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Low MPEG-4 |
Low H.264 |
| Time to create |
0:35 |
1:16 |
| Data rate |
448 kbits/s |
513 kbits/s |
| frames per second |
8 |
| file size |
1.59 MB |
1.82 MB |
| dimensions |
320x240 |
You'll definitely notice that H.264 takes its time compressing compared to MPEG-4 but that's probably to be expected.. you trade extra processing for better quality. Below you can see a snapshot of the difference in quality.
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 |
| Low MPEG-4 |
Low H.264 |
|
| Setting |
Medium MPEG-4 |
Medium H.264 |
| Time to create |
0:42 |
1:38 |
| Data rate |
573 kbits/s |
663 kbits/s |
| frames per second |
15 |
| file size |
2.3 MB |
2.35 MB |
| dimensions |
320x240 |
The first thing you might notice is that the MPEG-4 medium setting looks worse than the MPEG-4 low setting above. That is due to a slightly higher data rate while doubling the frame rate. You don't see the same thing with H.264 though. It still looks very crisp.
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 |
| Medium MPEG-4 |
Medium H.264 |
|
| Setting |
High MPEG-4 |
High H.264 |
| Time to create |
1:30 |
15:50 |
| Data rate |
2265 kbits/s |
2222 kbits/s |
| frames per second |
29.97 |
| file size |
8.3 MB |
7.88 MB |
| dimensions |
720x480 |
15 minutes to create a full size, full fps H.264 video clip from a 30 second DV clip? I was very surprised to see this (keep in mind this is on a PowerBook 667). The MPEG-4 encoder only took 1:30 and the quality was not 15 times worse. It was actually pretty good for how fast it processed the video clip.
Of course I'm guessing that most users of FootTrack don't use this compression setting.. the low and medium setting are much quicker and provide a good preview of your video clips.
 |
 |
| High MPEG-4 |
High H.264 |
|
Using nearly the same data rate as before you can have much higher quality preview copies of your clips by using the H.264 settings. Though FootTrack offers low, medium and high quality settings built-in you'll probably want to spend some time playing with the settings and create one that is optimal for you.
If you'd like to create preview copies of your video clips that take up the smallest amount of space possible you could take the low setting, decrease the maxium data rate further and still have good quality video clip previews.
Here's a few tips for those that want to create your own H.264 compression settings:
- Make sure and compress the audio. By default it is uncompressed so if you choose a maximum 400 kbits/s video data rate you will still end up with a movie data rate of 1800+ kbits/s. All the custom compression settings for H.264 settings for v2.1 use MPEG-4 Audio.
- Use a smaller custom size (320x240 recommended for 4x3 footage).
Once you've installed QuickTime 7 (by installing Tiger or installing it on Panther) you can download and try out the H.264 custom compression settings. Just download the file below and copy the three files to the "Library -> Application Support -> FootTrack -> Compression Setings" folder in your home folder.
FootTrack-H264.zip
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