H.264 to Windows Media Player

Meryem Ersoz · July 18th, 2005, 11:47 AM

y'all on this thread might be able to answer my question. this is my first attempt at a web delivery for video.

from FCP 4.5, i compressed using QT 7.0.1 for high bandwidth streaming and uploaded it to a server. it seems that only a very narrow range of people could view it...anyone using an earlier version of QT than QT7 could not view it, and very few PC people seemed able to view it.

given that compressing seems to chew up a lot of time, how should i re-compress this so that PC people can view it? can i just upload a second version as AVI or an MP4? would that work? how can i get PC folks w/out QT7 to be able to view this? i'd like to know this not just for this video but for future reference.

thanks in advance for any advice....

RANT MODE ON

BTW, freakin' Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should rub their big giant brains together and solve this web delivery format issue for everybody once and for all! too many incoherent (**&^%&^%&* options!

RANT MODE OFF

*ahem,* thanks for listening.....

Peter Wiley · July 18th, 2005, 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

from FCP 4.5, i compressed using QT 7.0.1 for high bandwidth streaming and uploaded it to a server. it seems that only a very narrow range of people could view it...anyone using an earlier version of QT than QT7 could not view it, and very few PC people seemed able to view it.

RANT MODE ON

BTW, freakin' Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should rub their big giant brains together and solve this web delivery format issue for everybody once and for all! too many incoherent (**&^%&^%&* options!

RANT MODE OFF

*ahem,* thanks for listening.....

Agree with the rant.

As to the QT7 issue I would need more information. What codec was used to compress and what settings were used?

Can you provide a link to the media?

Les Wilson · July 18th, 2005, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

it seems that only a very narrow range of people could view it...anyone using an earlier version of QT than QT7 could not view it, and very few PC people seemed able to view it.

given that compressing seems to chew up a lot of time, how should i re-compress this so that PC people can view it?

The issue here is that you used a new format that has only just recently been released. As such, not everyone has upgraded to QT version 7. It is available on the Mac and in Beta test on PC. This is normal for any new format be it QT based or WMV.

As for your question about producing something that more people can view, if you exported from FCP using Compressor and one of the MPEG-4 presets, then you'll have what you want as that format is a standard and has widespread support in QT and other players. PC and Mac users can view MPEG-4 just fine.

You can make your own compression settings in Compressor from any of the presupplied ones. I start with the recently enhanced one for MPEG-4 called MPEG-4 Improved NTSC for Fast Cable Streaming. Select it and press the "Duplicate" button.

With your duplicate selected, you can now customize the parameters in the tabbed sections at the bottom of the Compressor window. Here's one that produces good results for me:
Name: MPEG-4 HQ
Description: 320x240 15fps VBR
File Extension: mp4
Audio Encoder
Format: MPEG4
Sample Rate: 32.000kHz
Channels: 1
Bits Per Sample: 16
AAC encoder quality: medium
Video Encoder
Format: MPEG4
Width: 320
Height: 240
Pixel aspect ratio: default
Crop: None
Frame rate: 15
ISMA Profile: 1
Variable bit rate, high quality

If you prefer the look of 24FPS, you can tweak it to suit. The ISMA Profile is an improved one and in combination with the Bit Rate setting of "High VBR" gives you far better results than plain old MPEG-4 exports from QuickTime Pro. Also, don't underestimate the effects that filtering can have to improve results.

You are starting a journey. Learning the ins and outs of compression is a learned skill like other things in video production and benefits greatly from personal experimentation.

Dan Euritt · July 18th, 2005, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Wiley

Apple claims that QT6 was downloaded 350 million times with 98% of those downloads were from PC users, at a rate of over 10 million per month.

cemil asked about qt7, which has zero market penetration, and is only in beta for the pc... it is NOT ready for primetime, as meryem just told you!:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

from FCP 4.5, i compressed using QT 7.0.1 for high bandwidth streaming and uploaded it to a server. it seems that only a very narrow range of people could view it.

thank you for backing up everything that i have been saying about h.264 out here.

now try to imagine how long it'll take for ~900 million people to have h.264 capability... we are talking months and months here.

platform fanatics who refuse to accept web statistics only make things harder for themselves and their customers.

if you need professional quality web video right now, in a web video format that everyone can see, check out that flip4mac encoder... do not get suckered into using mpeg4, the picture quality is garbage, and i posted the test clips to prove it.

Cemil Giray · July 19th, 2005, 02:39 AM

A quick interjection about our own needs. Our stuff needs to be visible to about 100 key people, not more. These are mostly television execs and international organisation types who are well equipped as regards codecs, players, etc.

This said, I do agree, and spend time inhouse fighting the codec fanatics, that we do have to, when distributing to the masses, accept that there are statistics. For this reason, when we do mass distributions, like our Women are film that was downloaded 22,000 times, we make it available in a wide variety of formats.

A quick tidbit. Our stats showed that QT was the number one download, not WMV. I was surprised, frankly. The QT downloads represented 65%!!! Of these, 72% were on Windows. Again, I was surprised.

[ps. forgive me if I answer to any posts with delay, I'm in the middle of a move :(( ]

Peter Wiley · July 19th, 2005, 05:55 AM

Quote:

A quick tidbit. Our stats showed that QT was the number one download, not WMV. I was surprised, frankly. The QT downloads represented 65%!!! Of these, 72% were on Windows. Again, I was surprised.

This is confusing Cemil, because the numbers are the opposite of what you said.

Dan, where are your test clips?

Patrick King · July 19th, 2005, 06:03 AM

I know this is just a small sample size and so just anecdotal evidence and not statistically significant. But at home we have four computers, only one of which has Quicktime. At work I operate in an office with 26 computers, 9 which do video related work each day, and none of them have Quicktime. Windows Media Player is already there on PCs, so that's what gets used. QT is already there on Macs but at only 3% market share, that's not near as much default use. Everything over 3% requires a deliberate choice and Apple's aggravating QT website makes that choice easy to abandon in the middle of the download process.

Peter Wiley · July 19th, 2005, 06:55 AM

Patrick, I am curious, what exactly do you find aggravating about the QT Web site? What specifically makes you want to abandon a download of QT?

Meryem Ersoz · July 19th, 2005, 09:08 AM

Ernest, thanks for the tips. that gives me some idea of where to begin experimenting. my problem was that when i selected the "quicktime conversion" feature, it automatically defaults to an H.264 compression type. not knowing any better and figuring that the default would be set to the most common compression type, i went ahead with the default setting.

i think the H.264 image looks nice (the link is http://ia108620.us.archive.org/1/ite...llgooddogs.mov --since peter, i think, asked), but i received a lot of negative feedback for having unwittingly used QT 7 and H.264

in its standard compression types mode, FCP offers the following choices:

Animation
Apple Pixlet Video
Apple VC H.263
BMP
Cinepak
Component Video
DV-PAL
DV/DVCPRO-NTSC
DVC PRO PAL
DVC PRO HD 1080i60
DVCPRO HD 720P60
DVCPRO50 - NTSC
DVCPRO50 - PAL
Graphics
H.261
H.263
H.264
JPEG 2000
Motion JPEG A
MOtion JPEG B
MPEG-4 Video
Photo-JPEG
Planar RGB
PNG
Sorenson Video
Sorenson Video 3
TGA
TIFF
Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2
Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2

And don't get me started with the Compressor options!

If I am just trying to compress a standard MiniDV - NTSC - 4:1:1 image for basic (streaming) web delivery, which is the best option? I can rule out the obvious ones myself, frinstance, I'm obviously not shooting PAL or DVCPRO or HD or a pixlet video, but is there a best choice from among, say, H.261-3-4 or the MPEG-4 Video option. Or is there something lurking in the Sorenson option?

What I am trying to get at, is, which choice, straight from Final Cut Pro's array of choices will maximize my exposure, since H.264, the default setting, is obviously not there yet?

I may have a very weak and imperfect understanding of what Apple is up to here, but it seems to me that FCP is (perhaps prematurely) anticipating HD settings by setting the default to H.264. But that doesn't serve me right now, in terms of reaching maximum audience. So which of these available choices would? Maybe I am just trying to cut corners by requesting advice instead of running a bunch of compression experiments (which seems quite time-consuming), but my commitment is more focused on production than delivery. From the standpoint of delivery, I am less engaged by the academic debates and more interested in being able to send a link to a friend and have him or her be able to view it without a big hairball ensuing on the other end.

Am I making sense?

Cemil Giray · July 19th, 2005, 11:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Wiley

This is confusing Cemil, because the numbers are the opposite of what you said.

Hi Peter.
I don't think so. I believe that the mass of users is still *not* using Quicktime. I agree that the Windows machine park is still on WMP. But my stats, on this particular download were -- to my surprise -- skewed to Quicktime. In fact, after reading your post, I asked one of my sysadmins to double check and indeed, my figures are correct. My guess is, that most of my downloaders were media types and they, indeed, do have Quicktime on their PCs. I will say one thing - not wanting to in any way be dragged into a win/mac discussion - and that is that we cannot underestimate the number of Quicktime users out there. I don't think we're talking 3%. That's all for now. Back to my move :((

Dan Euritt · July 19th, 2005, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cemil Giray

A quick tidbit. Our stats showed that QT was the number one download, not WMV. I was surprised, frankly. The QT downloads represented 65%!!! Of these, 72% were on Windows. Again, I was surprised.

thanks for the feedback on those 22,000 downloads... that is a pretty significant number... since the 72% on windows o.s. does not reflect the state of the internet, there must be a reason you are pulling in more mac users... the title women in film(?) would perhaps indicate a greater interest by the female gender, maybe they tend to have more macs than pcs? pure speculation on my part, just looking for a reason... if you have the clip set up for streaming, repeat visitors using macs would skew the stats as well.

i can easily max out my 100 gb monthly bandwidth limit with video clips, and i never get requests for the qt format... probably ~25,000(?) unique url's a month across all my websites.

with the current explosion in internet advertising, i have applied to be a publisher with a company that is serving up advertising pre-roll in front of video clips, but they are doing it for small publishers like us... it's similar to what you see on msnvideo.com, but still in beta because no one has ever done this before with small fry websites, it's very cutting edge... there is no qt option with them, it's all windows media... couple that sort of thing with no qt drm, and you'll see why it's not really a pro format that you can make money with on the 'net.

you can download the video test clips at the website in my sig file below.

Dan Euritt · July 19th, 2005, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cemil Giray

we cannot underestimate the number of Quicktime users out there. I don't think we're talking 3%.

i would agree with that, for sure... if apple is telling the truth about that 350 million downloads of qt 6.5, you can see that qt market penetration could probably be upwards of 50% of the computers on the 'net... most important, tho, it's the people who want to see 'net video that are going thru the hassle of installing qt... qt does not come pre-installed on pc's, it has never been a native part of the operating system.

Peter Wiley · July 19th, 2005, 01:56 PM

I had no intention of starting a platform war here. I use WMP and encode for it all the time. I was only objecting to what I felt was an over-generalization about QT based on my experience.

I have always assumed that QT is around 35-38% of media players, WMP higher, and Flash highest (Macromedia claims 97%). Flash video has improved a lot in recent years. I have always assumed that most internet statistics are to be taken with a grain of salt because they generally come from sources with some kind of commercial interest.

Cemil, sorry. I misread your post (missed "of these").

Meryem, H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) is being widely adpoted for all kinds of purposes, including satellite broadcast and the HD-DVD and Blu-ray player specifications (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264).

The H.264 standard is all about HD for Apple. It is more widely expected that Apple will introduce an "iTunes Movie Store" built on the Music Store model. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is in talks with major labels to license music videos (see:http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...597#post335597 You can read what I think the implications of a iTunes Movie Store might be on that post.) to provide via the music store. There are a rumors, in spite of Steve Jobs' constant denials, of an iPod-like video player in September.

H.264 can get the file size/quality relationship to the point where it would be practical to download films and burn the to one of the new DVD formats that support HD. Apple may be setting up to push push push here. (see: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050120.html and http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html for interesting speculation).

Patrick King · July 19th, 2005, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter Wiley

Patrick, I am curious, what exactly do you find aggravating about the QT Web site? What specifically makes you want to abandon a download of QT?

Peter,

For a while you were forced to download iTunes to get Quicktime, so I abandoned there more than once. Lately that seems better except having to uncheck all the pre-spam possibilities.

I do hate having to acknowledge every single time I launch QT that I don't want to upgrade to QT Pro (no option to never ask me again, just select Upgrade or Later). So, since this is nag-ware, I choose not to use it unless I absolutely have to. There have been many links to short films or clips in this forum that I've just not taken the time to fool with because I recognize the QT suffix.

QT does seem to produce a good image, but certainly no better than the image possible with Windows Media Player. I'm not saying that QT is bad, just that I personally don't fool with it unless I think the piece has some over-riding benefit that outways the hassle from using QT.

Peter Wiley · July 19th, 2005, 02:58 PM

My understanding is that Apple removed the nag, very annoying, in all versions of QT 7.

In previous versions one could disable the nag by setting your system date ahead ten years, open QT, close QT, and then reset your system back to the right date.

July 19th, 2005, 02:39 AM	#20
Cemil Giray Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: France Posts: 58	A quick interjection about our own needs. Our stuff needs to be visible to about 100 key people, not more. These are mostly television execs and international organisation types who are well equipped as regards codecs, players, etc. This said, I do agree, and spend time inhouse fighting the codec fanatics, that we do have to, when distributing to the masses, accept that there are statistics. For this reason, when we do mass distributions, like our Women are film that was downloaded 22,000 times, we make it available in a wide variety of formats. A quick tidbit. Our stats showed that QT was the number one download, not WMV. I was surprised, frankly. The QT downloads represented 65%!!! Of these, 72% were on Windows. Again, I was surprised. [ps. forgive me if I answer to any posts with delay, I'm in the middle of a move :(( ] __________________ Stop AIDS. Make the Promise! \| Messages must cause change.

July 19th, 2005, 06:03 AM	#22
Patrick King Major Player Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Enterprise, AL Posts: 857	I know this is just a small sample size and so just anecdotal evidence and not statistically significant. But at home we have four computers, only one of which has Quicktime. At work I operate in an office with 26 computers, 9 which do video related work each day, and none of them have Quicktime. Windows Media Player is already there on PCs, so that's what gets used. QT is already there on Macs but at only 3% market share, that's not near as much default use. Everything over 3% requires a deliberate choice and Apple's aggravating QT website makes that choice easy to abandon in the middle of the download process. __________________ Fear No Weevil! Last edited by Patrick King; July 19th, 2005 at 06:27 AM.

July 19th, 2005, 01:56 PM	#28
Peter Wiley Major Player Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Lewisburg PA Posts: 752	I had no intention of starting a platform war here. I use WMP and encode for it all the time. I was only objecting to what I felt was an over-generalization about QT based on my experience. I have always assumed that QT is around 35-38% of media players, WMP higher, and Flash highest (Macromedia claims 97%). Flash video has improved a lot in recent years. I have always assumed that most internet statistics are to be taken with a grain of salt because they generally come from sources with some kind of commercial interest. Cemil, sorry. I misread your post (missed "of these"). Meryem, H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) is being widely adpoted for all kinds of purposes, including satellite broadcast and the HD-DVD and Blu-ray player specifications (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264). The H.264 standard is all about HD for Apple. It is more widely expected that Apple will introduce an "iTunes Movie Store" built on the Music Store model. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is in talks with major labels to license music videos (see:http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...597#post335597 You can read what I think the implications of a iTunes Movie Store might be on that post.) to provide via the music store. There are a rumors, in spite of Steve Jobs' constant denials, of an iPod-like video player in September. H.264 can get the file size/quality relationship to the point where it would be practical to download films and burn the to one of the new DVD formats that support HD. Apple may be setting up to push push push here. (see: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050120.html and http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609.html for interesting speculation). Last edited by Peter Wiley; July 19th, 2005 at 01:58 PM. Reason: fixed url

July 18th, 2005, 11:47 AM	#16
Meryem Ersoz Wrangler Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Boulder, CO Posts: 3,015	y'all on this thread might be able to answer my question. this is my first attempt at a web delivery for video. from FCP 4.5, i compressed using QT 7.0.1 for high bandwidth streaming and uploaded it to a server. it seems that only a very narrow range of people could view it...anyone using an earlier version of QT than QT7 could not view it, and very few PC people seemed able to view it. given that compressing seems to chew up a lot of time, how should i re-compress this so that PC people can view it? can i just upload a second version as AVI or an MP4? would that work? how can i get PC folks w/out QT7 to be able to view this? i'd like to know this not just for this video but for future reference. thanks in advance for any advice.... RANT MODE ON BTW, freakin' Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should rub their big giant brains together and solve this web delivery format issue for everybody once and for all! too many incoherent (*&^%&^%& options! RANT MODE OFF ahem, thanks for listening.....

July 19th, 2005, 06:55 AM	#23
Peter Wiley Major Player Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Lewisburg PA Posts: 752	Patrick, I am curious, what exactly do you find aggravating about the QT Web site? What specifically makes you want to abandon a download of QT?

July 19th, 2005, 09:08 AM	#24
Meryem Ersoz Wrangler Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Boulder, CO Posts: 3,015	Ernest, thanks for the tips. that gives me some idea of where to begin experimenting. my problem was that when i selected the "quicktime conversion" feature, it automatically defaults to an H.264 compression type. not knowing any better and figuring that the default would be set to the most common compression type, i went ahead with the default setting. i think the H.264 image looks nice (the link is http://ia108620.us.archive.org/1/ite...llgooddogs.mov --since peter, i think, asked), but i received a lot of negative feedback for having unwittingly used QT 7 and H.264 in its standard compression types mode, FCP offers the following choices: Animation Apple Pixlet Video Apple VC H.263 BMP Cinepak Component Video DV-PAL DV/DVCPRO-NTSC DVC PRO PAL DVC PRO HD 1080i60 DVCPRO HD 720P60 DVCPRO50 - NTSC DVCPRO50 - PAL Graphics H.261 H.263 H.264 JPEG 2000 Motion JPEG A MOtion JPEG B MPEG-4 Video Photo-JPEG Planar RGB PNG Sorenson Video Sorenson Video 3 TGA TIFF Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2 And don't get me started with the Compressor options! If I am just trying to compress a standard MiniDV - NTSC - 4:1:1 image for basic (streaming) web delivery, which is the best option? I can rule out the obvious ones myself, frinstance, I'm obviously not shooting PAL or DVCPRO or HD or a pixlet video, but is there a best choice from among, say, H.261-3-4 or the MPEG-4 Video option. Or is there something lurking in the Sorenson option? What I am trying to get at, is, which choice, straight from Final Cut Pro's array of choices will maximize my exposure, since H.264, the default setting, is obviously not there yet? I may have a very weak and imperfect understanding of what Apple is up to here, but it seems to me that FCP is (perhaps prematurely) anticipating HD settings by setting the default to H.264. But that doesn't serve me right now, in terms of reaching maximum audience. So which of these available choices would? Maybe I am just trying to cut corners by requesting advice instead of running a bunch of compression experiments (which seems quite time-consuming), but my commitment is more focused on production than delivery. From the standpoint of delivery, I am less engaged by the academic debates and more interested in being able to send a link to a friend and have him or her be able to view it without a big hairball ensuing on the other end. Am I making sense?

July 19th, 2005, 02:58 PM	#30
Peter Wiley Major Player Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Lewisburg PA Posts: 752	My understanding is that Apple removed the nag, very annoying, in all versions of QT 7. In previous versions one could disable the nag by setting your system date ahead ten years, open QT, close QT, and then reset your system back to the right date.