Size Matters! How to create a small Quicktime for pushing across the web
There are so many codecs for digital movies out there that is becomes really confusing when you are trying to make a small file to place on Youtube, an ftp site or to email to everyone in your address book. By the way, a codec is the formula used to compress and decompress a digital movie. For example, you can compress your video clip using H263, H264, Animation, Sorensen, Cinepak, Animated GIF, DV, DV Stream, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, M4V, FLC, SWF, and on and on.
You could literally test and play with settings and parameters for days and you will eventually drive yourself crazy trying to get the perfect file that is small enough to email but vivid and snappy enough to get you the recognition and accolades you deserve.
Here’s a fool proof, easy way to do it…
Buy Apple’s Quicktime Pro application for around $40 bucks. Then open your big, uncompressed monster of a movie file, then say “EXPORT” in Quicktime Pro and choose “FOR iPOD.”
That’s it. Your file will be tiny and look amazing. Even though you ended up with merely an .M4V file that you could have done that yourself, you would never be able to compete with the genius eggheads at Apple who have spent hundreds of hours in R&D to have the perfect codec settings!
This is also a great file to upload to YouTube. Their upload robot LOVES this file. However, if you want to make it absolutely perfect for YouTube, you should create your original big file at 400×300 pixels, because otherwise YouTube will scale your file and cause it to lose some resolution. I understand that 400×300 is a non-standard aspect ration in computer land, but that’s what YouTube is, so you might as well create your original file that size. Be sure to make the file with those dimensions PRIOR to crunching down with the “EXPORT TO iPOD.”
-Kirk
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Hello Kirk,
Real new to this stuff, so please bear with me. I must be doing something wrong, I bought quick time pro 7 ( hope that’s the same thing you were taking about), I uploaded to youtube three time’s with three different file changes ( MV4, MPEG 4, AVI ) and each time I received “failed to convert video file”.
What am I doing wrong ?
Thanks
Alan Papszycki
Hi Alan,
For some reason I just discovered your comment all these months later! Sorry for the late reply. I’m sure you have all but figured this out ages ago, but for the new readers, here is my answer:
It sounds like you are using the wrong codec. The codec is they type of file format the .mov is saved as. Think of it like a Word document. You can save the same text in all kinds of different word formats and versions but it still opens in Word. Codec stands for “COmpression/DECompression”
YouTube loves the .DV format. If you can transfer using Quicktime to a DV codec, it should easily upload. It will still be a .mov, but the format will be DV. But those files can be pretty big. A better way is to transfer to H.264 at 400×300pixels. Again, it will still be a .mov file.
Also, don’t for get Youtube has limitations on file size and clip duration.
Kirk