Saving as .mov

Hi All,

I have two clients who want me to submit my HD files as .mov and I can't seem to figure out how.

They download from my camera as .mov and I edit them in Adobe Premiere Elements, when I'm done I click on "Publish and Share" in top right hand corner, scroll down and select AVCHD, select MP4 - H264 1920x1080p 30 and process them. They end up as .mp4 files. I don't see any way to process them and save them as .mov files.

One of these clients wrote: "Generally, we’d suggest using Photo Jpeg since this is the most popular codec in stock media and setting the quality between 75-90. This should give you a manageable file size and a good quality." This doesn't make any sense to me...

Any ideas? I'm on Mac. iMovie? Quicktime?

Thanks in advance for any and all advice!

Tsado,

I am not Mac, nor Premiere Elements, but I like to help as I've liked to BE helped, having asked many questions such as yours.

I'll offer a couple suggestions, and then turn it over to those with experience with your software.

First thing is that you need to learn the difference between "codec"(PhotoJPEG, h.264, ProRes, to name a few) and "container" (.mp4,.mov, .avi, etc.) In your case, you mentioned scrolling down and selecting AVCHD ... this would be not so good (as in bad) for export to any stock site, especially your clients, as using this AVCHD codec imparts yet another level/generation of heavy compression to your footage.

You might be at first appalled by the file sizes of Photo-JPEG (a codec) but you will get over it ... you must. PJPEG is what I used for a long time, yes, it is "standard" on the stock sites, and fairly recently I have switched to ProResHQ (usually a Mac only encoding) as I found software and a workflow that makes it happen on a PC.

In most cases the camera records a native file that is very compressed. More advanced/professional/expensive cameras can record in less compressed codecs, some even in RAW, but for the most part your original file will be encoded in-camera to a lossy codec, which, if you re-encode/render to the same or another lossy codec, causes obvious loss of detail, introduces artifacts, and makes it very hard for the client. The only time you "should" render to these codecs, like h.264, for instance, is when you want to upload a smaller file to play easily on a computer, or to a video streaming site, and, even in that case, if you upload PJPEG or ProREs, you will see better results as those sites re-compress your video after uploading.

So your clients want PJPEG. It really should be there. When you scroll down on your output options, which to me sound like a list of codecs, look for it, and do not select h.264, MPEG4, or anything like that. They would probably also be happy with ProRes, as that is actually a better codec than PJPEG .. the file size will only be a little bigger. If you find this, the output codec WILL be in a .mov container, and your clients will be happy.

You might find Photo-JPEG under the main heading "Quicktime". That is how it is in After Effects, anyway.

Good luck!

Mizamook,

Thank you very much for taking the time to write such a wonderfully detailed explanation!

Best,

T

And you have to hav Apple Quicktime installed before you can save in the desired way, i believe.

Quicktime format