Hey everyone,

I need to start creating some WMVs for clients that don't have QuickTime (and trying to explain how to download and install it is hopeless, trust me), so I was wondering if anyone has some great settings for HD/HDV (1440 x 1080) down to something smaller in aspect ratio (I usually set the A.R. to 600 x 338), with good video and audio, that won't look/sound like garbage.

It may be near impossible, but I'm trying to take a 9 1/2 minute piece and get it down to 20MB or less without the video- and sound-quality dropping.

Btw, I found the settings in Final Cut Pro 6.x under File, Export, QuickTime Conversion, Options, Windows Media.

Thanks,

Heath

You won't come anywhere near HD quality... I'm afraid not even decent SD quality.

Using this Bitrate Calculator (http://www.3ivx.com/support/calculator/index.html) and setting audio to 64Kbps, I got 223Kbps for video. You can't go any higher than 360x240 with that.

Honestly, I think QT will look even worse at this bitrate, except maybe H.264.

Something needs to give!

Thanks for the link. We didn't want HD quality; I made a very small WMV (aspect ratio-wise), and it worked out.

THANKS!

heath

Glad to hear.

Just to set the language straight to anyone else reading, when you say 'aspect ratio' you really mean size, right?

Aspect ratio is the ratio between height and width - usually 4x3 or 16x9 aka wide screen.

Correct, Ervin. I made the aspect ratio really small. Since you can't just type a random horizontal or vertical pixel count into QuickTime Conversion, and have the other change in reflection, I opened a still of 1440x1080 XDCAM HD footage in Photoshop, which I could then type whatever number I wanted into the horizontal box, and it would reflect in the vertical box.

I then took those numbers and typed them into FCP's WMV settings found in QuickTime Conversion.

My favorite settings for widescreen web delivery in FCP are Export, QT Conversion, H.264, High quality, 600 x 338 custom size, and AAC 128 kbps for sound. I have gotten great results with this. In fact, I used those settings for my feature film to upload to the web, and it came out to just under 1GB.

Heath