iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

The Video Codecs: A Catalog

When you decide to export your iMovie production as a QuickTime movie, you can exert a great deal of control over how the Mac produces the resulting movie file by clicking Options in the dialog box shown in Figure 14-3 (The Settings Button), and then clicking Settings (Figure 14-4, Compression Type pop-up menu). You get access to a long list of codecs. Few of these codecs are very useful for everyday use. Many of them are intended for:

• Saving still frames (not movies). Examples: BMP, PNG, Photo-JPEG, JPEG 2000, TGA, TIFF, Planar RGB.

• Keeping around for old times' sake, despite having been technologically surpassed. Examples: Cinepak, Component Video, Sorenson.

• Professional cameras and high-end production firms. Examples: Apple Pixlet Video, Apple ProRes, MPEG IMX, HDCAM.

Most of the time, the compressor called H.264 will make you and your audience the happiest.

Note

The list of codecs in your dialog boxes may not match what you see here. Your codecs reflect the version of QuickTime that you have, which may be older or newer than version 7.6, described here.

Here are some of the codecs that aren't totally useless:

• Animation. This codec is significant because, at its Best quality setting, it maintains all of the original picture quality, while still managing to convert files so that they're smaller than files with no compression at all. (As the name implies, this codec was originally designed to process video composed of large blocks of solid colors—that is, cartoons.) ...