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Playing HD Videos from Superdrive

Hey Gary, I been asking a lot of questions to you lately, but another popped up that I like to ask you. My wife and I have a Photography business and one of the things we do for our clients is make HD Photo Slide shows. When we export the HD Slideshow from Aperture, usually a 1080 version, we burn to a CD for the client to have for playback on Computer or a digital player. The file is a .MOV and we also give them a standard DVD we make in iDVD or using another third party app.
So the Question: when the burn is complete of the HD and I try to play the slideshow from the CD either using Quicklook or the default QuickTime player, I notice extreme lag in playing with almost to no audio or freeze. Keep in mind these are not long videos and regardless of size or length, the results are the same. Of course if I copy the file to the Harddrive and playback all is well, but playback of the that HD slideshow from the disk is horrible. Any thoughts?
—–
Michael

Comments: 4 Responses to “Playing HD Videos from Superdrive”

    13 years ago

    Reading data from a CD is much much slower than reading data from a hard drive. If you are making 1080p videos, then there could be a lot of bits-per-second for the CD drive to read and relay to the computer each second.
    One option is to be careful when exporting -- or perhaps reprocess the video after you export. Using something like MPEGstreamclip you can reprocess the video and control the bits-per-second. It is possible, for instance that you are looking at 10,000 kbps or more in your exported video (get info on the .mov file when it is open in QuickTime player). But you may be able to reprocess it giving specific instructions to keep it at 2,000 kpbs which will be easier to read from a CD.

    Michael
    13 years ago

    Ok yea I do have MPEGStreamclip although rarely use it other than flash playbacks. So if I change the bits-per-second, will quality degrade? I mean these are ultimately the clients final copy for them to use as they wish. When we export from Aperture we just select the 1080 selection. I never bothered to see if there are any customizable exports other than the selected presets.

      13 years ago

      Yes. Lowering the bits-per-second is a trade-off in quality vs. size. But reading a huge 1080 file from a CD drive and expecting it to play back in real time is just a fact-of-life. So you can either give them a small version, or make it clear they cannot play it from the CD drive. Or give them two versions.

    Michael
    13 years ago

    Ok understood. I was just concerned that is was not an optical drive issue on my part. Thanks.

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