Best quality export - need to make a small mp4 file for website

Question

Hi there - I need to make a short video clip for a website - the final version that I send needs to be 340x192 and 1mb per 10 sec.  The clip is 200 seconds so it should therefore not be over 20 mb.  The original footage was shot on an EX1 camera.
I exported the video as a full quality Quicktime mov file.  I then used mpeg streamclip with the following settings:
Export to MPEG-4
Compression: H.264
Quality - 100%
Limit Data Rate: 1400 Kbps
Frame size: 340x192
Frame Blending: checked
Better Downscaling: checked
Deinterlace video: checked
The image looks terrible ... wondering if there is a better way to do this?
Any suggestions much appreciated!

Answer 1

> The image looks terrible ... wondering if there is a better way to do this?<
The reduction ratio you are attempting is almost 400:1, +-10% or so. Just so we're clear, the HD image is more than 2,000,000 distinct pixels in every frame, your frame size is about 68,000 pixels. That's 1/30 of the original size so, even before you add the quantization of the H.264 compression, you are throwing away 29 out of every 30 pixels that appeared in the original image.
I should imagine the quality is going to look horrendous, not merely terrible, compared to the original.
H.264 adds compression artifacts by averaging temporal and spatial differences, further diminishing the literal quality. You tend to see H.264 as better than, say, MPEG2 because the artifacts inherent in the processing are hidden better.
So that's the arithmetic because I can't tell if you understood that, forgive if you already know that stuff. Let's move on.
What do you think is "terrible" about the resulting movie?
What do you hope to improve?
You have very few choices. You cannot improve the resolution because of the outrageous scaling you are performing. You cannot get much better than H.264 to disguise this type of operation. You cannot increase the bitrate because of your server limitations.
bogiesan