I want to put small Quicktime and .avi files onto CD, either from a pc or Mac. Can anyone advise me as to what compression software I should be using to give me a smooth result? I don't want to spend heaps and don't really need the software to do much more than this simple task.
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Quicktime Pro ($30 or £20?? from Apple) and Toast 5 Titanium for Mac (£79?) will be able to convert Quicktime Movies and AVIs to MPEG-1, which is the format you need to burn VideoCDs. This will generate a disc you can play on many set-top players. Quality is not great though.
If you only want to play on a computer, you could keep the files in their existing Quicktime or AVI format, and burn onto a CD like any other data file. Limited to 650MB though of course.
If you are after better video quality on a disc, you need to investigate pukka DVD writing.....but then that means ££££££.
You're in the right place here to investigate!
[This message has been edited by mooblie (edited 04 October 2001).]
Thanks for your reply. My lack of knowledge will surely astound you, but can you help me further with this. I have a 1 min 30 sec quicktime movie that I tried copying to disk with the cd burner supplied with a bog standard iMac. The movie when played from the cd is totally jerky. It plays well from the desktop. In the very simple options given with the burner I used "highest qualiy", but surly a 40x CD drive should be able to play this quicktime smoothly? Although the file was only about 350 mb, do I need to compress it further so it will play from CD? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? I am probably going to have to buy some form of compression softwre as you recommended for longer movies, but surly this short quicktime should play smoothly "uncompressed"?
Adam
Sorry - I mistook your needs - I assumed you only wanted to store/backup the movie on CD, and hence suggested the simple/free solution of leaving it in native Quicktime file format.
If your file is 350MBytes for 90 seconds, that's 3.9Mbytes per second. A 40x CD-ROM drive SHOULD transfer 40 x 150/1000 = 6Mbytes per sec, and so playback will be borderline, once you assume some overhead. (I think drives never actualy achieve anything like their rated maximum speed, it is only a theorectical maximum related to rotational speed on the outer edge, to sound good on spec. sheets.)
I suggest the next step for you would be Toast 5 Titanium, which will allow you to compress your file from QuickTime Pro to MPEG-1 format, which is VideoCD standard.
Quality will fall (worse than VHS in my experience) but at least you will be able to get playback from your CD-ROM drive, and over one hour on a single CD-R - although you don't need that long playing time by the sound of it.
You should probably also get playback on a Mac, a PC and many set-top DVD players. (For the last one - DVD players prefer CD-RW over CD-R, if you have trouble in playback.)
cheers, I shall get toasting immediately.