Compressing with ConvertToMovie

To compress a sequence with ConvertToMovie:

  1. Open ConvertToMovie.

  2. ConvertToMovie displays a file-selection dialog. Select the film or folder of PICT files you want to compress. ConvertToMovie then displays the compression dialog, which includes a number of fields and pop-up menus.

  3. Select Compact Video and Color in the Compressor pop-up menus.

  4. Slide the Quality control to "Most."

  5. Set the Frame Rate field to the frame rate of your QuickTime movie.

  6. For VCR-like controls, a key frame every 1-2 seconds is advisable. If VCR controls aren't a priority and quality is a high priority, the Key frame rate should be set equal to the total number of frames in the QuickTime movie.

    For a scene with a lot of change in it (such as a pan across a room), set the key frame to a lower number so it refreshes the buffer instead of calculating the new image. This reduces the artifacting and edge crawl slightly.

  7. Set the playback data rate in the Data Rate Desired field. Typically, a value between 240 and 200 is used, depending on the complexity of the film's audio track.

  8. Click the OK button. ConvertToMovie now begins to compress the film into Compact Video format. Each minute of film takes approximately an hour to compress.

ConvertToMovie overview

Table 1:  Characteristics of the ConvertToMovie tool. 
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Characteristic       |Description                    
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Compression          |Compact Video                  
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Frame Rate           |Frame rate of the QuickTime    
                     |movie                          
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Key Frame Rate       |Every 1-2 seconds              
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Color                |Millions                       
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Quality              |Most                           
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Data Rate            |As high as possible, 16-bit or 
                     |8-bit 22 kHz mono, 240 KB/sec  
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