I spent a little time the other day running several different Compressor recipes so I could compare different compression options. I thought I’d share the results here, in case they’re of use to other folks on the interwebs. And of course, if you’re reading this and you spot anything that looks wrong, please shout out – corrections and additional input encouraged…!
\nFor my test I was working with a 4:05 movie edited in Final Cut Express and sourced in AVCHD on my Canon HF100. I started by exporting it to a 2.4 Gig QuickTime file for archive purposes. The main attributes of my first test, which turned out to be a pretty good recipe for YouTube, particularly when in a time crunch, were:<\/p>\n
(Full specs on this later in the post, along with all the tests and a few notes on the results.)<\/i>
\nA few top-line conclusions:
\nDeinterlace:<\/b> Using the deinterlace filter in Compressor chewed up my text; using deinterlace under Frame controls worked like a charm.
\nResolution:<\/b> Dropping resolution by 50% hurt the image and softened text but didn’t really speed things up or shrink the file much, at least going from 1280 x 720 down to 640 x 360. Of course, there will be situations where you have to drop the resolution, but both YouTube and Vimeo suggest leaving HD resolutions at 1280 for HD, so in this case there was no reason to downsample.
\nBitrate:<\/b> Changing the bitrate had a direct impact on file size (2500 = half the file size of 5000) and a noticeable impact on the image, though going down to 2500, the image still looked pretty good for web video. YouTube currently suggests not capping bitrate, Vimeo requests that you set a max of 5000, which is what I did for example #6, below.
\nMulti-pass:<\/b> Multi-pass adds a lot to encoding time (4X in this case) but did give me a higher contrast image with richer colors. So if time allows, it looks like multipass is better, but in a time crunch, single pass can work.<\/p>\n
\nDefault settings:
\nFile Extension: mov
\nEstimated size: 4.29 GB\/hour of source
\nAudio Encoder
\nAAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz
\nVideo Encoder
\nFormat: QT
\nWidth and Height: Up to 1280 x 720
\nSelected: 1280 x 720
\nPixel aspect ratio: Square
\nCrop: None
\nPadding: Preserve source aspect ratio
\n(L: 0, T: 0, R: 0, B: 0)
\nFrame rate: (100% of source)
\nFrame Controls On:
\nRetiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
\nResize Filter: Linear Filter
\nDeinterlace Filter: Better (Motion Adaptive)
\nAdaptive Details: Off
\nAntialias: 0
\nDetail Level: 0
\nField Output: Progressive
\nCodec Type: H.264
\nMulti-pass: Off, frame reorder: Off
\nPixel depth: 24
\nSpatial quality: 75
\nMin. Spatial quality: 50
\nTemporal quality: 50
\nMin. temporal quality: 50
\nAverage data rate: 10.24 (Mbps)<\/pre>\n
Test 1<\/b> = default (see specs above)<\/b>
\n294 MB, 15 minutes to encode
\nnotes: looks good and pretty smooth, 294 MB
\nTest 2<\/b> = like #1 but I switched deinterlace from Better to Best
\nnotes: took much much longer; after 1 hour it was ~15% and I cancelled the encoding. Looked like it would take 6-7 hours for the total encode, or 24-28X the time. Yikes.<\/i>
\nTest 3<\/b> = like #1 (so deinterlace was set back to “better”), but I toggled the deinterlace filter checkbox on
\n294 MB,19 minutes
\nnotes: Same file size, but much much worse results – this is the one that bitmapped the text. I’m going to avoid this in the future.<\/i>
\nTest 4<\/b> = like #1 but with multi-pass encode
\n314 MB, 52 minutes
\nnotes: Slightly richer than #1 and slightly better contrast, though longer encoding time.<\/i>
\nTest 5<\/b> = like #1 but with no bitrate limit
\n372 MB, 76 minutes
\nnotes: Slightly richer than #1 and slightly better contrast, though longer encode; no big surprise — this looks the best….<\/i>
\nTest 6<\/b> = like #1 but 5000 bitrate
\n159 MB, 59 minutes
\nnotes: Slightly less contrast\/more faded than #1 but still pretty good.<\/i>
\nTest 7<\/b> = like #1 but 2500 bitrate
\n66 minutes, 79 MB
\nnote: main change is more chunkiness, mainly visible when the file is large. Still not bad though.<\/i>
\nTest 8<\/b> = like #1 but 50% resolution
\n52 minutes, 285 MBs
\nnote: Softness definitely noticeable, especially around the text. File size almost the same! So not much benefit to this….<\/i>
\nTest 9<\/b> = like #1 but 29.97 resolution
\n60 minutes, 294 MB
\nnote: No noticeable difference to my eye.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I spent a little time the other day running several different Compressor recipes so I could compare different compression options. I thought I’d share the results here, in case they’re of use to other folks on the interwebs. And of course, if you’re reading this and you spot anything that looks wrong, please shout out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[27,28,44,45],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-and-also-that","tag-compression","tag-compressor","tag-vimeo","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}