This situation means that even if buying quicktime pro, the process
will be more of a pain than your current export from video editing app.

Because now you will have to save your video timeline to an
intermediate format, which will then be loaded into quicktime pro (or
alternative) to be encoded.

To get decent quality, your intermediate format needs to be high
quality and bitrate, perhaps native DV format if thats what your
source camera is, and so long as your video editing app doesnt take
too long to export it.

Its a time/filespace/quality balance as to what you use, something
people dont need to worry about if the right export options are
available straight from their video editing app.

Also bear in mind quicktime is not the only h264 encoder available for
Windows or mac, here is my assessment of pro's and cons of Quicktime
versus other options:

pro's:
Its farily cheap
Lots of people know how to use it & advise if you have problems
As Apple make quicktime and the ipod & apple tv, we should be
confident that its output will be compatible
Its pretty easy to use

con's:
Its not free (some alternatives are free but can be harder to use)
Its not the fastest
If you want to make 640x480 files and your video to be encoded is
interlaced, quicktime doesnt do deinterlacing and so makes a pigs ear
of the results
Lack of manual control over bitrate (& thus filesize) if using apple
ipod & tv presets

I still havent found the perfect alternative h264 encoder that is free
or dirt cheap for Windows, is easy to use, and accepts most formats of
video, and handles de-interlacing, although Im sure such an app exists
or could be made out of existing free & hard to use stuff.

The only alternative commercial Windows h264 encoder I hav experience
with is Nero Recode 2. It may represent good value if all the other
apps it comes packaged with (cd writing etc), are of use. It is faster
than qucktime encoding for sure. I am not sure how up-to-date its
device profiles (ipod etc) are, but it does offer a lot of encoding
options, which is a good and bad thing. I cant remember wheher its
intelligent when it comes to deinterlacing or not, I will use it again
soon to refresh my knowledge.

http://www.nero.com/nero7/enu/Nero_Recode_2.html

Cheers

Steve Elbows

--- In [email protected], "Heath" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Of course that would be the answer, Jobs and Gates never heard the 
> song Ebony and Ivory I am guessing....  ;-)
> 
> you know the whole part about living together in perfect 
> harmony....ok, maybe I am the only one who thought that was funny....
> 
> Heath
> http://batmangeek.com
> 
> --- In [email protected], "David Meade" <meade.dave@> 
> wrote:
> >
> > From what I recall ... it's not vegas' fault but Quicktime's.  There
> > is something about the Windows Quicktime API that is not exposed to
> > windows applications (not even if you have QT Pro installed).  I'm
> > pretty sure its the AAC audio codec.
> > 
> > Basically windows applications cant request the AAC codec be used 
> via
> > the QT API.
> > 
> > You can use all sorts of other QT stuff ... but cant do ipod 
> formatted
> > video without QT Pro ... because on a windows box only QT pro is 
> going
> > to be able to access the parts of QT for Windows that allows for AAC
> > audio compression.
> > 
> > ... poorly described ... but the bottom line is that in windows you
> > need QT Pro, and you have to actually use it (not some other app) to
> > do the final compression.
> > 
> > -- 
> > http://www.DavidMeade.com
> >
>


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