Comments on: Making MP4 H.264 Videos in Apple Compressor

By: LuDeLA

LuDeLA — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:10:46 +0000

THANK YOU, KYLE! This was a priceless piece of information.

By: ShirleyThompson

ShirleyThompson — Fri, 10 May 2013 01:41:56 +0000

Very helpful. Nicely written blog. Thank you Kyle.

By: Anna Rose (@alterpic)

Anna Rose (@alterpic) — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:37:56 +0000

Thank You!

By: Markus

Markus — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:44:42 +0000

hi,

nice settings!

i’m not 100% sure, but i think i’ve sometimes encountered problems in the past when renaming .mov to .mp4 and trying to play them back on a sony bravia tv. still, works most of the time, so maybe i just messed up the encoding settings for the files that didn’t work.

i never cared about the “frame controls” option for a straight render (and i guess, they don’t matter if you don’t change resolution, timing, interlacing,…), but i definitely have to play around with the “fast start” option.

one other strange thing i noticed – when resizing a 1080p file to 720p i get a file with 1280×720 (1248×702) in quicktime – what’s with this 1248×702? – some strange aspect ration? – the file works fine so far.

By: Ronan

Ronan — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:33:20 +0000

Hi !
Thanks a lot. That works great, and that helped me truelly in my job.

Ronan – France

By: Kyle

Kyle — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 02:27:21 +0000

@Hugues I wrote this post a year and a half ago and use variations on this preset several times a week. I have yet to encounter a situation in which this doesn’t work. If you find that it doesn’t work for you, please let me know what the application is.

The MPEG-4 preset in Compressor uses the “MPEG-4″ video codec, not H.264, so I definitely do not mean use the MPEG-4 preset, unless for some reason you need to use the MPEG-4 video codec, which I have never needed to do. For web video, H.264 is the preferred video codec, and I prefer to have it an MP4 container rather than an MOV container. That’s what changing the extension does.

There are Compressor presets for Apple devices such as “H.264 for iPad and iPhone 4″ which give similar results, but you get less control over the various encoding options, so I like to use this custom preset.

By: Hugues

Hugues — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 00:54:13 +0000

Really doubtful with this, there is a mp4 set up in compressor. Changing the extension as you do, using the h264 don’t make it a mp4. So I wonder if you doN,t mean use the mp4 preset

By: Roy Nolan

Roy Nolan — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:58:19 +0000

I loaded my QT file into compressor and that was alright until I checked Inspector
The 1st page you displayed at the top of this page came up and my movie title was displayed, in the proper place, but all the windows were grey and inactive so I couldn’t make the changes you suggested. What’s the problem?

Also, my project is in Standard Definition. I don’t have HD. Is that a problem?

I originally had made an Mp2 file for making DVDs and had loaded this on to my server so that the video could be downloaded by customers. The file was so large 2.63gb [53min] that it took forever. Several friends suggested that I change to an Mp4 file instead to lower the file size. Then one of them referred me to your website.

Can you help me? And by the way what would be the final file size if I go this way?
If this works this would really make my day and you would surely be a hero in my world.
I will be anxiously awaiting your reply
Thanks
Roy [ramblingroy@gmail.com

By: gfisch

gfisch — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:36:03 +0000

Wow – this is EXACTLY the solution to my problem. I was missing the fast start option in my H264 iPod/iPhone setting. A google search for “h264 fast start compressor” made me find your wonderful tutorial. You made my day (night). Sigh. gfisch