A little video help?

[DP]

I wouldn't know video if it bit me on my a$$. Today I saw BlackJack sitting on a table in the front window while a pretty good rainstorm with high wind was blowing thru. As I looked, I could see the power lines arcing and sparking behind my neighbor's house so I grabbed my phone and shot some video. I told them I shot it and they want a copy but the file is 289 MB's for 54 seconds!
I've opened VLC, iMovie, and QT but for the life of me I can't figure out how to compress it (or whatever) and/or to save it as a separate file to give them. It shot as an MP4 but I thought I had "saved" it in VLC but the file with the video name is a .m4v file (!) and it won't play in QT!
A little help? TIA.

[jdc]

upload to youtube.

[Black]

I like a little application called iSquint for this (not sure where the best place to d'l it is though.)

[The Grim Ninja]

There's an ultra-simple video encoder built into recent Mac OSes. Find the video file, right click on it and look at the bottom of the menu for "Encode Selected Video Files" Then select one of the settings. Perhaps 720p will work and cut the file size down significantly. Shouldn't take long to encode.

[The UnDoug]

You can use Handbrake to resize/shrink it, too.

Just choose the iPad or iPhone preset off to the right in the application.

If that's not small enough, you can customized the dimensions.

It's the size (x and y coordinates) and quality (1080p/720p/etc.) that are likely causing it to be so large of a file.

[DP]

The Grim Ninja wrote:
There's an ultra-simple video encoder built into recent Mac OSes. Find the video file, right click on it and look at the bottom of the menu for "Encode Selected Video Files" Then select one of the settings. Perhaps 720p will work and cut the file size down significantly. Shouldn't take long to encode.

OK, thx for that. But when I used it, the new smaller file has that .m4v format again. When I click on it, some thing called mocha comes up and has some stupid error message with it.
Also, when I use it, the Encode Media window shows Format as H.264/AAC yet it gives me that .m4v format. No other choice is offered.

[Sam3]

wikipedia wrote: The M4V file format is a video container format developed by Apple and is very similar to the MP4 format. But M4V files may optionally be protected by DRM copy protection. Apple uses M4V to encode video files, such as TV episodes, movies, and music videos, in its iTunes Store.

The m4v container contains the H.264 encoded data. Properly encoded, an m4v should play in iTunes or Quicktime or VLC.

Mocha is a tool that monitors your network activity and keeps a record of IP/MAC address pairings and firewall logs. It will give a warning when it notices any suspicious activity, like any changes in MAC address or any connection attempt to the firewall. Somehow it is linked to open m4v files. Check your file associations and change the m4v to be opened by Quicktime.

[DP]

Again, thx for the help. I did open it in QT and it works just fine.

[modelamac]

DP,

It appears you have the video on your Mac.

You need iMovie and iDVD to do it, but iDVD will burn it in a playable format. Not every DVD player will play it, but that is because of the media you used. Some players will play Sony/Phillips/Verbatim, etc and others will play fewer brands. Verbatim seems to be the most compatible.

You may need to put it on a thumb drive and take it to one of your techy PC friends.

I could do it for you, but I'm in FL now until end of April.

DP wrote:
I wouldn't know video if it bit me on my a$$. Today I saw BlackJack sitting on a table in the front window while a pretty good rainstorm with high wind was blowing thru. As I looked, I could see the power lines arcing and sparking behind my neighbor's house so I grabbed my phone and shot some video. I told them I shot it and they want a copy but the file is 289 MB's for 54 seconds!
I've opened VLC, iMovie, and QT but for the life of me I can't figure out how to compress it (or whatever) and/or to save it as a separate file to give them. It shot as an MP4 but I thought I had "saved" it in VLC but the file with the video name is a .m4v file (!) and it won't play in QT!
A little help? TIA.