Movie Technical Information

  • Quicktime See http://webhelp.ucs.ed.ac.uk/services/media/quicktime.html

    Encoding limits (as at March 2007): Stand-alone audio streams must have a maximum encode rate of 64Kbps, for speech based material, an encode of 32Kbps is usually sufficient. Standalone video streams must have a maximum encode rate, **including audio** of 350Kbps. UCS may revise these limits once we have had time to evaluate the effect of these limits in use for some time. 

    MPEG4 Video
MPEG4 Mono 44.1kHz Audio
320x240
Prepare for Internet Streaming
Progressive Medium
15 fps?
Prepared for Cable/ADSL speeds (approx. 350kps)
    Alan Ordway Instructions: 
    Use DV to tape.
Import into Final Cut and edit
Export as a Final Cut movie
Open exported file with Sorenson Squeeze
Select MP4 for the output type and Progressive Medium
After the .mp4 file is produced I open it in QuickTime Player Pro
Select export Movie to QuickTime Movie
Click options and uncheck Video and Sound, only Prepare for Internet Streaming should be checked
    That will produce a .mov file that will use mpeg-4 for the compression and can be a fast start progressive download from a web server.

    Now I did one other thing so that the Quicktime Player is launched instead of trying to play the movie in the web browser. I created a .qtl file.

    For example, for your video I created all the above and saved it as tateLecture.mov. I put that up on the web server. I then created a text file called tateLecture.qtl. That file contains a ?quicktime directive: 

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
<?quicktime type=”application/x-quicktime-media-link”?>
<embed src="rtsp://boombox.ucs.ed.ac.uk:554/smilcourse/sample.mov"
autoplay="true" />
    and that is the file that is linked to on the web page. Only Quicktime player has the .qtl extension registered and that will do a fast download of the file which the Quicktime Player can then use to get the actual .mov file. The reason for doing this is that Windows Media Player and Real Player sometimes hijack the .mov extension and then it just looks like the .mov is broken when it really isn't.

  • Preparing a Quicktime Movie

    The process described on this page works if you export a movie from the original one. Do not compress a movie twice. If you have already exported a movie for fast start, use the option Movie to Hinted Movie instead. This operation requires Quicktime Player Pro or any export/hinting software capable.

    • Open the movie in Quicktime Player (Pro version).
    • Menu File, Command Export.
    • Select Movie to Quicktime Movie.
    • Click Options.
    • Check Video and select h.264 for video compression and set Quality to Medium.
    • Set video size to 320 x 240.
    • Check Audio and select AAC for audio compression and set Quality to Normal.
    • Check Prepare for Internet Streaming and select Hinted Streaming.
    • Click OK.
    • Choose a destination and name on your hard drive to export the movie to (add "-h" to name so it will be easy to identify hinted movies).
    • Click Save.

  • Live Streaming

    UCS can provide advice on using the following encoders for live streaming:

    • WM9 Encoder - on Win32
    • RealProducer 11 - on Win32
    • QT Broadcaster - on OS X
    There is now a free Flash encoder from Adobe but UCS do not yet have a Flash Media Server service in place although UCS have requested that in March 2007.

    For WM we can provide a dedicated broadcast mount point on our WM service: for Real and QT we provide the equivalent on the Helix server. However, we do need to keep control over these to ensure that resources - essentially bandwidth out - is not overwhelmed.

    You do need to realise though that this technology is not suited to synchronous communication as there is considerable latency in the event --> encoder --> server --> client path.