Tutorial: 3ivx Dual Pass Compression
Verdi April 26th, 2006
We get lots of requests for this. It’s actually the first videoblogging tutorial I made back in December 2004 (though this one is updated for QuickTime 7). This isn’t a free deal though - 3ivx costs $20 and QuickTime Pro is $30. The big thing though is that 3ivx creates much nicer looking videos than Apple’s regular mpeg4 codec and unlike H.264 they play well on older computers and work with QuickTime 6. This is a long video (11:30) because I do a lot of explaining as I go along. So you don’t have to sit through it over and over again, I put together a quick reference guide (2 pages .pdf).
Also for reference, here is the test clip that I show in the tutorial:
Compressed with Apple’s mpeg4
Compressed with 3ivx Dual Pass
Technorati Tags: screencast, screencasting, tutorial, howto, 3ivx, codec, videocompression, compression, freevlog
The Tutorial: 3ivx Dual Pass Compression by Freevlog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Hi,
I read this on 3ivx.com:
“During a Dual Pass encode the Adaptive Quantization setting has no effect.”
Greets
Intersting - thanks for the info. I must have had that confused with the single pass mode.
What about older version of quicktime for those PC users who will never even wanna try to update their quicktime?
Anyway to fix that without them downloading quicktime 7/6?
Hey Leo,
As far a people without Quicktime 6 or 7… Some people go with Flash video for just this reason. If you use Blip.tv as your video host they will transcode your video to Flash for you. The downside to that is a Flash compressed version of an already compressed video usually doesn’t look that great. Personally, I haven’t found a problem with producing only QuickTime movies. QuickTime 6 is almost 4 years old. Most anyone watching video online has it by now.
Which compressions method and settings would you recommend for preparing a screencast (like a software tutorial made in Snapz Pro 2.0) for streaming?
Hey Jan,
The settings in this tutorial will work great for a screencast (it’s what we use). You probably won’t need to force keyframes every 5 delta frames. You can probably up it 75 which is the default recommendation. Also, you might notice if you spend some time in one place while describing something, your overall bit rate will be lower that the limit you set because all of it wasn’t needed.
Hi Michael,
I began following your tutorial, installing 3ivx for my new Mac mini, but 3ivx isn’t showing up as an option in QuickTime Pro (even thought it shows up under /Library/QuickTime). I’m thinking this is probably because 3ivx doesn’t support Macs with Intel processors; do you happen to know if this is the case? I’m off to continue researching this…
I found this with a Google search:
Via - http://davidbau.com/archives/2006/03/22/raging_hair_power.html
“I used Apple’s built-in MPEG-4 encoder. The best way to produce MPEG-4 is apparently to use the 3ivx toolset instead for better compression and quality. However, 3ivx is not yet available on Intel Macs. (The folks at 3ivx were nice enough to refund my $20 after I discovered this the hard way. I will definitely buy it when the Intel version comes out.)”
That sucks. The codec stuff never ends…
Hi Michael,
Relative to Harold’s comment, and your subsequent google search discovery, do you have any suggestions for us Intel Mac folks for how to produce decent mov videos optimized for general use (including on iPods). Any assistance would be appreciated. PS - Congrats on your 15th Anniversary. My wife and I celebrated our 6th during May.
Intel Macs can use the regular Freevlog compression tutorials. They use the Apple MPEG4 codec and have worked with the iPod since day 1. If you want better quality out of it you can increase the bit rate (which will increase the file size - sorry no magic there). http://freevlog.org/tutorial/#compress
Here’s another option for Intel Macs (and everyone else). http://freevlog.org/index.php/2006/05/23/quicktime-71/
Hi! Thanks for the great tutorials.
I’ve tried your divx tutorial for compression and it works great! My only problem is that the videos don’t seem to stream on pc’s (windows). On thee windows machine I tested on, my divx movies download the whole way before playing. Noticed on your site that your videos stream fine on pcs.
Am I doing something wrong? Thanks!
Hi Sebastian,
Just to be clear, this is a tutorial for 3ivx which is different than Divx. To get QuickTime videos to play while downloading you need to make sure “fast-start” is checked when you compress. Even so, if you just link directly to a QuickTime video and are using Internet Explorer on a PC to view it, it will have to download completely first. One fix for that is to use our pop-up maker (check the link at the top of the sidebar).
Oh yes– sorry– I meant 3ivx. Thanks for the information. I’m very grateful!!
was following along fine until you got to the part of replacing the log in the PREFERENCES folder. I’m using a pc. I did a search for the 3ivx log and the only one that came up is the one I placed on my desktop from the previous step.
So, where do I put it if there’s no preference folder?
[…] There are literally a gajillion ways to compress your video for the web. This is just a good, quick, one-size-fits-all way to get it done. So if you’re feeling adventurous, here are a few more: H.264 iPod (iMovie & Final Cut Pro) Ryanne’s Favorite Settings 3ivx Dual Pass […]
3ivx MPEG-4 5.0 fixed the dual pass bug and is available for Intel macs
Hi
just wanted to write you to say THANK YOU!!!! (Im really happy that it worked for me)
Im noob at comps and stuffs like this, i would never had found out how to do this. You really explain it good (even when i dont speak or understand too much english lol), you are a great teacher! =)
Good luck in all what you do.
Greetings