300MB file to 81MB. I believe isquint is simillar to ffmpegx or somehow uses it. That's pretty good but still big for my dsl upload speed. Does anyone know of a good free file sharing site that has good transfer speeds?

Also, comments on which format is better for my purpose... mpeg-4 vs. avi?

I also tried youtube for it filtered out my audio due to possible copyright restrictions. :(

CCC
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 22:16:22 +0000

if you want people to stream your slideshow, you can use vimeo or facebook. just upload your .mov file like you would on youtube and embed it on your website.

if you want to make the slideshow available for download, just put it up on dropbox or google app engine.

.avi is just a container, you can put videos of different encodings (divx, xvid, mpeg-4, etc.) in it.

if you want to cover your bases, just make it available in Xvid, MP4 and WMV.

gnowk
Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:37:10 +0000

Your problem is not really the video format, but the resolution size. All current formats are pretty competitive. Based on my experimenting, at this time WMV provides the smallest size. The formats I would go with are: XviD, DivX, WMV, or MPG. Each has its advantages and draw-backs.

However, using any of these formats will not help you make the files any smaller than what you have already got. That's because of your 640x480 resolution. Until technology gets better, that's what you got.

The only other compromise you can make is to reduce your resolution. Usually to 320x240. Anything smaller is too small. 320x240 is decent (considering that was the traditional TV resolution). That would immediately reduce your file size by 4 times (generally). So an 81 MB file at 640x480 becomes 20 MB file at 320x240.

Another thing you can do is encode the audio format into low-quality MP3. For example, use 8-bit rather than 16 bits. Reduce 2-channel stereo to 1-channel mono. In each case, that's 1 fold of size reduction.

Personally, I use VirtualDub to do all this work, because it's fully customizable for each video and audio compressor. Then once I'm happy with it all, I'll produce the XviD video for distribution. And if I want everyone to be able to watch it, then I use produce it to DV and have Windows Movie Maker convert it to WMV.

Chieh Cheng
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:40:31 +0000

Cool, vimeo seems to work pretty well. At least they didn't filter out my music :)

CCC
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:20:35 +0000

Well, I found out that installing ffmpegX is not that easy. After installing it last night, I tried running it today to find that you need to install two other packages:

mpeg2enc:
http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net/MacOS/mpeg2enc.intel

mencoder and mplayer:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mplayerosx/ffmpegXbinarie . . .

SUPER . . . on the other hand . . . was a piece of cake to install. Just install and run. Takes a bit of time to load, though.

Chieh Cheng
Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:37:40 +0000

Correction, ffmpegX is not free. It is shareware. I learned this after installing it and trying it for the first time.

Chieh Cheng
Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:39:13 +0000

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Title: MOV to AVI Conversion
Weblog: Camera Hacker
Excerpt: While writing the Authoring DVD with Microsoft Windows Media Center, I was authoring a DVD for a relative. However, one of the videos I wanted to burn is in Apple QuickTime (MOV) format. Windows Media Center doesn't recognize the MOV format. So I needed a way to convert it into DV or AVI format. Tha . . .
Tracked: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:43:33 +0000

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