So you have just captured all the spots for your new director off of a MiniDV tape, compressed them and are ready to get approval. Your director looks at them and asks, “Why can’t they look like this?” And by this, he means a movie trailer on Apple’s site, which looks B E A U T I F U L !
So you go back and try to tweak all the settings on your software using the latest codecs and approved variable bit rates. But the output just does not pop like the Pirates of the Caribbean trailerÂ. Why? Does Apple use some rig equivalent to a racing stock car while you are plugging away with a standard automobile?
Encode from the best source possible
First off, let’s talk about encoding. Apple’s encoding process isn’t magic. Apple just uses the high-quality video source and tools. Apple typically receives the trailer on D5, which is the best source available. D5 means 10 bit HD video at 1920 x 1080 at 235 MB/s uncompressed. In English this means 10 times more video information and three to four times larger display than your spot on MiniDV.
That’s a big difference. There is vastly more information to start compressing from, which results in better compression. Arguably, an uncompressed SDI (serial digital interface) Digibeta capture will get you very close to D5 output for data rate capture, but your spot will still be 720 x 480 (480p).
Good tools, vast knowledge, and a lot of time
If you’ve ever wondered about when to use the contrast balance and image cropping features in Cleaner, you’ve wondered about image pre-processing. Apple has people who can tweak settings to achieve beautiful compression.
Apple uses the same tools: Cleaner 6, CinemaTools, and Compressor. So if a spot is dark and looks great on TVs, maybe it needs a little boost to pop on your iPod. Apple created QuickTime, so they know how to design for it. The big question, though, is do you have time to fret over every one of the 30 spots you need to get out for your sales rep by 4 p.m.?
For compression, Apple uses the same QuickTime Pro or Compressor. There are no crazy hand-tweaked compression programs working behind the scenes; no custom hardware cards with DSP magic added to the mix. Apple just uses good variable bit rate settings in the most modern H.264 encoding format.
As a result, Apple’s video is only viewable with QuickTime, which is much better than Sorenson compressed QuickTime 6 video. Over time, all your ad agency contacts will have QuickTime 7 installed on their machines. Our hope is with a little coordination, we can make this happen sooner, rather than later.
Progressive download versus streaming
Finally, there is delivery. All Apple movie trailers come down to your computer in progressive download mode. Want to know the easiest way to tell if a video is progressive? If you cannot skip to the very end right away, it’s dowloading progressively. If you can skip around, it’s streaming.
If the video is small enough, the trailer will download fast enough to play without stuttering. There’s something important here: your website, housed on a single computer farm at one ISP, will have nowhere near the performance of Apple’s download center, which is outsourced to Akamai.
Once again, there is a big difference again between a $20 per month basic hosting plan and a $2000 per month basic Akamai plan. Akamai sends your video files to hundreds (thousands?) of servers all over the world. A visitor in NY will pull down the video from Akamai in NY; London pulls from London, etc. If a visitor from London pulls down your file from Los Angeles, they will wait longer.
For more information on encoding and compression, take a look at our Encoding Guide in our Wiredrive Reference section.