Shutterstock Photographer Forum :: View topic - Compression

badboo · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Miami

A 30 second 720*480 DV clip is over 700 MB. What compression formats are also accepted?

Are you all uploading 60 seconds, 1 GB sized clips through a 56k dial connection? haha. Kidding. I do have DSL - still this would take me about 6 to 7 hours to upload.

I couldn't find posts or anything from shutterstock stating what formats (or better WHAT COMPRESSION) is supported...

Any answers?

varius · Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 2:53 pm

My two accepted (and 28 waiting to be revied) clips are AVIs compressed with Cinepak Codec. All 30 clips, between 6 and 60 sec long, have a total of 1.32 GB.

Needless to say, I let them upload at night while I'm sleeping...

badboo · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Miami

Thanks for your comment varius! Did you just feel like using the Cinepak compression or did SS mention that this is "required" or "desired" or "acceptable"?

I think that SS should post a list of all accepted forms of compression to avoid rejection because of wrong or too much compression leading to loss of quality...

varius · Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 4:18 pm

Try and error, really. My first attempt of submitting DV-AVIs in PAL standard was... not pleasant.

But since the Cinepak Codec comes with Windows (iirc) I though it was worth a try.

And yes, I'd really appreciate some official statement on the codec thing from SS either.

koki · Joined: 04 Mar 2006 Posts: 283 Location: Skopje, Macedonia

my attempt with dv-avi pal was aslo with no success at all :(
now i submit my clips as 'normal' mpeg1

badboo · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Miami

I really want my clips to be in "good" quality for the customer.

I haven't made any great experiences with compression of any form using "low to normal" bitrates.

In the end when you push up the bitrate, you end up with good quality but almost the same file size as uncompressed.

The stupid thing is - you are using a codec that not everybody has...

I would just save some (render/saving) time if we knew exactly what codecs and bitrates are sufficient...

varius · Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:11 am

jubalharshaw · Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 310

I've been wandering around the web looking at stock-footage to see what other shooters are doing and I've seen a lot of Quicktime. Those sites that have submitter infomation mention the Quicktime wrapper as being acceptable more often than any other. My Quicktime files compressed at 85% are usually smaller than a mpg of the same footage. However, there is a small expense: $30 to upgrade to Quicktime Pro.
Jubal Harshaw

badboo · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Miami

Interesting, I was trying many different ones also considering the Sorenson codec which seems to work pretty well.

There haven't been specific comments from SS in the Footage forum.

Probably they are even trying out themselves which works best for them. I am just going to submit all the blips from now on in different formats to see which ones they take...

jubalharshaw · Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 310

Here are the numbers for one instance of Quicktime compression at an 85% quality level, which seemed to me to result in a very clean mov file.

avi = 405,020 kb
Quicktime mov = 4,914 kb

Not a typo-I checked the file size numbers twice and played both files. A compression of 98.8%! Still not believing this, I went to a second set of numbers and got almost identical results.

avi = 609,548 kb
mov = 7,342 kb

I knew it was good, but I didn't know it was this good until I did the arithmetic for this post. No wonder so much of the web is standardizing on Quicktime. If I screwed up the arithmetic, someone please tell me.
Jubal Harshaw

varius · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:02 pm

I'll check... Which codec did you use for the avis?

jubalharshaw · Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 310

Full frames, uncompressed, thus the large files.

varius · Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:59 pm

That explains a lot. :)

badboo · Joined: 10 Jun 2005 Posts: 361 Location: Miami

From what I have seen cinepak and quicktime are not making that much of a difference in size but maybe quality depending on the footage (slow moving objects compared to fast changing frames).

No doubt that the quicktime solution is the better one. Various footage sites offer Quicktime for high-res download.

jubalharshaw · Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 310

If I understand what you mean, you are saying that Quicktime and Cinepak are not that much different from each other in their ability to compress files, but they may differ in their quality of compression.
Maybe so...I haven't compared that.
Jubal Harshaw