Preparing videos for web

i have read in many articles that you need a good encoding software and good codec for a best quality vidoes of small size.
I already have iMovie'08.
Do i need to buy FCE or/and Quicktime Pro too?
Another thing is when I try to save the "Get a Mac" ads, its prompting me to buy quicktime pro 7.
Why is that?

One of the best overall guides is
http://s29039.gridserver.com/ProAppsTips/EncodingRecipes/contents.html
If you're happy with the movies you make in iMovie,
then you don't need FCE to go to the web.
However, FCE makes a huge difference in making movies.
The most recent version of QuickTime Pro is well worth the
investment ($30). Usually the best way to work is to make a
high-quality full-res version of your movie as a self-contained file.
Then try different ways of converting it for the web.
IMHO, the best web delivery codec at this time is h.264,
which is supported by QuickTime Pro 7 and the most recent Flash.

Similar Messages

  • Can anyone say what makes "preparing video for display" take more time?

    i searched old threads. the topic has been raised before but there didn't seem to be any satisfying answer... i have noticed that when i have 3 or more active video tracks and i move a shot on the timeline, i get the "preparing video for display" message. it takes about 20 second to display, which is a long time to wait for every little adjustment i try to make... and i'm not using more than 5 tracks (which doesn't seem like that much either...)
    i am using FCP 5.0.4. my whole project is 5mb and the sequence is 4 minutes long. got some effects but nothing major at this point. i'm worried it'll get much worse as i add effects and layers.
    does anyone know what may be causing this or how can i make this process faster?
    is it something that can be adjusted in the settings?
    it doesn't seem normal. i've never seen anything like this in AVID...
    thanks...

    I'm at a loss at this point.
    2 things...exactly what version of QT are you running? (may/may not make a difference)
    Then, here are a couple of links for ways to trash preferences. Since you're on FCP 5.0.4, you should be good with the Anders Holck FCP Rescue 5.
    Caveat...once you've trashed your preferences you'll need to reset them...might want to make notes of how they're set now.
    If you use FCP Rescue 5, it will enable you to create a backup of your new prefs after they've been reset, then if you ever need to trash prefs again, you simply use the 'Restore' feature to get them back the way you want them quickly.
    http://fcprescue.andersholck.com/
    http://www.digitalrebellion.com/pref_man.htm
    http://www.fcpbook.com/Misc1.html
    Hope that helps,
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  • Exporting HD video for web

    What settings should I use to compress a HD video for web?

    It depends a lot on what level of broadband you expect the user to have, and whether the video has to play immediately. There are some natural sizes to use for the video, such as 1280x720, 960x540 or 640x360, and the frame rate ought to be 24, 25, or 30, depending on the source material.
    Making it for medium to good broadband, and with wanting the video to play right away, you could do say 1280x720, 1 megabit per second, H264. It would look reasonably good. If you don't mind people having to download for a little while before the video can play, then take the data rate up to 3 mbps.
    So, one way to look at that would be to use the AppleTV preset from QuickTime Player, then open that mp4 file and save as to mov (just to make your html task easier). It would look very good, but might take a bit of downloading time before it's ready to start playing.

  • Need help with rendering my files..."preparing video for display."

    I don't know if I sent something to the trash folder from Final Cut, but for some reason all of my files in the timeline are unrendered, and every time I render them a message appears saying that it is "preparing video for display," and then they are unrendered again. What is this? Did I send something to the trash folder that keeps doing this? Is it a settings mode? Does it have to do with the space on my drives?

    I'm having the same problems.
    A friend of mine told me to trash the render files and re-render my whole project. He finds it some times gets rid of some of the glitches when you render along the way in steps.
    I trashed the render files and of course the project says I need to re-render which I do. I can save the project, close it, and when it opens I get the "preparing video for display". Once that's done it has nothing rendered at all.
    So I re-render, and its fine. I tab to another window and then back and it gives me the same message, completes and all my stuff is un-rendered.
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  • "Preparing video for display"

    I've been working on a project for a month for a convention, and made 7 videos for it. Everything worked fine, as long as I was using ProRes footage.
    The convention is done, and I'm trying to make a DVD of the proceedings. I've got an hour long timeline, and adding PPT slides that I converted to PNG on V2. Every time I slide a clip on V2, I get the "Preparing video for display" message, and I have to endure a 15 second wait.
    So, I'm wondering if it's PNG, or whether it's simply that my project has gotten too big and unwieldy.

    That's usually a sign that your graphics card is not keeping up.
    How many sequences do you have open in FCP?
    Are you displaying Audio Waveforms? Thumbnails?
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  • "Preparing video for display" ****!! Project get's stuck before opening completely

    I've been working in this project for almost two years. Now, I'm doing the subtitles in Final cut from Spanish to English for almost two months now, almost half way through the movie so I get a lot of renders done everyday. Since last Week my projects get stuck at "Preparing video for display". I usually go to the Autosave Vault, for some reason one of the project open, and I start working again from the hour or two of work I lost. But, whenever the projects get's to Autorender, the same message displays again, and the damned beachball appears and all goes to ****. I can't get anywork done, I've lost a lot of hours worth of work and I'm facing a deadline. I've tried trashing the preferences, but nothing. So before I drive my car into a tree i wanted to at least submit the question, to you.
    Clues:
    FCPR0 6.05
    MACBOOK PRO WITH 4GB MEMOMRY
    LION BUT RUNNING ON IT WITH SNOWLEOPARD ROSETTA.
    Best to all of you.

    My guts are saying that you've a bit of an unstable installation going on, causing the instability... the fix is to perform a clean install and try working with that. You can build a new startup disk on a firewire drive or on another internal drive or partition, leaving your current startup disk alone... safest way to test this hypothesis... I'd also not install Lion if you're going to run FCP 6. Best setup for FCP 6 is likely Leopard or Snow Leopard. In reality it can be argued that the version of FCP that you are running will run the best on the OS it was written for in the first place.  Which, for FCP 6, is likely 10.5.x.
    Here's a list of what is known to be a stable setup with every version of FCP: http://www.digitalrebellion.net/blog/posts/recommended_quicktime_and_mac_os_conf igurations_for_final_cut_pro.html
    Jerry

  • Preparing video for display - forever

    Everything has been working fine, but then I downloaded two plugins – Fx Factory and Sugar Fx MAgimoto. I have since deleted them, but no change in fcp.
    Now when I try to open ANY fcp document all it says is "Reading Project... preparing video for display."
    I have a 2.66 Ghz i7 with 4gb ram, FCP 7. Neither my files, nor my projects are big. What is going on?? Of course this would happen when I'm under deadline.
    Thanks for any help you can offer.

    In addition, try repairing permissions and trashing preferences.
    Russ

  • 'Preparing Video for Display' causing render problems

    I have a DV-Pal sequence, with a few crops, burn effects and transition, so I've got a lock and render everything, but every time I do about 3 mins later a dialogue box pops up stating 'Preparing Video for Display' with a little percentage bar. Once it's 'Prepared Video for Display' (whatever that means??) all my rendered effects revert back to an unrendered state.
    Has this happened to anyone else and how can I stop it?
    Much Thanks, Matt

    Quit Final Cut Pro. Go to your Render Files folder and trash the contents of the sub-folder there that has the same name as your project.
    Next step:
    Deleting FCP Preferences:
    Open a Finder window. Set the view mode to columns:
    Click the house icon that has your name next to it.
    Click the folder "Library" in the next column.
    Find and click the folder "Preferences" in the next column.
    Find and click the folder "Final Cut Pro User Data" in the next column.
    Move the files "Final Cut Pro 6.0 Prefs", "Final Cut Pro Obj Cache" and "Final Cut Pro Prof Cache" to the Trash and empty it.
    When you have a stable set of preference files, download [Preference Manager|http://www.digitalrebellion.com/pref_man.htm] to back them up. If you have further problems, the backup can be recalled and you can continue working.
    Re-open your project and render again.

  • Preparing Video for display message

    So starting within the last three days I have been having issues with a 'Preparing video for display' message/progress bar coming up whenever I move clips in a timeline, the same message that usually only comes up when a project is being loaded for the first time. This was never something I have had to deal with before, and each time it happens I have a three to five second delay for it to do whatever it is that it is doing. (It adds up.) Is this something that is supposed to happen or can I (please) make it stop somehow.
    Thanks for the help.
    .ryan.

    Im running with 1 1/2 gigs RAM right now, cutting in FCP 5.0.4
    There are usually between 2-5 layers of video in play, but never more than two at once (no overlays or mattes, just straight cuts right now.)
    Maybe it is just the project is getting too large for the RAM i have, and I need to buy more. I was hoping to avoid this as I have spent pretty much everything I have, but if it saves me bursting a capillary, I'll do it.

  • FCP freezes at 'Preparing video for display'

    Hi
    I am experiencing a problem opening 2 of the fcp projects I've been working on in the last week. When opening everything seems to work fine, I see all the sequences opening, but when the 'preparing video for display' window appears it stays forever and I have to forcequit the application.
    Opening FCP without existing projectfile works fine. Also opening different older projects. Just the 2 recent projects are experiencing this problem. I still worked on them yesterday night and didn't do anything strange after.
    Also the Autosave Vault files are having the same problem.
    I've been trying to delete preference files but nothing works.
    Who can help me fixing this urgent problem. It would cost me days of work to redo the edit. And the frustrating thing is that I can already see them appearing but not touch them!
    Thanks a lot
    Aaike
    FCP 7.0.2
    OSX 10.5.8

    Dear Luca, thanks for your answer. Just before you wrote, all of sudden, after trying many times, one of the projects opened.
    I will see what happens in the next hours and write again when the same problem comes back.
    Cheers
    Aaike

  • Getting videos for web viewing right

    Using Xserver on Quad Mac G5 and QTSS. I would like to stream videos like the one in Apples live events. Quite impressive. http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf08/
    Using FCP pro 5.1.4 compressor 2.3 and selecting QT 7 for download. Using this on a web site produces less than desirable results. Usually blurry video or I get the "Q" in the movie template of iWeb and have to wait some time for it to download to start playing.
    What are the tools used to create the high quality videos in these live events?

    I'm tagging this one also.. I'm a new convert to the Mac (one more sleep until Mac Pro deliery!!). I normally do 10 megs for 2 minutes of 640X480 WMV video for web delivery and thought that was good when editing on the PC.. until I started to see some of these tech tutorials also.. and yeah.. crisp! But more importantly, is that thought the 100% viewing size might be on the smaller size, there isn't a lot of visual quality loss when expanding the view to 200% or more.. Now THAT was impressive..
    I want to learn all of this.. =) So much stuff, so little time.. sigh

  • Crashing during 'Preparing Video for Display'

    I have an hour long, fully edited project that we have been cutting on a dual G4 with 6.0.4.
    We now want to bring it over to our 8 core with 6.0.4 for color grading and motion, but every time we open the project it chrashes FCP during the open process when 'preparing video for display'
    if we go open it back up on the G4 it is fine.
    any thoughts?

    Found the solution. It must be a PPC > Intel thing.
    On the PPC, open the project and close all sequences except a blank one. SAVE.
    Open on Intel, SAVE AS new project file, then reopen.
    Should work now when you open up a sequence.

  • Preparing video for the web...I am lost

    Hello all,
    I had a project that began in imovie 06. It is an hour long production that i wan to prepare for use on a web site. I know that an hour long video is asking a lot of a web audience but the work is unique in that it is a poet reading a very long poem. I want to get this right for the few people who will actually want to see this thing.
    My workflow is as follows. Share the video from iMovie 06 with expert settings set to Quicktime. High quality 480 x 360 letterboxed AAc 128. The resulting hour long video is 360mb
    I open that video in Quicktime 7.6.4 then I copy and paste the first 15 min to a new player. From that new player I Export for Web and create the three standard versions. The problem is that the desktop version is 105mb and iPhone versions is 108mb. Both are bigger than the section of the movie that i started with 90MB. This suggests to me that there is a lot wrong with my workflow.
    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

    Re-read your last paragraph for the obvious clues to your troubles. Going from 90 MB to a larger file size means you are "up-sampling" previously compressed data.
    Even though your 12 GB file seems absurdly large now it will become highly compressed when using the "Export for Web" feature of QuickTime Player Pro.
    Do some simple "one minute" test files from your DV source file. Compare settings (pen and paper) and dimensions and audio quality. Ask some questions about the source file. Do you really need "stereo" sound when "mono" would be half as large? AAC audio is good but do you need 128 when 64 would be half as large in file size?
    Is this a "talking head" (little motion) video track? Could you replace the video track with some still image files and still achieve your goal?
    Just something to think over.

  • Need latest protocol for preparing movie for web in X

    Hello. The basic problem is slow start on You Tube. My general question concerns preparing a movie for the web; not restricted to You Tube.
    In FCP 7,  it was export using QT conversion, to Quick Time Movie using broadband Med or most recent settings, choose H264, choose custom size 16:9 HD 1280 x 720p, prepare head for internet streaming by choosing quick start ,
    adjust settings, and save. Then, Open .mov (usually 1 G for 3 minutes) in QT, choose export to web, transcode, and send 50-100 Mb  M4V or sometimes MP4 to Host. No problem.
    When I open an .mov prepared in X, the QT Player no longer allows the same options as it did when processing 7 movies.  Am I missing something? I click export to web with the new system and it just starts in coding.
    I appreciate the automatic features of X, but am having problems with both stutter start and a few more upload problems that I see as temporary.
    Thx.  www.youtube.com/user/edwardshaw1
    Any suggestions most grateful for.
    Ed

    Check your Applications > Utilities folder. That's where the OSX Installer moved Quicktime 7 (also known as Quicktime Player) when Quicktime X became the standard player. Your pro license should still be activated. If you don't find it there and you have a Snow Leopard (or earlier) installer disk, you can find QT7 in the Extras folder. Make sure you do NOT overwrite Quicktime X when you move or install QT7 (both are originally named "Quicktime Player" - but you can rename the older Quicktime Player to "Quicktime Player 7" before moving it into your Applications folder.)
    The problem with MPEG Streamclip and other "third party" conversion software (like ClipWrap and Smart Converter) is they use FFMPEG open source x.264 codecs. Apple's H.264 codec is superior (arguably, marginally better... but better.)
    YouTube will "respect" your upload if it's already done well (to their specifications.) Otherwise, their software will recompress it.
    In QT7Pro, you settings should be:
    Compression type: H.264
    Frame Rate 30 (or 29.97) fps  (29.97 is the "true" 30...) [Even if your project is 720/60p - YT wants 30]
    Keyframes: Automatic
    Frame Reordering : OFF!
    Data Rate: (I'll get back to this)
    Optimized for: Streaming (only allowed with Best Quality encoding setting)
    Quality: (if you specify a data rate, you only can use "High" -- and you *should* specify a data rate)
    Encoding: Best Quality (Multi-pass)
    Audio:
    Format: AAC
    Channels: Stereo (don't think it matters)
    Rate: 44.1KHz
    [show advanced settings]
    Render settings (doesn't matter - normal is fine)
    MPEG-4 AAC Encoder Settings:
    I use Variable bit rate ; Sound Quality at 128 - 160kbps (about 2/3's to Best on the slider)
    (you can use a constant bit rate - i think YT allows up to about 192kbps, but I don't "push it")
    If you fall within these parameters, YT is not likely to futz with your vid, you'll get what you put up.
    Now, for the Data Rates:
    For 1080/30p (29.97p) I've found that 4Mbits/sec is adequate for most video (most of mine are tutorials). If you have sections of your video that have something like trees blowing in the wind shot against a bright blue sky -- you will definitely need a much higher data rate (check your transitions too, they can be subject to some nasty blocking/artifacting when highly compressed). To figure out how much, take a 5 second clip* of the highest action and transcode it at - start at 12.5Mbits/sec (or 12,500 kbits/sec) - and see if you notice any "blocking" - if you do, crank up the data rate another 500-1000kbits/sec (or more if it's pretty bad). If you don't — try optimizing your compression by reducing the data rate until blocking appears. You shouldn't need to exceed 18Mbits/sec... Upload your 5 sec clip to youtube and see if it works out okay. If so, just delete it. Transcode your video to those specs and upload to youtube. Remember your settings - they'll serve you well.
    For 720 video, 3200kbits/sec is a good starting point.  480 - 1500 kbits/sec. and so on...
    Bandwidth (aka data rate) is **key** to good video. The more compressed your video is, the more YT likes it. The more YT likes your video, the more likely they'll leave it alone and just pass it straight through. (I have seen them pass through data rates up to 18Mbits/sec. Just follow their rules.)
    [*In Quicktime 7 Pro, you can set an in and out point anywhere in your video by typing 'i' for the in point and 'o' for the out. Copy (Command-C) the selection. Command N to create a new player and paste - and you have your 5 (or whatever) second clip.]

  • Compressing video for web

    My friend from Australia is trying to convert a trailer for web streaming but is having troubles with the format. We filmed the videos in Nashville and then he edited the trailer in Australia but every time he sends me a copy it's pixelated... Any suggestions on what settings he should be using on the compressor?
    Thanks,
    Sheyla

    Quality is directly related to "bandwidth" (Data Rate).  How much you need is directly dependent on video size. You can usually get very good quality with 8Mbps (8000 Kbps) for 1080/30p. Exceptional quality would be in the 20Mbps + range (FCPX exports H.264 at 40+ Mbps and some higher end DSLRs and video cameras produce H.264 in that range as well.) For 720p, you can reduce that bandwidth down to about 5-6Mbps; 480p down to about 1.2Mbps.  If you have high contrast fast moving scenes, you will need more bandwidth in order to avoid jpeg artifacts (blocky images.)
    If you're posting videos on a "service" like YouTube or Vimeo, you should investigate their encoding specifications. For instance, a couple years ago, the maximum bandwidth supported by YouTube for 1080 video (doesn't matter the frame rate or interlaced/progressive -- just the maximum they allowed) was 5Mbps. They increased that to 8Mbps.  The trick with these services is: if you encode the video with HIGHER bandwidth than they allow, they will encode that video again downwards to the limit. You never, ever want this condition to happen. There are other encoding options that should be adhered to as well:
    Key Frames: Automatic
    Frame Reordering: OFF!
    Optimized for Streaming (makes a difference!)
    Encoding: Best Quality (always use multi-pass)
    (if you use these options, then you can set the Data Rate to 9400 kbits/sec -- it will almost always come under the 8Mbps limit)
    Sound: MPEG-4 AAC Low Delay  48KHz bitrate 128 - 320 kbps
    Check: Prepare for Internet Streaming and select Fast Start
    YouTube will leave your upload alone

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