Matt's Macs

Compressing Movies

- 2001.04.05 - Tip Jar

This column was first published in the MUGOO Newsletter in November 2000.

Lights, camera - whoa wait a minute!

Don't touch that mouse, it's My Performa at the Movies, Take No. 4.

Lights, Camera, Compress Movie???

Now how 'bout those movies!! Did you check them out at http://home.att.net/~myperforma? Performa 635Those movies were easy to take and record given the right hardware, such as digitizing hardware, a large storage device, and the right input device, such as a microphone or a movie camera. What's left capturing images and sound? A large file on your hard drive that begs to be edited, compressed, and saved. Editing the file will take the same creativity, patience, practice, and the necessary hardware and software that was required to make a movie. Let's go! Hollywood here we come!

Movie files are large. There is no doubt about it, and no easy way around it. Presently, I have several movies on my 4.3 GB hard drive. A two minute movie, in color, without sound, takes up 17.8 MB of disk space. The audio and video files are CPU and RAM intensive to record, play. and edit. Frankly, my Performa with its 68040 chip and 36 MB of RAM is pushed to the limits of performance to playback, record, and edit these movies.

We will get into more about editing next month; now for some fun stuff. Here's how you can have your Mac howling at the moon when you power up. Download "Floppy howling" from http://home.att.net/~myperforma. Save the file as a QuickTime movie, naming it Startup Movie. Drop the file into your system folder; restart your Mac.

Remember the Mac's bark is worse than its byte!

Next month: My Performa Coffee Break

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