Help converting MOV/QuickTime videos with high quality

[mbeede]

Greetings - Our church uses motion video backgrounds during our service and other programs. The videos come from 2 sources:

1. Digital Juice Jumpback DVD's - 720x480, .MOV format
2. Custom videos via Apple Motion on Mac - 720x480, .MOV format

Both sources produce really crisp high-resolution videos. I convert them for use with MediaShout on a PC/laptop (which does not support QuickTime MOV format, and has problems running QuickTime Alternative)
I want to preserve as much of the quality as possible - I don't care about file sizes as much as they don't get too big (above 100MB or so).

What codec(s) would you recommend for the best resolution and retaining very high quality? I have tried the following one's but they produce very average results IMO:

Divx (bad), MEG1 (bad), MEG2 (bad), Cinepack (ok), 3ivx (ok), Indeo 5.1 (good), Windows Video 9 (good), etc.

The best combination I have found so far is using QuickTime Pro with the DV/NTSC codec. It's great but sometimes produces HUGE files (250MB+). I have used WinAVI and WinConverter too without success. I thought I might try SUPER next, if it's recommended.

Recommendations/suggestions please...

Thanks, Mark

[ozymango]

MOV isn't actually a format itself, it's a container that supports all sorts of different audio and video codecs. So first thing to determine is, what kind of audio/video codecs your orginal mov files are composed of. I'm not sure offhand how to check that on a mac, but you can open the files with gspot on the PC to find the codec, that'll help a bit in deciding how you might compress that further.

That being said, if you've got QT Pro then I'd give a shot at encoding these with the mpeg-4 codec (should be avaialable under the "Export" option in QT), that should give you a fairly hefty size reduction while maintaining decent image quality.

Also, do the master videos have sound, and if so, do you need to keep that sound? If the originals have a soundtrack and you don't need audio, you can save a lot of file space by converting the video only, no audio track.

If you let us know more details about the original files, we can probably help better!

[mbeede]

Ok, so it's a good thing I posted this in the "newbie" area. Let me get you the information you asked for tonight and I will post more info. I was not aware that MOV format used different codecs too (since I don't own a MAC and don't work with them at all). That probably explains why some of my conversions look better than others...

I will post more info tonight!

THANKS!

[kschang]

On the other hand, I believe ExtremeTech did a test of the Apple's QT MPEG4 implementation against other implementations like DIVX and so on, and found Apple's implementation quite... underwhelming is putting it kindly.

[Cornucopia]

You've already got a Mac with Apple Motion (like AfterEffects), so you ought to have QT Pro. If you don't, get it.

Now, you said they're in MOV format, but you didn't say what codec was used. You can find this out with QT Pro's "View | Show Movie Properties" (Command + I, iirc).

Best thing for you is if you don't need to re-encode, but just cross-convert the container. Example: QT MOV w/DV codec --> AVI w/DV codec. No re-encoding, just repackaging.

IIRC, Digital Juice discs have duplicate copies of movies encoded with one or more of the following:

• Uncompressed (None) *
  DV *
  AVID ABVB_AVR/Meridian_JFIF *
  MJPEGA or B *
  Animation
  PhotoJPEG
  Sorenson3
  MPEG4 *
  MPEG2 *
  MPEG1 *
  Cinepak *

I put them in that order, because that's probably a good way to rank them in terms of desirable quality/universality from the top down (filesize is usually the reverse). You argue jockeying them around a little. {*} denotes codecs that may have a corresponding AVI version. Note: the files that have no direct AVI export from within QTPro may be exported raw and then used directly on the PC (esp. the MPEGs).

Well, 1st you say you don't care about filesize, but then you complain about it. Which is your priority? Me, I'd go for large but very high quality (e.g. DV).

.....

Wait a minute, Digital Juice Jumpbacks already comes with pre-rendered DV-AVI files. Just use them, no conversion needed.
For the Apple Motion stuff, if you can't directly export to AVI, render it to AppleDV Quicktime MOV. Then open it in QTPro and Export to AVI with the DV codec.

Scott

[mbeede]

Update - I tried to analyze the MOV videos last night but neither GSpot, or 3 other top programs give you any details about them. I will try to view them in QT Pro tonight.

Cornucopia: A few other things...

1 - I DON'T own a Mac. Our worship lead owns it and I don't have access to it at all. Being a musician, he is on it constantly.

2 - Digital Juice NO longer ships their disks with DV AVI format. They only ship .MOV format starting with their new #30. You're right the older disks also had DV AVI and those conversions work great. I wish #30 had them.

3 - Filesizes don't matter to me, but they do matter to MediaShout v3.0. If they get too big (200MB+) then playback is very sluggish when showing song lyrics on top of them. But that's a MediaShout issue. I just need to workaround it for now. The DV AVI videos work great.

So question- How can I go about converting the .MOV videos in Jumpback to the same format that Digital Juice used: DV AVI format. What software and codec would you use. Please be specific. I have spent too much time on this stuff...

Thanks, Mark

[Cornucopia]

I thought I mentioned it, but I'll go through it again a little more precisely...

Get Quicktime Pro ($29 US). If you can't use the Mac, then buy a Windows version.

1. Run QTPro.
2. Do [File | OpenMovie], find you Jumpback movie and open it.
3. Does it play correctly in QTPro? If no, it's because you don't have the appropriate Quicktime codec component (i.e. plugin). You should be directed where it can be DL'd. If you aren't directed to it, do [Ctrl +I] to show the codec info and post that to this site.
If it does play correctly...
4. Do [File | Export] (Ctrl + E). Change the "Export" drop down box to "Movie to AVI".
5. Select [Options] button. Both Video & Sound should be checked. Video Settings should be "Apple DV/DVCPro NTSC" or something comparable, Best quality, 29.97 FramesPerSecond. Audio/Sound should be Uncompressed, 16bit, 48kHz, stereo. Normally, there would be a "resize" button available also (which should be set to 720x480 for NTSC DV), but I believe Apple's DV codec setup forces this anyway, so it's not needed/available. Click "OK".
6. Back to Main Save Dialog, click "Save" once you've navigated to where you want the output to be (obviously NOT on the CD! ).

What you will have will be a DV-AVI, Type 2 file (Type2 = Add'l muxed audio for compatibility). Don't know if it's OpenDML (allowing >2GB) or not.

Now, I won't hold your hand for all the stuff, but that should take care of the basic need.

Note: You shouldn't be having problems with that kind of filesize. However, it may actually be a subsystem decode/pipeline bottleneck sort of thing. What kind of PC specs is it?

HTH,
Scott

[mbeede]

I have done this EXACT same thing numerous times in the past but it is not working with the new Jumpback 30 .MOV videos. When converted using this procedure they play very sluggish in MediaShout v3.0.

I just did a post on Digital Juice's site to get more info on what changed in the .MOV format they used in the older JB's and this new one. Something is definitely different.

I will double check all my steps tonight but I am 99.99% sure that this is exactly what I tried last week. Thanks for the detail.

Church laptop specs:
Toshiba, P4, 3.1ghz, 1.5GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9000 w/128MB RAM
Windows XP Professional w/SP2
DirectX v9.0c