super 8, dv and cd-rom

[redrice]

here's a cross-media technical problem.

i have a short (2 minutes) film which i put together in the NLE from super 8 original footage. i had the idea that i could make an 'interactive CD-ROM' to distribute it - i.e., friends would be able to view it on their computers as a screen embedded in a full-screen black 'frame', and it would play automatically when you clicked on the icon. (later on, i might get more ambitious).

i saved the movie as a full-resolution quicktime movie out of my NLE. then i downloaded a multimedia authoring programme on free demo from www.ezedia.com.

i had no problem getting what i wanted when i played the master file back from my hard drive. but when i wrote the whole thing to CD-ROM, and played it back from there, while the quality of the video image was great, the playback was jerky and erratic.

(i have dual 1Ghz processors, 500+ RAM, and a 40x read plextor drive, so i think hardware speed is not an issue.)

i assume that the problem lies not in the authoring software, but in the absolute limits on data rate delivery from the CD-R media, which are well below the requirements of full res QT. i assume also that, unless i want to shrink the image on the screen, - which i would like to avoid - the solution to the problem is compression.

so can anyone advise me: 1. am i right in my diagnosis? and 2. if compression is what i want to do, what is the best type of compression to use? i would like to use quicktime, but i'm not absolutely wedded to the format.

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[mattias]

> 1. am i right in my diagnosis?

yes.

> 2. if compression is what i want to do, what is the best type of compression to use?

sorenson. set "keyframe" every to 9999 or some other very high number (this activates the automatic keyframe placement), the quality to 100% and the kilobyte rate to somthing that all cd players can handle, such as 600.

and don't forget to resize it to square pixels. i would probably reduce the size of the frame a little as well, since the sorenson codec requires a lot from your computer at high resolutions. 480x360 or so would work better and still have enough resolution for a sharp image. you can still set the display size of the video to the size you want it to appear in, if you have quicktime pro.

/matt

[redrice]

thanks mattias! i shall try that once i get back from my weekend...

stay well,
peter

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