Quicktime settings for web

Question

I am making timelapse movies from a series of 5mp stills. What settings should I use for putting 30sec movies on the internet. I tried resizing in photoshop down to 320x240 about 15k per photo and it looks awful.

Answer 1

A 15 KB image file is kinda small by 2006 standards but if the file looked OK when viewed with Photoshop it should look the same in your Image Sequence .mov file made using QuickTime Pro.
Did you use the "Web safe" .jpg format in Photoshop or another file format (like .psd)?
Try these steps as a workaround:
Create your folder of sequentially named files using the .jpg format. Size them to 640X480 and target a file size in the 30 to 50 KB range.
If these look good in PS you can import to QuickTime. But here is the "trick":
Use a "Frames per Second" rate of 10 seconds per frame. Sounds odd but we can fix the file later.
Now you have a 640X480 .mov file that is encoded using the Photo-JPEG video codec that needs some more work.
Open any audio file and "cut" exactly 30 seconds. Use the right left arrow keys to "fine tune" and view the Movie Info window to confirm it's 30 seconds.
Save this as a new file (.mov).
Open your 300 second "video" movie and select all (Control-A) and then copy (Control-C).
Switch to your 30 second audio .mov file, select all and choose "Add to Selection & Scale (Edit menu).
Open the Movie Properties window (Control-J) and highlight the audio track. "Delete" the track.
Using the same Movie Properties window highlight the video track and use the "Visual Settings" to adjust the dimensions back down to 320X240.
Save As and check the box for "Self-Contained".
This should now give you a 320X240 "video" running at 30 fps. It should be in the 200-300 KB file size range.