Compressor 4: Compress Video for Web

Compressor 4: Compress Video for Web

NOTE: I’ve done a lot of webinars on video compression, but recently discovered I haven’t written a basic tutorial article covering video compression for the web. Click here for my most recent video compression webinar.

We compress video for the web because uncompressed video is far too big to download. Whenever we compress something, we need to remove image and audio data in order to make the resulting file smaller. Whenever data is removed, image quality suffers.

So, the goal in video compression is to make the file as small as possible, while keeping image (and audio) quality as high as possible. This is a constant balancing act and no one compression setting works perfectly for all files.

THE BASICS

File size is totally and completely dependent upon compression bit rate. The lower the bit rate, the smaller the file. A bit rate of 1 creates a phenomenally small file. However, such a low bit rate totally destroys the image.

The choice of codec also influences bit rate settings. For example, MPEG-2 requires higher bit rates than MPEG-4 in order to achieve the same level of quality.

DEFINITION: Codec (COmpressor/DECompressor) is the mathematics that the computer uses to convert analog light and sound into a form that the computer can record, store, and playback. By far, the most popular codec today is H.264, which is often called MPEG-4.

Image quality is based upon balancing the bit rate against the final compressed frame size, frame rate, and the amount of movement from one frame to the next. The larger the frame size, the faster the frame rate, or the more movement between frames, the higher the bit rate necessary to preserve overall quality.

For example, a 320 x 240 still image can be compressed to virtually nothing, while a 1920 x 1080, 60 frames per second handheld dance video is gonna be huge, no matter what you do.

WHAT DOESN’T MATTER

Several factors that you think might affect final image quality or file size really don’t matter. For example, the file size, in bytes, of the source file really doesn’t matter. Whether your source files is 20 GB or 200 GB doesn’t matter when you are compressing the file. Strange, but true.

Also, within reason, the frame size, frame rate, or codec of the source image doesn’t matter as much as the final, compressed frame size, frame rate or codec

COMPRESSING VIDEO

Whether you are running Compressor 4, Compressor 3, Telestream Episode, Sorenson Squeeze, or any other compression software these settings, and their rationale, remain the same. I’m going to illustrate this process using Compressor 4.

The Compressor interface consists of five windows, starting in the top left and rotating clockwise:

• Task
• Preview
• History
• Inspector
• Settings

To add a file for compression, click Add File in the top left corner. (You can add as many files at a time as you want.)

Once the file is added, select the task tile (the rounded rectangle containing the small image of the video) to display the movie in the Preview window.

The Preview window allows us to view the video, set an In or out to compress only a range of the video, review or add markers, and, in general, make sure that the file we are compressing is the file that we actually WANT to compress.

The easiest way to compress a video is to work with one of Apple’s settings. For example, enter “iphone” in the search box at the top of the Settings window and the three Apple presets for the iphone appear. There is nothing wrong with using a preset and its a great way to get started.

To apply a preset to the clip, drag the preset from the Settings window and drop it on top of the video in the task bar.

At this point, you can skip down in this article to “Geometry Tab.”

CREATE YOUR OWN PRESET

In this article, I’ll explain how to create a basic compression preset. I’ve already written about how to change frame rates, add watermarks and other effects, and how to change image sizes. (I list where to find these articles at the end of this article.)

To create your own compression setting, click the Plus button in the top right corner of the Settings window.

For web video today, the best option for compression is MPEG-4, so select that.

This opens a new compression setting into the Inspector, where we can customize it.

Before you do anything else, give your new compression setting a name and description. Don’t be fancy, the best settings are those that are clearly defined and described.

ENCODER TAB – VIDEO

While there are a lot of potential choices, when it comes to simple video and audio compression you only need to adjust two tabs: Encoder and Geometry.

NOTE: If you are compressing video solely for YouTube, ignore this step and search for “YouTube,”  in the Settings window. How to use the YouTube setting is described here.

The Encoder tab is where we adjust the compression settings themselves. If the word “Encoder” does not appear near the top of the Inspector, click the second tab in from the left to display it.

Here’s a quick explanation of the top settings:

• File format. MPEG-4 is correct. Leave this alone.
• Extension. This is also correct. Leave this alone.
• Job Segmenting. This only applies when you are using a cluster to compress your video. Leave it on, it doesn’t hurt anything.
• Video Enabled. If you are ONLY compressing audio, not video, uncheck this.

Video Compression. In the past, lots of time was spent debating whether to use H.264 Baseline or Main Profile. However, recently, the industry has standardized on H.264 Baseline. Leave this setting alone.

Frame rate. If you shot 60 fps, set this to 30 fps. If you shot 59.94 fps, set this to 29.97. If you shot any other frame rate, leave this setting alone.

Keyframe interval. If you have lots of movement in your video, set this to two times your frame rate. If you have limited movement in your video, set this to five times your frame rate. The lower the keyframe interval, the larger your file size, but the better your image quality will be for pieces with lots of movement. I generally set this to 120 for my movies.

Multi-pass. I tend to think multi-pass yields better quality with smaller file sizes. But it also takes longer to compress. Do a test for yourself. Compress a short video with this on and a second version with it off. Compare how long it takes to compress, image quality, and file size. Pick the option that works best for you. I tend to leave it checked.

Bit rate. This is the crux of compression and every movie is different. However, in the interest of giving you someplace to start, here are four settings you can use as starting points for your own compression.

IMAGE SIZE           BIT RATE
480 x 270               500 Kbps
640 x 360               750 Kbps
960 x 540               1250 Kbps
1280 x 720             1500 Kbps

Currently, I don’t recommend putting 1920 x 1080 images on the web because both the image and file size are too big. This restriction will change in the future, but for now, huge file sizes like this tend to cause very choppy web playback.

ENCODER TAB – AUDIO

If you are only compressing video, uncheck Audio Enabled.

These default settings create a very high-quality stereo clip. My recommendation is to leave these alone, unless you don’t need stereo. For example, one person narrating a video can easily be compressed as Mono and your audio file sizes are reduced by 50%, with no loss in quality.

However, for my audio podcast, I use the settings illustrated above, because the human voice can be compressed smaller than music. These settings reduce my audio files significantly, without damaging aural quality.

ENCODER TAB – STREAMING

The settings in the Streaming tab are fine as is, don’t touch them.

GEOMETRY TAB

The Geometry tab controls the size of your final, compressed image. Again, don’t worry about the size of the original image, you only need to specify what you want it to become.

The default setting for this window creates an image which is 640 x 480, which is wrong for just about everything.

My recommendation is to create all your videos at 1280 x 720 or smaller. In this case, you select the image size you want from the Dimensions popup menu. To create a different image size, select it from the Dimension popup menu.

The Pixel Aspect should be changed to Square.

NOTE: Adjusting Cropping, at the top, allows you to remove elements from your image, exactly as we would do in our video editing software. Padding, at the bottom, allows you to add black to the top/bottom of an image to convert 4:3 to 16:9 (called “letter-boxing”), or add black borders to the sides of an image to convert 16:9 to 4:3 (called “pillar-boxing”).

When you are happy with your settings, click Save at the bottom. (You can modify these settings at any time, by selecting the preset in the Settings window, which reloads it into the Inspector.)

Your newly-created setting now appears in the Custom folder inside the Settings window.

To apply it to a clip, drag the setting from the Setting window and drop it on top of the video you want to compress in the Task window at the top.

Then verify you have the correct destination (middle column) and file name (right-hand column).

CREATE A TEST MOVIE

Before you spend time compressing your complete video, make a point to create a short test movie.

The hardest part of any video to compress is where the action is moving. Movement is far harder to compress than stillness. So, in your movie, find a 2-4 second section where things are moving AND you care about image quality. Set an In (“I”) and an Out (“O”) to mark a test section. Then, apply your compression setting and compress the short segment.  (You can also move the In and Out by dragging their icons.)

Because this test clip is short, it will compress quickly, allowing you to check image and audio quality without wasting a lot of time. This also allows you to see that your settings are correct and the final compressed version looks great.

If the test movie doesn’t look great, either increase the bit rate or modify the image size. I should also probably mention that you should check your other settings to be sure you don’t have an accidental typo.

Once you are happy with the look of the short test movie, drag the In to the far left and the Out to the far right to select the entire movie.

STARTING COMPRESSION

To start compression, click Submit in the lower right corner of the Task Window, then click Submit again when the smaller window appears.

A NOTE ON COMPRESSOR

Compressor, the application, is only a front-end to a background process. This means that once you click “Submit,” you can quit Compressor, as all the compression actually happens in the background. Compressor does not need to be running for you to compress a file.

OTHER READING

I’ve written about Compressor a lot. Here are some relevant articles:

• Compressing video for YouTube
• Creating a droplet
• Adding a watermark

SUMMARY

Video compression is central to all the videos we create. Pick a video compression program that meets your needs and spend time learning it. Creating great-looking video is an essential skill today. COMPRESSING great-looking video will guarantee you work a long into the future.

 

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