Compression question
 

Hi guys,

I've just finished a project shot in HDV (V1E) and captured to Prores in FCP. I have the whole thing in a single sequence and have exported a master copy using "file>export>Quicktime movie>current settings". Looks great but its about 70gb. I now wanna compress it for exhibition on a tv screen and then on a projector (both times played from a laptop via hdmi).

Not sure where to start with compression. I have compressor, of course, but not sure what I'm doing with it really. I'd like the final file size for exhibition to be 4gb max (especially for cross-platoform sharing). Any insights about where to start with this would be greatly appreciated! I know I could do ad-hoc trial and error but I suspect this is a fairly common workflow question, so thought you guys would be able to save me some time!

Regards,

John

The way I'd approach this is compress using H.264 as a codec and use a bitrate (total, including audio data) at 1/20th the rate of the bitrate in ProRes (which will be different depending on frame size and frame rate).

Oh, and download a free app or widget for calculating bitrate and file size. I use BitRate Pro.

Hi John,

For what it's worth, I recently read about a great way to save files in a very high quality. The writer said to compress using PNG and customizing your size, etc. Not sure how anyone else feels about that. There are a lot better experts than I on this forum. At least it's worth a try.

Marc S