Movie Post Production

[awinphoto]

Hello, question is around compression and post productions.  First let me mention that while I understand for the best videos I shouldn't be using a DSLR and Imovie, but until I get enough paying clients wanting videos who can make me justify final cut pro, this is what I'm using to get my feet wet for the time being.  I did a short film the other day (full HD settings on my 7D) and trimmed it down to a short and sweet 2 minute thing that I intended to email to friends and family (of our kids outting).  Well anyways I understood that when I exported the movie, i dumbed it down to the medium sized option (not HD and not ipod) and it compressed down to 23mb.  While that was fine, that's not what I would consider email friendly or even website friendly due to upload times.  They had a option to export via quicktime and I was able to lower the resolution down to low/medium quality and 640x480 resolution, and still that compressed to almost 50mb!  Am I being unreasonable and 23mb for a 2 minute movie acceptable or is there a better compression method/setting in post that would make that even smaller.  Ideally I would like to get proficient enough to have a few short films that wont take half and hour to load on my website where I could really start marketing myself as a hybrid photographer, but until I get stuff like this ironed out, it cant happen yet.  Please let me know your suggestions...  Please no criticism about equipment because I have to make the most with what I got.  Lastly, while I would feel more comfortable with final cut express than imovie, I heard that it doesn't have any better compression methods than imovie so I would still be in the same situation.  Anyone with experience with imovie/FCE please give me your suggestions.  Thanks.

[gene_can_sing]

I compress movies for clients all the time because I work in TV.

a 23mb file size sounds about right for a 2 minute movie.

Somethings to remember.

For Vimeo, it's best to use Compressor (part of Final Cut Pro Suite), as opposed for exporting from Quicktime. I noticed that whenever I export from Quicktime for Vimeo (Not a regular webpage), the sound goes out of sync. This is only for Vimeo. If you're doing it for a normal webpage, quicktime works fine.

Also, since H264 is the most common web format and what most people use, you have to remember that you will lose color saturation. So what I do is re-import the final movie into After Effects, add about +15 using the Hue Saturation filter, re-export the extra saturated movie and then convert that to H264 using Compressor.

By adding the additonal +15 Hue Saturation, it will compensate for the loss of saturation in H264, and look closer to what you originally intended the colors to be.

Just keep the H264 quality at High (not Best because it's huge), DO NOT check interlace and you should be fine. Vimeo.com has a good web export advice. Just look it up on line.

Hope that helps.

[awinphoto]

so that file size is about right for the medium setting of 640x364 for 2 minutes?  What is better, mpeg-4 or .mov?  I dont see an interlace option in imovie but there is a delinterlace option... should I click that?  What about data rate (auto or restrict)?  If that's about right in size, is there a way to knock if down more so it's not so huge on a website or email?  Thanks

[Cornershot]

Two minutes is a lot of video and you're not going to get it down to an email friendly size without sacrificing a lot of quality. If you have a web host or some kind of ftp space, you should just email a link and have them stream it.

[leGreve]

Sign up for Dropbox or Yousendit and put your files up there for people to download. Simple as that...

[NormanBates]

you're getting a lot of things wrong...

* "while I understand for the best videos I shouldn't be using a DSLR and Imovie..." --> if you want better video than what your DSLR can offer, get ready to spend $5K on a camera (AF100 or FS100), plus another big load of cash on lenses and accessories; anything below that can only compete with a DSLR in deep field shots, and will look much worse than DSLR footage for nearly any shot with people in it

* 23Mb for a 2min video is already on the low bitrate side of things, even at 640x480; consider doing your video in fullHD, with 15Mbps instead of 1.5 Mbps (and thus 230Mb), then uploading to vimeo and protecting the video with a password, then email link and password to relatives

that's what I did with this kids video here:

http://www.vimeo.com/18614722
	Small | Large

which you can't see because you don't have the password   

[awinphoto]

Thanks for all your help... With my experience in photography I know just enough to get myself in trouble but not enough to get myself out of trouble haha.  If 23mb for that resolution and length of film is already on the low end of things, then I guess I'll have to work around that.  (with photos I can roughly judge file size and format to guesstimate how large the photo really is, however with video and all the different factors, I'm still learning as I go).  Could compressor with Final Cut Pro do a better compression (lower file size) or would I get the same file size but better rendition of the file?  Any suggestions on FCE vs FCP vs Imovie?  From most my searching it seems most pro's like FCP but is there a fine line where I just cannot do the same quality work with FCE?  I'm not looking to become a video pro per se but if a client wants a short video done or wants short video clips of lets say a wedding or whatever, I dont want to turn them away if you know what I mean.  Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. 

[NormanBates]

for 7D footage, adobe CS5 is much better than any adobe product

the upcoming FCP may change that (I have no idea, I'm a PC)

[kawasakiguy37]

At this point if you want to be at all professional with your video work it sounds like you need to do some more technical reading on bitrates / file formats / file containers. I would first of all suggest NOT downsizing, as one of the whole advantages of your camera is the resolution it records in.

Adobe CS5.5 is miles ahead of FCP for DSLR video editing. It (Premiere) will use the video card in your computer to real time render most of the footage (assuming your comp is fast enough). With FCP you have to first convert your footage into something like ProRess 422, or render constantly. CS 5.5 is native to most codecs now.... and it also integrates extremely well with after effects.

In addition, Id strongly suggest taking any current photoshop/lightroom knowledge you have now and start translating that to After Effects. Just like your photos, color grading and whatnot will make a big difference on how your clients view the quality of your footage.

You can get a trial of CS 5.5 for 30 days, and youll have a lot easier time manually setting encoder settings (of which compressor doesnt even give you much choice over). The best solution, however, would probably be to use an intemediate codec and then convert your final film to H264 with something like avidemux, where you will have complete control over the codec.

In short: Up the bitrate to something like 3-8k, keep it higher resolution, and just upload to vimeo/youtube or your own filehost. 150 megs is nothing these days - theres no reason to try to crappify your footage by making it email size

edit: This page explains everything in detail about h264 encoding:
http://avidemux.org/admWiki/doku.php?id=tutorial:h.264

[awinphoto]

"theres no reason to try to crappify your footage by making it email size" You gave me a good chuckle there haha.  Would I get by allright by just purchasing premier from adobe or would I need to get premier, afteraffects, the entire production suite?  Also considering that for instance photoshop CS4 is still good for several photographers minus some goodies which are on the latest and greatest... Would premier cs4 for instance serve my purposes or will they not accept my camera or are too dumbed down?  Thanks for your suggestions and comments. 

[rnoguera]

On the Windows side, you can also consider Avid Studio.

I have been using it with the 5D MkII video files without any problem. And the price is 1/10 of Final Cut.

[awinphoto]

On the Windows side, you can also consider Avid Studio.

I have been using it with the 5D MkII video files without any problem. And the price is 1/10 of Final Cut.

Thanks for your suggestion, alas, for the last half decade, I have switched over to Macs and haven't looked back (often).  =)  I just got fed up with virus's and spyware and stability issues and computer crashes... (I even got an external drive to back up my files... my computer got a virus, backup hd got the virus, lost everything...  )  Anyways haven't had an issue since the move over.  If premiere is so much better than Final Cut, then I'll definitely give that a try.  Do i need to get the entire suite to do basic video editing or can I get away with just premiere? 

[Axilrod]

On the Windows side, you can also consider Avid Studio.

I have been using it with the 5D MkII video files without any problem. And the price is 1/10 of Final Cut.

Final Cut Pro X should be released by the end of the month, and it was completely rebuilt from the ground up.  Has some incredible features....No rendering, automatically fixes shutter roll, stabilizes, color balances on import, uses ALL of your computer's cores, and is 64-bit so it can finally utilize more than 2.5GB of memory.  $299 from the app store.  I've been using FCP for 10 years and FCPX has EVERYTHING I have always wanted out of FCP and then some.

 

[kawasakiguy37]

I would consider production premium ( I think thats the name). You get Premiere, After Effects, and maybe soundbooth. If you can afford it, after effects is pretty nifty

As for CS4, you should look if it can natively playback h264 footage from your DSLR or not. Im not sure if they added that in CS4 or CS5, but thats a big plus (no transcoding to be done before you edit)

[NormanBates]

* if you're shooting with a DSLR, CS5 is a huge step forward from CS4 (really, really huge); read about it here:
http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2010/12/02/in-praise-of-dissent-adobe-cs5-paves-the-way/

* premiere vs. full production premium: with premiere all you can do is edit; that's all I do 90% of the time, and for most wedding work I think that should be enough, but if you want to do anything more fancy (read: VFX), you'll need after effects

* CS5 vs FCP vs AVID: wait a week, until the new FCP is out; it could catch CS5 for DSLR stuff, or it could fall short; then you can decide