After settings have been selected for a movie, the last step is to compress the movie. You can either click on the "Compress" button from the Movie Cleaner toolbar, or select "Compress" from the File menu.
You can suspend compression by selecting Suspend from the Movie Cleaner Status toolbar (see Chapter 12 - Suspend & Resume for more information.)
During Compression...
To make compression more efficient, Movie Cleaner does very limited event handling while it is compressing. Whenever the compression cursor (a vise) is visible, events such as key presses are ignored. Once you move the mouse, Movie Cleaner will temporarily pause compression and turn the cursor back into an arrow. Depending on several factors such as your processor speed, it may take up to a minute to return to the arrow cursor, because Movie Cleaner must first finish compressing the current frame.
As long as the arrow cursor is visible, compression is paused and you may move windows around, go to the Finder, etc. Once you leave the mouse idle for a few seconds, Movie Cleaner will resume the compression process.
Because Movie Cleaner needs all of the available CPU power to do the complex calculations for compression, it does not work well to run it in the background while using your computer for other tasks. A more effective method way to compress is to set up your compression at night, and then suspend it when you need to use your computer. Simply resume the compression when you are done for the day.
Monitoring Compression
During the compression process, you can monitor the current compression information by watching the Output Movie window. See the next section for more details. While the compression is in progress, you can not actually view the movie, but you can see the current frame. If you suspend the compression, you can play back the partially compressed movie in this window. Refer to Chapter 12 - Suspend & Resume for more information.
Getting More Information on Your Movies During Compression
Under the movie in the Output Movie window are several sections containing information about the movie being compressed. When you pause compression, or it is finished, the standard QuickTime controls appear. You can use these controls to view the movie. Below the controls are three status sections.
Amount of Compression Completed: The first section shows you with a slider how much of the movie compression is completed. The elapsed compression time and remaining time until compression is complete are displayed next to the slider.
If you click on the "more info triangle," the status line will expand to show you details on the amount of the original movie written and remaining to be written, as well as minutes of material which have been compressed and are remaining. Times refer to the running time of the movie, not the time remaining to finish the compression. Clicking on the more info triangle a second time will "close up" this section.
Average Data-Rates: The second section contains information on the average data-rate during the movie compression. Expanding this section will show the average video and audio data-rate. It will also show the size of the current frame, and indicate if it is a keyframe.
Compression Rate and Performance Chart: The third section gives you information on the compression rate of the movie. Expanding this section will show you how many seconds per frame each process takes.
ΓÇó If you are compressing on a Power Mac, a note will appear beneath the compression chart to remind you that compression is significantly faster with the professional version of the tool, Movie Cleaner Pro.
Before/After Preview
During compression, a special Before/After slider appears underneath the output movie. The image to the left of the slider is the uncompressed original source. The image to the right of the slider is the compressed final movie image. The slider may be moved back and forth to see how any particular area looks before and after compression. This feature lets you see exactly what the selected codec is doing to the image quality of your movie. This feature is not available when you are doing 8-bit Cinepak movies. You can turn this feature on or off in the Preferences.
Don't forget that it takes Movie Cleaner a little while to respond when you first move the mouse. While you are moving the Before/After slider, Movie Cleaner will pause compression. When you stop moving the slider for a few seconds, it will start compressing again.
