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Appendix A | Appendix B | Appendix C | Glossary | Index | Legal Stuff | License


Chapter 10 - Compressing and Suspending Movies

Compressing Movies | Suspend & Resume | Monitoring Compression | Playback During Suspension | Changing Settings and Resuming

Once you've set all your processing and compression parameters, compressing the movie is easy, but time consuming. Depending on your settings (particularly the codec), and your processor speed, compression can take up to several seconds per frame of your movie.

NOTE: Media Cleaner Pro is multi-processor compatible to help speed up the compression process. All of Media Cleaner's filters and image adjustments make full use of your multi-processor machine. However, many of the current codecs don't take full (or any) advantage of multi-processor computers, so the speed increase with an MP machine may not be as great as you would expect.



Compressing Movies

To start your movie compressing, simply press the "Start" button in the Status Bar. This will start compressing your movie with the settings currently selected in the Settings window. You may also select "Start" in the File menu to start compression. Media Cleaner will prompt you for a destination and name for your final compressed movie.

During Compression...

To make compression faster, Media Cleaner "monopolizes" your CPU during the compression cycle, and ignores events such as key presses, etc. When you see the compression cursor (a vise), you know that the computer is focused on compression, and will not respond to the keyboard, and many other things. To return your computer to a "normal," responsive state, simply move the mouse.



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Amount of Compression Completed

The first section shows how much of the movie compression is completed with a progress bar. The elapsed compression time and remaining time until the compression is complete are displayed next to the progress bar.

Once you move the mouse, Media 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 a few seconds to return to the arrow cursor, because Media Cleaner must first finish compressing the current frame.

As long as the arrow cursor is visible, compression is temporarily paused and you may move windows around, go to the Finder, etc. Once you leave the mouse idle for a few seconds, Media Cleaner will resume the compression process, and again "take over" your CPU.

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Monitoring Compression

During the compression process, you can monitor the current compression information by watching the Output Movie window. While the compression is in progress, you cannot actually view the movie, but you can see the current frame and use the Before/After slider. If you suspend the compression, you can play the partially compressed movie in this window.

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Getting More Information About Your Movie During Compression

Under the movie in the Output Movie window are three sections containing information about the movie being compressed.

If you click on the toggle, 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 toggle a second time will "close up" this section.

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Average Data Rates

The second section contains information on the average data rate during the movie compression. In parentheses, Media Cleaner shows how much disk space one hour of compressed video would take at the current data rate. This is helpful for figuring out your "media budget" for CD-ROM projects, etc. Expanding this section will show the average video and audio data rates. It will also show the size of the current frame, and indicate if it is a keyframe.

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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. This helps you understand where the time is being spent during compression. If you are under a very tight deadline for your project, you may want to use this information to turn off filters, or choose different resizing or compression modes.

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Suspend and Resume

NOTE: You can only suspend a compression that is being output to QuickTime or VDO ­ you cannot suspend a RealMedia compression.

At any time during the compression process (except flattening), you can suspend your compression, then later resume the compression from where you stopped, rather than having to start over.

Media Cleaner's Suspend & Resume feature is extremely important when you need to compress a long movie but cannot afford to have your computer completely occupied for long periods of time. It is also a good way to preview your movie before compression is complete.

Media Cleaner keeps track of where the compression was suspended and lets you resume from where you stopped. You can even shut down and restart your computer, play back the partially compressed movie, or compress another movie before resuming compression on the suspended movie.

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Suspend

Pressing the "Suspend" button in the Status Bar, or selecting "Suspend" in the File menu, will stop a movie's compression. Upon suspending, Media Cleaner will store all the information necessary to resume the compression later. Media Cleaner will also finish your movie properly so that it is playable.

NOTE: While a suspended movie is watchable, it may not be flattened properly, so you shouldn't distribute suspended movies. If you don't wish to continue compressing a movie, and would like to distribute the suspended portion, process it again with the pre-configured QuickTime "Flatten Only" setting. You may also flatten a movie with the "Flatten and save..." option in the File menu.

NOTE: If your computer crashes or is shut down during a running compression without the movie being suspended first, the partially compressed movie will be lost and you will have to restart the compression from the beginning.

Media Cleaner also lets you suspend more than one movie at a time. With two or more movies suspended you can resume compression on whichever you choose.

NOTE: You cannot suspend a movie during the "Flattening" part of the processing - once Media Cleaner starts flattening a movie, it must finish this process.

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Playback During Suspension

To view a suspended movie, use the movie controls in the Output Movie window. When you are done viewing your movie, simply hit "Resume."


Resume

The "Resume" button in the toolbar resumes compression of a suspended QuickTime movie. To use the resume function, open a suspended source movie, a suspended output movie, or a batch that was suspended and press the "Resume" button. Media Cleaner picks up where you left off with no loss of audio or video quality.

Media Cleaner will resume from the last keyframe compressed, not the last delta frame. This may cause your compression to resume a little before the point in the movie where you suspended compression. Media Cleaner does this to prevent extra keyframes from being added at the suspend/resume points in the movie.

NOTE: If you are making a movie with no keyframes, Media Cleaner may have to resume the compression from the beginning of the movie.

The "Resume" button is inactive if the current movie or batch has not been previously suspended.

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Changing Settings and Resuming

Changing settings in the middle of a compression may create a movie which will crash some computers.

Because of this, Media Cleaner will always use the original settings a movie was compressed with when resuming a compression.

If you wish to change your settings, you must press "Start" instead of "Resume" ­ this will start over with the new settings.

NOTE: You cannot change settings in the middle of a compression. This is different than in previous versions of Cleaner.

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