H.264 QT7 Format
 

I notice that Canon's clip advertising the A1/G1/H1 uses this format as delivery for the web. I have a few questions regarding this format.

Is there advantages of this format versus the .wmv format? Which compreses better for a given quality?

Can Vegas encode in this format? I only noticed Quicktime rendering options in Vegas with the H.263 and H.262 formats, if I recall correctly.

Why do you think Canoon decided to encode in this format for their demo clips?

Based on answers to these questions I may have more questions...

Thanks guys,

-Jonathan Gentry

I would imagine they did this to have the clip playable on both
Mac and PC with no issues or additional downloads.

It's also a really nice small, high quality mpeg4 codec.

I believe if you upgrade your codecs in vegas, it should
be made available for rendering.

H264 currently wins for quality vs. file size. If you learn how to use it properly its compresses extremely well.

Yup, great compression.

If you have Vegas 7, you can compress directly out of the timeline. It's under AVC H.264 as a format (not under the QT7 tab).

I just don't think I saw that as an option. I'll check again and see, but I was looking for it and couldn't find it. Someone said upgrade the codec in Vegas. How do you do that? Is it a download at Sony Media Software website?

I hope this isn't too off topic for the A1 forum...

-Jonathan

i just encode my stuff to xvid manually with virtualdubmod after exporting from premiere.. premiere can encode in h264 quicktime as well though, does a good job too if you know what you're doing.

wmv has the advantage of being able to fullscreen it in the default player without getting ugly vertical sync problems from lack of hardware overlays etc

Here. Only in Vegas 7.

Obviously there I things I need to learn about Vegas. Thanks Bennis. It's interesting that it's not saved as a .mov but instead an .avi. That confuses me a bit...

So we have a codec that is better quality and compatable with mac and PC. Maybe a switch is in order for high quality web delivery.

-Jonathan

This is why I love this forum. Learning things every time I visit...

Thanks for that Vegas tip.
I always went for the Quicktime 7 tab.

I second that, thank Bennis, I was looking in the same place. Will be trying this out tonight. Do you guys go with the stock settings or customize them in any way?

Care to share how to get a great encode using this??? It seems no matter what I set the bitrate to and all that, it ends up looking very crappy. I've even tried using QT Pro and MPEG StreamClip without good results... the WMV is the best quality I can encode.... especially at higer resolutions (720p, 800x452, etc.)