WWDC2003 Session 705

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
okay it's just about time so let's go
ahead and get started everybody should
be here for session 705 the art of
mpeg-4 encoding my name is Dennis Backus
I work on the QuickTime team at Apple
computer we're going to talk today about
the house of in pegged for encoding not
so much the wise but the house and
encoding in general that is somewhat of
a difficult process to a certain extent
it's of science but good encoding is
actually an art hence the title of this
session and today we're very lucky to
have to I think some of the premier
artists in the encoding world and
especially the impact for encoding world
Andy beach I go to my left and then John
how from an organization from an
organization called lat exit from the
east so without any further ado let's
get started Andy thank you very much hi
everyone I am Andy beach I'm from last
exit this is John owl last exit is a
started as a web design and technology
company but John and I are both from a
film and video backgrounds quickly we
turn to video on the web and interactive
video as being some of the primary work
that that we wanted to do Dennis asked
that I I try and explain the last exit
naming some basically we were working
for a rather large global company got a
little tired of the way everything was
being run and the way things are being
handled so we made our last exit out of
a out of the big world and into our own
company because if we were going to work
for assholes we could work for ourselves
so what is impact for what what can I do
for you Apple Apple has a lot that
they've talked about it and that's what
we're all here for basically the what we
want to talk about though is that it's
it means impact forming standardizations
and it does mean interoperability the
two most important things for for us
what we're going to and what I'm going
to do is I'm going to try very hard
today to to intro everything but then
rapidly hand off so that we can actually
get to some meeting potatoes
demonstration of impact for encoding and
then lots of time for you guys to to ask
question because I'm sure that you've
had encoding nightmare question problems
coming up so we want to make sure that
there's plenty of plenty of opportunity
to get into that today we are going to
discuss though the basic understanding
of the impact for spec I don't feel
necessarily qualified to fully speak to
it but I'm certainly going to do my best
given the people that are in the room
today how to produce the impact for
content that you want different ways to
deliver that you know the different
appliances out there and demonstrate a
workflow for creating your your mpeg-4
so and again I'll try to make this as
brief as possible so that you don't have
too many history lessons today impact
was was introduced as a standard
QuickTime sixth broad impact for to us
quick the last quick timeline of 2002
we're now seeing support for AAC audio
impact for video and with the lightest
three we're now getting the 3g p as well
if we look at the two file formats
you're going to you're going to notice
something very similar in the two in the
two graphics obviously they are very
similar because the impact for is based
off of the architecture of the QuickTime
right now we're just dealing with the
video in the audio aspects but there is
a great deal more that's their thing
to come we're patient we'll wait
scalability is by far the most important
aspect this is our friend Terry Tate I
don't know how many of you got to see
some of the Terry Tate content that came
out last year the scalability designing
for playback on a variety of devices
flexibility and the bit rates and the
frame size is that that it's going to
handle this is this is the key to the
impact for moving past something like an
impact to broadcast architecture so this
is the standards-based going back to a
wide array of platforms developing for
one format with being able to playback
everywhere the the internet streaming
media alliance if there was an out if
there's an analogy out there we
certainly look for the perfect analogy
impact for is really the ingredients and
the is ma is the cookbook giving you the
recipes for all the various profiles so
it's going to tell you how to how how
everything should be structured and put
together to meet those those profiles
that you're trying to impact for is
obviously got a great deal more behind
it and under the hood so it's that raw
source that you're going to be able to
tap into the tube that we're concerning
ourselves with with the encoding right
now even though we'll do all of these
great things but to get this started off
it really is the video and the audio
that are particularly important to us
there's a number of ISO compliant impact
for codecs out there in addition to thee
into the impact for there's a lot of
interoperable plugins as well like
Envivio and the impeccable to get stuff
out the audio the AAC stuff it's a lot
less processor intensive than it has
been on other things in the past so you
get a lot better playback on
on some lower platform systems there's a
great deal more audio support and you
get a lot higher audio and a lot smaller
file now and for content creation i want
to ask john to step in okay this I guess
is my part of the absolutely beach Apple
wanted to make it really easy for
everybody to be able to encode mpeg-4
they really threw themselves behind the
standard and pretty much want to
transition you know content creation and
viewing on the internet into MPEG 4 and
so they gave us a bunch of different
ways to create mpeg-4 content using
iMovie Final Cut Pro quicktime pro you
name it they want you to do mpeg-4
coming out of it so I'm going to outline
sort of how easy it is to do mpeg-4
content sort of go over an overview of
how the QuickTime exporters work and
show you some other options for encoding
okay so basically to create an mpeg-4
file you can open a video in a final cut
or sorry quicktime pro you hit export
appellee kamandi you choose mpeg-4 you
choose a default setting and you watch
the progress bar go across the screen
and you end up with an mpeg-4 file on
the other end it's basically that easy
so I don't know how many people out here
are actively doing mpeg-4 content
creation most everybody went to golden
those of you who are there a bunch of
you who are doing content creation
encoding that you don't want to go to
impact for you you're not gone to mpeg-4
yet are those people here a couple okay
so hopefully we can sort of convince you
to switch over this if you look at the
two screens the one on the Left I guess
is a you know export to mpeg-4 the one
on the right is the default setting but
the you move ahead to the actual
quicktime exporter and
and it has a really neat feature in that
when you open a program that knows how
to use QuickTime like Final Cut Pro like
after effects like I movie they
basically all export video using this
same mpeg-4 exporter the Apple is 0
compliant mpeg-4 exporter you create the
mpeg-4 files mp4 file out of that and
it'll playback on any ISO compliant
mpeg-4 player you can use the Envivio
plugin to play it back in real player on
a pc i've been told it works in windows
media but i try not to look at windows
media so I unless the apple quicktime
encoder is a kind of neat thing they
they've made it do one pass vbr encoding
so it tries you set the bitrate you want
you set it to be you know 300 kilobits a
second and it gets everything it can at
300 kilobits a second but then you have
areas that don't need that so it scales
it down some and you get a smaller file
size which for an end user is a good
thing the encoder is optimized for a g4
processor it doesn't fly but it's pretty
fast interesting to see what it does on
the dual two gigahertz g5 looking
forward to that so this this is the
QuickTime six exporter just like in the
previous slide you go movie to mpeg-4
and then you get another window that
comes up with the lets you choose your
profile if you want to use you know
simple advanced simple complex whatever
the profiles you go in and do that you
set your audio your video bitrate you
can set your frame size you set
keyframes you can do your audio bit
rates you can choose whether they do
high quality encoding you can choose
whether it will actually you can't
choose when use the speech codec as a
music codec you can use the music codecs
and then they have at the bottom it
tells you sort of what kind of file
you're going to produce and if you come
up with settings that don't fit the
mpeg-4 specification it'll tell you and
it'll tell you how much you need to
lower it by to get it to fit in the
specification which is really handy
especially when you're starting
learning to do and peg for that's
quicktime exporter going out of
quicktime six player this is the
quicktime explorer exporter going out of
final cut three pretty much the exact
same thing you go export movie to mpeg-4
and you have the same settings window so
the same way you did it in quicktime pro
the first time you did it you can now do
it in Final Cut Pro in After Effects
export movie to mpeg-4 same window it's
seeing a pattern here imovie export
movie to mpeg-4 everybody ends up with
mp4 files and everybody has happy mpeg-4
compliant files alright with cleaner and
squeeze you get a little more advanced
control over your video cleaners sort of
the industry standard compression
program it's been around for years
squeezes becoming as this was introduced
a few years ago and it's becoming sort
of more widely adopted sorensen
introduced their own mpeg-4 codec so
your encoding video using their mpeg-4
exporter not apples mpeg-4 exporter and
you get different results cleaner and
squeeze allow you to do cropping of your
video so if you want to you know take
out the black bars at the top of the
letterbox video or you want to you know
make something smaller and make
something really strange frame size like
100 by four you can use that to crop it
out and you can do color corrections of
you know sometimes video gets muddy when
you bring it into the computer so you
can brighten it up some bring it into
the computer video color space so that
it looks good on a desktop just about as
good as it would look on a television
you can do deinterlacing which again
makes it look good on the desktop
because the desktop computer is an
interlaced video its progressive those
filtering to allow you to do more
advanced color correction batch
processing which comes in handy when
you're doing 300 files that have to be
due by tuesday it's a lot easier than
going into quicktime extended quicktime
pro and going export export and having
to come back you can set it to go and if
it doesn't crash then you're good to go
for playback in delivery
basically you can create an mpeg-4 file
that plays back on everything you can
create an mpeg-4 file that will only
play back in QuickTime you can create
mpeg-4 files it will play back on phones
that will also play back in quicktime
and they all have different extensions
they have different characteristics and
they have four different ways to go
about making them and I'll go over a few
of those so you have file types you've
got mp4 which is an mpeg-4 movie the
native mpeg-4 files extension mov which
is the QuickTime file extension you can
create an mpeg-4 movie with the dot mov
extension that you know is still
technically an mpeg-4 movie m4p is the
itunes music store file but that's an
AAC audio file which means it's an
mpeg-4 movie 3gp playback on a 3gpp
phones one day they'll come to this
country and we can enjoy that but again
it's an mpeg-4 file so you can play it
back in mpeg-4 on your desktop playback
in QuickTime 6.3 all right dot mp4 the
native mpeg-4 movie extension it'll play
back on all is ma compliance devices the
advantage is to producing dot mp4 files
are its interoperability that's you know
that's why it's a standard that's why we
have it that's why we encode for it the
disadvantage of it or is it in
specifically in QuickTime it's not a
fast start movie so if you do
progressive content progressive download
you know when it starts coming in and
there's enough of it to play it buffers
in it'll start playing back dot mp4
movies don't do that you have to
actually hit play and that's kind of a
bummer because you can't always trust
your user to hit play sometimes they're
not that smart sorry users but they
don't they don't always know they have
to hit play and ago the movie doesn't
work just hit play mpeg-4 also has sort
of limited annotations on what you can
do and you don't have this sort of full
range of QuickTime annotations with you
know go to this URL for more stuff I
encoded the file this is the copyright
all that
dot MOV files the QuickTime extension
it's meant for playback in the QuickTime
Player the quicktime plugin the
advantage of this obviously fast start
you do a mp4 file that you then save as
a quicktime movie you can author as a
fast start movie on the web it's a dot
MOV file everybody that has QuickTime
installed is going to be able to play it
as long as they're using QuickTime six
with the mpeg-4 codec you have the full
range of the QuickTime annotation so you
can do encoded by you know full name
copyright holder all that jazz you can
also put in other QuickTime media types
so you can take advantage of things like
still images because mpeg-4 spec under
is ma as implemented in quicktime
doesn't allow us to do the still image
stuff and all that but you can do
sprites and using an mpeg-4 movie or
bass sort of around an mpeg-4 movie you
can make a media skin and put your imp
egg for movie inside it unfortunately
it's not a dot mp4 it's now a DOT mov
but you still used mpeg-4 as your codex
so it's an impact for movie with me okay
the disadvantages you lose
interoperability so it's an impact for
movie but it's not an impact for me that
make sense yes no God m4p you have the
itunes music store format it's an iTunes
protected file it's locked you know you
can't take the ones off my laptop and
play the money horse they're all
delivered through the Apple music store
the advantage of it are that it's
digital rights management and so you
can't take it off my laptop and play it
on yours it's got 128 kilobits a CIO so
very high quality audio playback the
stuff about dolby labs did the testing
and you can't distinguish this from the
source audio so you get good quality
audio you can also take that and if you
legitimately bought the icing spa you
can import it into iMovie you can import
it into I DVD and use it for those
projects which is kind of cool because
you bought the file so you might as well
use it wherever you want
the disadvantages depending on how you
butter your bread are digital rights
management and some people don't like
that yep the Apple music store files I
believe so yes the preview files I don't
think are 128 kilobits per second but
the files you buy from the itunes music
store I believe are the 3gp 3gp files
there QuickTime movies that will
playback on 3gs phones they also play
back in QuickTime 6.3 on a Mac that's
the standard for playback on wireless
devices they've got audio video and 3gp
texts as implemented in quicktime which
is really cool because you can actually
stream text with video and a lot of
people need to do that for people use
closed captioning or if you want to you
know send an English file to a foreign
language you can have subtitles it'll
swim wirelessly do a phone it will
download to a phone in play but
unfortunately 3gp isn't really available
in the US so none of us get to play with
acting as a friend Casanova set go to
Japan and sit in the airport all right
demo man please have the demo machine
any questions so far before we carry on
with John's demonstrations everything's
pretty straightforward so far
it's a full application Sorenson sells a
version of squeeze it squeeze for mpeg-4
and it comes with the Sorenson mpeg-4
pro codec and that is the only way at
this time to encode using the Sorenson
codec you can't just buy it like you
could buy the old sorenstein video codec
you have to buy squeeze to get the codec
to encode the files so that's that's how
they kind of get you to buy their stupid
nuts product okay you ready for a demo
here okay on with the demo basically I'm
going to try and walk you through start
to finish capture file to you know
produce a file that can be uploaded to
the Internet as a streaming mpeg-4 file
so you start out you get a source tape
from well I get them from clients and
the first thing to do is you have to
import it in the computer we use Final
Cut Pro apples you know gold standard
video importing and editing application
it's a great program we've been using it
for years so the acquisition stage as
you go into final cut fortunately I have
a file that's hey I reconnect
okay fortunately I have a file right
here we don't have to capture it but
getting the file into your computer is
kind of the easiest thing to mess up if
you bring bad quality source file into
your system you're not going to be able
to encode a high quality file the sort
of mantra has always been garbage in
garbage out so you always try and get
the files or the source tapes from your
clients or produce your files using the
best quality things you can get used
beta SP use digi beta I really like to
try and get things exported directly out
of either after effects or final cut on
a hard drive that because that there's
no degradation of the image quality
there so we've got this file which is a
this came to us on a DV tape from a
client it's a kind of a music video
promo
something you may notice lots of red DV
doesn't like red so I kind of chose this
clip for a reason and that it doesn't
encode very well and so instead of
showing you like the perfect file and
this is a great and look how great it is
I want to show you that you know not
everything looks great and a DV file
with lots of red encoded to mpeg-4 isn't
always going to look great and at the
end of this will see that but this lots
of red has kind of pixilation and
blurring at the edges of it on the
source file so I'm definitely going to
end up seeing some of that in my mpeg-4
file so there's really not a whole lot
you can do to stop that kind of stuff
especially if your clients give you
stuff on TV tape so we've got it lots of
high
[Music]
mr. local hero sammy sosa so yeah lots
of high movement lots of you know strong
red colors so basically you're kind of
encoding nightmare file right so this
was brought in final cut and captured to
the hard drive so I final cut you then
open for this sake of this demonstration
we use cleaner 6 which is able to encode
a dot mp4 file so i take my file bring
it in to cleaner you can see the whole
file you know you can set in and out
points unfortunately this clip is
actually got the in and out points right
where I want them so i don't have to set
in and out points and you open up you
get a setting since this is a streaming
file when you do streaming you don't
really have a whole lot of flexibility
as to what bitrate you can use it has to
be under a certain bit rate or else it
won't stream so you know say for a 56k
modem you know you need to encode at you
know kind of around 30 kilobits per
second because for video because you tak
your audio on there you tak your ten
percent bandwidth tax on there because
when you encode a streaming file you
always kind of leave ten percent for the
hinting and for I guess network trouble
so you know you're you're always kind of
locked into similar bit rates you know
doing a ISDN file you need to come in
under 100 kilobits per second typically
for doing broadband files you want to
come in a door around 300 kilobits per
second a lot of broadband connections
get faster but to sort of be nice for
the slower connections you do around 300
you can do a special 701 sometimes but
or even megabit streaming for the right
connections but so what for this demo we
just do around 300 so we have a setting
I'm outputting to mpeg-4 the dot mp4
file
if I click on this we get our
handy-dandy Apple thing so cleaner
actually uses the Apple encoder image
I'm cropping this is a 300k file I'm
cropping the image to kind of near TV
safe by taking 32 pixels off the left
and right 24 off the top and bottom it
you know kind of gets rid of any
nastiness that you may have at the top
and bottom of your video file sometimes
when you bring in files from tape it
kind of distorts around the bottom at
the top and so by cropping your video
you're reducing that you're also kind of
reducing the size of the image so that
when you encoded at a smaller size like
320 x 240 or 240 x 180 you're getting
more of the actual real video image into
the encoded file then you would at you
know this size and you're not really
cropping out much more than people lose
when they watch television so it's a
kind of safe way to crop files including
this one to 240 x 180 it's a kind of
fast moving file like I showed you so I
chose a smaller frame size because it
you know it kind of behaves better as a
smaller frame size there's a larger
frame size you see some more pixels on
some faster moving places it's all the
footage was shot on television so I'm
deinterlacing and a adaptive noise
reduces just kind of something I leave
on adjust you know typical you check the
gamma up you adjust the brightness and
contrast to kind of make it look better
on a computer basically and these
brightness and contrast settings if I go
and apply them to this file and then do
a preview of it they kind of make it a
little bright and washed out
I'm a Red Sox fan so we get Pedro and
she just kind of washed out and kind of
nasty so you can go in bring this
settings down some you get a little
richer color and you use a little less
washed out to crowds a lot less washed
out I don't know what that looks like on
here with looks better on my screen you
know encode you know 15 frames a second
for a 240 x 180 file at you know 300
kilobits a second is generally going to
look pretty good you know keyframe every
basically hundred francs so every
hundred one hundred fifty frames data
rates to 300 kilobits a second audio you
notice there's no way to choose your
audio bit rates here but you can say 16
bits there 16-bit 44 kilohertz then
stereo the way you choose your audio
bitrate is you have to go back into the
quicktime encoder here you go to the
output thing options audio now i can
pick my thing so yeah stereo it won't
let me go any higher than 22 if i go to
mono i can bump it up some and that
generally actually sounds better than
stereo sometimes depends on again the
source file depends on whether it's
speech or music encoding quality i
always choose best 32 kilobits a second
on top of my you know just about 300
kilobits per second files will give me a
file that will stream over almost every
broadband connection in the US so you
choose apply for that setting you kick
it out
and you again watch the progress bar
creep across the screen favorite part of
my day because it means I get to go play
xbox for about seven minutes for the the
15 frames per second particularly for
the for the broadband stuff will work
very well for for all of the video
footage that you have but if you're if
you're encoding any animation you may
find that you're going to have to start
bumping that up because on on any
animations particularly things out of
after effects you'll start finding that
15 just won't preserve sort of that the
full range of motion so bringing it up
to as high as 24 helps anything above
that you tend to just start you're just
packing packing on extra frames that are
probably going to get lost by the by the
end user anyway as they're playing it
yeah like every good cooking show I
already have one prepared so this is
that file encoded using the setting that
I had
I
[Music]
done
he got
Oh
that file once it started getting
exciting and everybody started hitting
home runs it started to pixelate and
kind of look nasty and unfortunately
that's you know because the bitrate that
it was limited to for streaming it did
that with this particular job I talked
to client into letting us deliver a
downloadable file because it's only a
minute long it didn't produce a very big
file and by being able to up the bitrate
I was able to make a file that I was
happier with in the thing but you know
for as far as streaming though it
doesn't look all that bad for you know a
good ninety percent of
[Music]
you're even that on a computer screen is
still you know pretty fun to look at yes
I'm sorry can you please go into the
microphone so the translator the
practice between the audio kind of
standard setting for that no I honestly
I don't have a standard setting for
anything I do basically every video is
going to be different so something that
you know is a sort of spoken word just
talking peace you can take the audio
data rate down and you can bump the
video data rate up some to get a little
bit more quality but generally no I
don't have a specific way I you know
that way I do it in for the translators
he asked if I went with mono sound on
that instead of stereos to get an audio
quality no that was actually stereo
sound I didn't go with mono on that one
I did that this morning just playing
around and I was generally good sounding
I mean whenever i do files I wear
headphones so I can sort of really hear
what the audio sounds like and then I
take headphones off and I play it back
over my you know regular Harman Kardon
sound speakers and listening to it on
the speakers for gives a lot more sins
than listening to it on the headphones
so if you're really nitpicky wear
headphones but generally people aren't
going to be doing it over headphones so
you can get away with mono
so I have 100k version of this file as a
question no but we can make one very
quickly the other reason I chose this
clip is because it is short take these
down to get the washed-out out of it
this one I'll do mono
any other questions while we were
watching the progress bar slowly creep
across the screen or does anyone have an
xbox he asked about input formats what's
a good input format like i said this
file came from DV so i imported it you
know via firewire using Apple's DV codec
but generally when we get files in on
beta tape or digibeta tape we bring it
in using kona SD card yes and so it's
this they're either eight or ten bit
uncompressed codecs and I've had a lot
of like happy results with that card
it's a nice product they're just put out
this year a firewire interface with SDI
and it uses the Kona a chair SD and the
10 bit and the 8-bit Kona uncompressed
codec so I you know hoping to get my
hands on that at some point to play with
that because if I could you know do that
on my laptop instead of having to go sit
it and it you know station for
digitizing that'll make you know life a
lot more fun but yeah I like the Kona
stuff with the uncompressed with final
cut for apple introduced an uncompressed
8 and 10 bit kind of beginning codecs so
people will start using that and we'll
start seeing results and how that pans
out that
[Music]
but I've also done mpeg-4 encoding where
instead of doing I chose to just take
the source file and do the three hundred
and 100 out of cleaner here because it's
faster and it produces a kind of fat
pretty decent you know workflow pretty
decent product a lot of people will take
and do all their pre-processing to one
file before they encode it and that's
we've done that for a lot of files we
especially did that before cleaner
supported mpeg-4 so you know we would go
to something like photo.jpg as an
intermediate file or go to I did PNG
files because they're pretty good
quality pretty smallish file size so
that's as an it's kind of an
intermediate from where you capture to
where you go to mpeg-4 I've done photo
jpg and PNG as yeah if you start with a
photo jpg at the largest size that you
want the overall media to be so if it's
a 320 x 240 or 400 300 and you just
start with that as your intermediary
file you'll get pretty good results we
were we were very pleased with that last
year we did experiment with the PNG as
well and it was it was sort of a
situation of to us it looked better but
it was also a little slower to like to
export ok this is the 100k version it's
a 180 x 1 32 I think mono sound
this one I believe is ten frames per
second so it's going to be a little jerk
here but this one actually looks pretty
good
[Music]
Oh
[Music]
Oh
[Music]
God
you got
you never know
[Music]
haha
[Music]
[Applause]
okay not great but not bad considering
the time we put into you know encoding
this file you know all of us here this
afternoon just now you know it's not a
bad result if you sit down with a file
and you know tweak it and play with it
you're going to come up with a pretty
pretty good looking result and you know
also kind of always keep in mind that at
lower bitrate you're not going to get
you know Apple movie trailer quality
because this is streaming and that's not
and 56 k you're lucky to be getting
video
did the encoders get that as a
translator to get that question now we
need you guys to get up two phones ask
the questions of translators can't stand
here the whole thing thank you briefly
when when DVDs are being professionally
masters ill they'll obviously do
different trade-offs between audio and
video variable bit rate and the size of
the bit rate at very kind in the plan
I'm asking whether you do for streaming
or wet or whether these tools support
for mpeg-4 you know if I have the major
accessible you know action seek right
then it goes to a dialogue portion and
with music where I can't trade off
between audio video or even do more bit
rate of one part in the best bit rating
the simple answer that question is yes
but the involvement to that question is
still yes but kind of a not why would
you do that but it's going to take a lot
more work for streaming you pretty much
wouldn't want to do that because you're
always going to be at a certain bit rate
and you you know if you can have your
talking parts looking as good as your
you know high motion parts then you know
that's just a benefit you're not saving
anything by going at a lower bitrate for
downloadable content yeah you will save
especially on the file size which is
what is the sort of holy grail for
downloadable content so yeah you can
break it up and have the talking bit
encoded at this bitrate with this sort
of setting and you can have the fast
action bit done it this bitrate with
this setting and then you basically can
combine them all in Final Cut Pro and
export a dot mov out I don't think you
can do it and produce a mp4 a legal
mpeg-4 file but you can do it all using
it I think you can you can
I said yes it's a pastor thank you good
no you don't get transferring it's
actually that's how say you do an mp4
file out of cleaner it doesn't hint it
you know they have a setting for hinting
but it actually doesn't hint the file so
you know this file open up you know that
I just did is not hinted there's no
hinge track in there so what I do when I
have to hint these files in is I go into
QuickTime Player you open it in that you
know you export movie to mpeg-4 option
bless you like mr. Wagner gratefully
volunteered pass through audio video so
you're not getting any transcoding
streaming optimized for server okay save
you know this very quickly kicks out a
file that is now what's got hinted track
so this is now you know extremely file
that you put on your streaming server
and it delivers so yeah to answer your
question yeah you can do it as an mp4
file you can do as a dot MOV file so
yeah you can save while doing your
you're a bit rate
I'm making this better probably taking
the audio down a notch or two with a bit
rate upping the bit rate on the video
maybe trying to mess with the frame rate
who is obviously more frames per second
at a bit rate gives you a good looking
file than a less frames per second at a
given bit rate because you're throwing
the same amount of fit at less frames
than you're throwing at eight frames a
second then you're able to throw more
edits and at 12 so you know changing
frame rates does it if you get really
kind of in a jam especially with like
the Reds on that file I had a huge huge
problem with and you know you can go in
and try and take the red down you know
which will give you a little less
blockiness when those things come up you
can go in and you know change the
brightness and contrast a little to try
and give yourself a clearer looking file
as it goes out so those are kind of the
next steps and then the step after that
is just kind of go it looks good enough
and then you deliver it I'd probably had
to that may be aggressively cropping
more depending on the footage the
ability to if the actions in the center
of the screen or if it's focused in a
given area you know I'll start
aggressively cropping the outside train
more scrub through it quickly and see if
I'm losing losing the action or the
focus of it so I'm devoting all of my
data to the to the core action of the
clip I've not had a situation where
somebody's come back and said man that
was really crop instead they expend man
that looks really good more questions
now please are there any more questions
specifically if you have a question
please just come to the free to the
microphone there's a couple there's one
there there's one there and there's one
over there
sharing experiences you've had with some
of the other integral codecs like a baby
they hold on maybe if you could tell a
choice about the experience Malaysian
other than a lot of humor Matariki I
honestly can't comment on that my
experience with divx has been watching
things that people have showed me on the
computer that they downloaded from nazi
sources so I've not encoded to divx yeah
I've not encoded to divx for client
delivery files because my clients either
go through apple with their delivery
mechanism and we have to deliver the
files that Apple needs or they've you
know clients that I you know work with
on our own without Apple who you know we
try and steer them in a certain
direction that will try and keep them
sort of in line with what Apple is doing
so that the content is all going to kind
of look the same behave the same and act
the same way so I'm sorry but I can't
dad what I'm hoping yeah yes sir
hey way to go we love it can you please
go to the microphone it for the sake of
the translation I really want to find
out what I sound like in Japanese I
think we all should you mentioned the
photo jpg doing my daddy one side you
see any extraordinary differences when
you're not coming down in a vomiting
world and sudden when you start with an
asian-style force intended file it has a
first question in this legislation
billion we started experimenting with me
chief ourselves a plan like what encoder
choices are between 0 there speaker
compressor and couple of things can't
even look at me she flies in my PhD we
haven't really had experience with yet
so we're we can't wait for the client
that wants us to play with it because
that's how that's how we most often get
to experiment with it that's how we get
new hardware Zoe I got something for
that the as for the the a bit versus
attended the the main the main
difference that we've seen is on high
contrast stuff so like we have one place
as a production company eyeball that we
do a lot of work with they do a lot of
graphics based 3d stuff it's all flat
graphics but it's also really high
contrast ratios they like to push the
envelope and you start seeing a muddy
quality to your to your black levels
that you don't see on you see a muddy on
the 8-bit that you don't see with the 10
bit at times so so there definitely is a
value difference that we've seen and I
think I my personal opinion is some of
its perceptual on the clients part but I
have actually seen it on even just
metered looks at it so so there is
there's some some slight differences for
that but again it's really got to be
high high contrast differences and it's
really mostly when it's graphics so that
there's really a far-field color color
value with video captured video you
can't tell that much of a difference but
you know the human eye is sensitive but
it's not that sensitive
and when you're going from you know
either eight or ten bit source to you
know mpeg-4 or Sorenson or you know
mpeg-1 you know eight or ten bit doesn't
make all that much of a difference in
kind of a real world implementation
there's sometimes yeah there's obviously
going to be validity to almost
everything so yeah but you know goten
bit okay are there more questions yeah
oh I'm sorry I get a doing here to try
for a 402 name is a section man I can
play the compression and I found us a
quality of a poor choice in QuickTime
quite not just 223 that's professional
edition nothing on you have climate hell
you enjoyed the free edition know is
example then takes for education and
jump improving on future well I think
that if I may for the important the
important part of that was it was
Sorenson video three and a lot of times
we consider this imp egg apples in pegs
for one so I mean it's it's really it's
got lots of room to grow and yeah
there's there's room for improvement but
i think that improvements coming and i
don't see a reason not to support a
standard we like we still do a lot of
florence and video as well for forgiving
situations i think right now we're in a
we're at a point where it's depending on
the the type of the type of content that
it's going to be dictates somewhat what
we might choose but that's that's the
only thing we don't just pick sorensen
video because we think it looks better
we think it might look better in some
situations right now but i wouldn't say
that in 12 months or 18 months that
that's necessarily going to be it's
going to be true
so she join in threes and right well if
you look at a lot of the content on the
actual quicktime what's on page the
music videos those sort of things a lot
of those are done in mpeg-4 that's
because they're done in streaming and
picked for and I know that because I do
a lot of and so there is a transition
the movie trailers and things like that
you know one day mpeg-4 we'll see that's
the kind of question at us you can bring
up at the QuickTime feedback session
what I believe is exactly we actually
are in transition and on the MPEG I mean
on the movie trailer slide stay tuned
yeah one thing I believe it was brought
up this morning sergeant then there's a
standard for the quick time or the
mpeg-4 decoder there's not a standard
for an encoder you know so as people
write better and more efficient and you
know kind of nicer I guess encoders
you're going to be seeing better quality
mpeg-4 files you know because they'll
have to play back in the same decoders
that we have but as people sort of get
used to riding for the format you know
you are going to get better encoders so
yeah it's a transition it's going to
happen everything is going to happen
eventually to move along the sort of
mpeg-4 thing because we all you know
it's like it's a standard that's what we
want to get behind and push the
important thing river by the standard is
10 years from now you know what the
impact for files on Apple's slide was
still playing 10 years for now you can't
guarantee that the storms and three file
is still going to play so we think that
going forward is a good idea to move to
mpeg-4
[Music]
Thanks any other question yesterday
here's the microphone their disease
involved in second video games is wait a
minute I'm this Dylan issues with skis
involved pigs were in it is there is
there is actually a fee structure to
take for and we're actually lucky here
at the wwc to have Larry horn even one
of the sessions thursday morning at nine
thursday morning at nine o'clock he is
the man to talk to about fees its
identity Reaper developers are on
wavelets forbidden well you know their
fees to use windows media as well like
money they come out with immediate with
a licensing structure a few months ago
just like the intake for does that was
one another's life yeah okay probably
that's widely is the mpeg-4 handling on
the city following standard this is in
fact for like he said it's been out to
work for us for about a year if you look
back in the history of any codec or any
file format we're in one point 0 will
soon be in two point O than three point
0 to four point oh any other questions
about encoding in general and can we
please also have the slide machine thank
you yes sir I was curious we're using
right now and squeeze for treatment of
quality at this point try and also or
bashing but anything like let's say the
quick to micro very kind of batching
functionality that I'm unaware of
quicktime pro yeah not like through
Final Cut you can get matching that with
Sorenson excessively one clip and you go
to like store with regeneration they're
way too small or smiled to multiple
outputs basically yes let's say you're
using final cut pro in there well Apple
kind of change the thing after I handed
in this presentation by launching final
cut for with compressor so final cut for
now comes with kind of apples
compression program and I wasn't able to
use demo using that in this presentation
I was didn't really have the hands-on
with it that I wanted to be able to talk
about it but it is probably what it is
possible with compressor definitely to
do batches multiple Clips multiple
settings it's like using squeezer
cleaner without led to queue up
sequences raw raw clips that have been
marked and output multiple multiple
versions so out of something like Final
Cut Pro you you know you save everything
you want to do as a unique sequence you
know you do those all and then you go to
batch export them and you can batch
export them to not really multiple
settings but you can do you know your
300 run and then you can go in and do
another batch export of your 56k run
that kind of deal so final cut will
enable you to do batch export using the
QuickTime exporter without having like
cleaners cleaner or squeeze but
definitely if you're in the market to
update final cut for is they did really
Joyce yeah really good job with that
format with the annotation for the limit
annotation support honestly don't know
of any tools the way I've done it is
I've tried putting in annotations before
I hit export something in quicktime
player and see if it makes it sir so
things like name can go through things
like that that's honestly I've only done
it through trial and error there
actually is a trick you could use with
quicktime you can use are you familiar
with ref movies so you can put
annotations in a rest moving inside the
rest would be called to an mp4 and
energy don't and then the rest we can
actually use its annotations that show
up when you play the mp4 moving yeah
anytime live had to do something with
serious annotations where clients
demanded you know the copyright in the
artist website and all that I've just
taken the mpeg-4 file that I put out and
then do mine screens on that soon I do
export in a movie to QuickTime movie and
yet you pass through the video and audio
so you've got no transcoding and you can
put in the annotations you want to do
not after the fact not really know if
it's more functional of the spec that is
any limitation I'll put up yes sir
it's not a way of making real time and
encoding form of the old things like
quicktime broadcaster your roots or real
time as in live streaming well that's
what I can't now does is real-time
encoding in right I believe it is using
mpegs before but that's probably a good
question yeah that's a good question for
frank cass know it's like we just got it
yesterday so we've been playing with it
you know in our off time ask us tomorrow
yeah ask us tomorrow but no I do believe
that it's mpeg-4 it seems to me that
apple would want to use mpeg-4 in that
because everything else they're pushing
his mpeg-4 it could very well be h.263
though which it is a sucio here we go as
mpeg-4 yes ok sure we have something
like quicktime broadcaster you can do
live encoding of AAC audio streams ok as
there are no more questions I'd like to
thank you oh I'm sorry please if you
have a question please just hit a mic
don't be shy well don't hit it
how it smells like at least the DVD
resolution or higher I think each with
different student or anything in the
future there may be better encoder yes
well there there's something that was
mentioned in the mpeg-4 session earlier
this morning as well as at the quicktime
keynote the AVC advanced video coding
and so that is kind of what is pegged
towards the higher bitrate DVD quality
files and so you know Apple of course
doesn't comment on future plans but if
they were to implement that that's
definitely the way to go so other than
that yet you just you can do mpeg-4
files at you know monsters bit rates
again and you get very good quality and
we're even doing some experimenting with
with some some set-top box playback and
enact that kind of thing with it so it's
completely viable it looks very nice and
it looks probably even better the future
as it goes forward but I think the thing
that we're liking about it so far is the
file size is involved me prefer for a
really heavy duty high quality are still
are still very attractive but they're
not huge yes and also apples
implementation of mpeg-4 and AAC doesn't
tax the processor very well it's
optimized to run especially on a g4 so
playing back a you know 640 by 480
mpeg-4 file with AAC audio plays back a
lot smoother than a Sorensen 3q design
music profile did because especially q
design is a processor hog so it does
doing the big things kind of pays off an
mpeg-4 because you can throw the bitch
you need to add it to get the video
quality and then you get benefits
because of the low processor tax so yeah
it's definitely something if that's
where you're looking to go throw lots of
bits and mpeg-4 and see what you come up
with we've actually done a lot of demos
at macworld in AP where we basic
comparison we show is an impact to file
encoded it's a X megabits 45 megabits we
actually do an impact for version of the
same file the same dimension
at half the data rate and you're
hard-pressed to tell the difference in
the two files together on video like it
is I think yeah thank you we don't have
future products obviously but this
thursday we have a special the feedback
form 011 with Frank Casanova is our
directory person asked like that the
other interesting situation i mean drm
there's a lot of different opinions
right now about drm the person to really
ask that question of is is Frank
Casanova in the free that feedback forum
hit a square for that we're more than a
guide guys that actually have to take
the files in encode we don't we're not
much on the product marketing side I
knew I couldn't tell you and I just
don't know because they don't tell me
anything you even tell us yes yes
compared to apples it compressor I think
that at times the Sorensen mpeg-4
compressor can produce better quality
videos I think at times the Apple
compressor can produce better quality
videos honestly it's a matter of what
the sources it's a matter of what you do
to it and so I've had you know similar
results with the two I know that you can
do side-by-side tests and come with this
one does better than this one goes
better but honestly at the end of the
day you're getting pretty close to the
same results you know Sorensen is done
you know a little more extra work on
their codec because it came out later
than apples so you know they have a
little more under the hood but yeah
they're both very good very viable
mpeg-4 video codecs and are there any
more questions well if there's not i
would definitely like to thank you guys
for your time today it's been very good
and wrapping up i think there was a
couple of a little bit of information in
offense you have a couple more sessions
on in pick for you guys all have to
schedule but coming up tomorrow there's
some
specific sessions on 3gpp in the
afternoon to and and then there's one at
five and then again the real story about
mpeg-4 visual licensing this is the
Larry horn Larry horn is the president
director of a group called MPEG LA which
is the MPA G+ BP thank you he is the
sort of the at the forefront of in big
license and pick for licensing so I'm
sure he'd love to hear your feedback as
well yes then again please come to the
330 Thursday session a quick time
feedback for them this is the place
where you've got Frank cats those who
heads up the product marketing team but
you also have some real key engineers on
the quicktime team and and this is an
incredible opportunity for you guys to
tell us things and for us to hear you
know tell you things what we can tell
you about what we think about different
things so please come well that's what
you think one mark question you said it
was a advanced video coding is part of
the mpeg-4 specification is there
probably three through thursday at three
thirty as we pass anova he'll he's
playing guitar he's answering all the
impactful eyebrows what does eyebrows
right
yes explore like me being all day we can
movies with bigger boobs yeah that's
gonna be a good session I'm gonna be
there and it'll be in a bigger room okay
well thank you thank you very much for
your time
[Applause]