812 – Using video formats the right way: Tom talks MOV vs MP4

Episode 812 – MOV vs MP4
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 812 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about some things you really need to get a handle on, and that is the video formats. They are really important on how you distribute video and shoot video and edit video and so forth. So it'll be pretty quick, but you'll learn the differences between movie files and MP4 files, and even Android has some other kind of files. All right, I hope you didn't miss episode 811. That was Tom Fox. He's authored 25 books on business leadership and compliance and ethics, but he also authored a best selling children's book series. And you don't see that very often, that's for sure. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. It's the longest running, most successful, most unique ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. And also grab a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. You will thank me for it, because you will save hundreds of hours into the future where you won't be fighting with your computer. And also follow me at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire on TikTok.

[00:01:38] Okay, let's talk about movie files and video files and how they're created and when you should use them for your videos. Well, movie or movie files that was created by Apple a long time ago, unless you know how to change it. When you shoot a video on your iPhone, it's going to be in movie format. Now. Android people, you you have a different format. I'll mention that later, but that movie format or movie is the highest quality video format and the highest resolution format on an Apple device.

[00:02:18] And it's really, really gorgeous quality. Now, this sounds like a good thing, right? Well, you'll find out shortly that it can cause you problems if you try to use that video file in the wrong way. All right. Now let's talk about MP four. This is currently the video type you use when you want to put a video online or distribute it. It's a compressed format. Yes it's still the video you produced but the file size is much smaller. The old standard years ago was FLV, but now that's long gone and it's MP four. So what's the difference? Well move files are usually extremely large and way too big for the web and or any time you need a small file size. Mp four is a highly compressed format, but the nice thing about it is that you can compress it either more or less to suit how you're going to use it. The more you compress it, the worse it looks, quality wise. Sometimes you might just need to show someone a draft before you finish a video, and there's no reason to send them a gigantic file. Also, maybe they're going to be looking at it on their phone, and it could take a super long time to download if you send them the uncompressed, super high quality version. So MP four is pretty much the standard nowadays for distributing video. Now, the practicality of it is that, yes, you can upload a movie file, let's say, to YouTube, but they are going to convert it to a format that's way smaller, so they don't eat up tons of bandwidth for nothing when someone watches your movie or your video.

[00:04:16] Now Android phones, from what I've researched, because I don't have an Android, so I don't pretend to be all up on that, but uses MP4 and another format which I never even heard of, which is three GB. So if your Android users, you need to find out, okay, what's the high quality file we shoot natively or default on our iPhones or excuse me, excuse me on our androids? And how do we change it to make sure that it's we can distribute it as an MP four. Now there is a time and place to use movie files. Let's say you shot the raw footage and you're sending it to an editor to edit it. For business purposes, you always shoot the highest quality. You can always. You can always reduce the file size and quality for distribution. But if you shoot at low quality to start with, you can't upgrade the footage to a high quality for broadcast or for your editor. Now, if you're just shooting Christmas videos Christmas morning, that doesn't make much difference. But if you're trying to do high quality videos for your business, then you have to pay attention to this. Now, if the editor has all high quality footage. You can do just about anything with the finished product, but if the editor starts with low quality or super compressed footage, well, that's the best the footage is ever going to look.

[00:05:47] Low quality, super compressed. The editor can't make quality where it never existed, so always shoot in high quality. And a sidebar here if you're deciding on what storage capacity when you're getting a new phone or tablet or something, make sure you got plenty of space. If you're going to be doing this as a business because you don't want to run out, you can always get it off of those items. But it's a pain in the neck. So, so shoot at high quality and have plenty of space to to store it. Now, when you're sending super high quality files, you may have to send a physical hard drive. And as for instance, I'm limited to two gigabytes. Transfer on for free on the transfer service I use called Wii Transfer. So if I want to send a video to somebody I only got two gigabytes for free. I think you can pay to upgrade to four gigabytes, or you can pay two to get a lot higher file size. But then depending on your internet connection, it may take you a month to upload it. All right. So so a lot of times on super big stuff that we're doing like the dock, you know, we're getting drafts of the documentary from the Hollywood people that are shooting it all, that they're sending it to us with a hard drive. Let's see. Oh yeah. I mean, just think about how big these files can be.

[00:07:13] I mean, an uncompressed ten minute video could easily be 15GB or more, especially when people are starting to shoot 4K and even 8-K and that kind of stuff. So if you're going for broadcast, they're sending it to an editor, leave the file uncompressed and get it to where it's supposed to go by hard drive if it's that big of a video, if you're using the video on YouTube, Vimeo, streaming it, or distributing it online in any fashion, compress it and convert it to MP4. Also. How do you do that? Well, if you want to do it yourself, you can use a free program called hand brake. Hand brake. It does a great job of compressing. And you can convert video files to one form or the other. Now, if you're using an editor, they're going to know. What if they know? If you have a decent editor, they already know what to do with all these files. You just have to make sure the original one you shot is high quality. Now, if you do it yourself, there is one other thing you need to know a tiny bit about. And I don't pretend to be any kind of expert on this stuff. It's called a codec. Codec? That's code. It stands for code decode. All you need to know that currently, if you're doing the compressing yourself and the program asks you to pick a codec, a codec, you pick H 264 and that may change if you're listening to this in a couple of years.

[00:08:51] But for now, October 2023 pick H 264 and you really don't need to know what codecs are, and I'm not technical enough to explain it to you, so just pick H 264. So for most of the stuff that I do and probably you too, I use mp4 format after I shoot the original and H 264 codec. That's all you really need to know. But you do need to know about these file sizes. And that MP four is the one that's going to be everybody on earth can play it. And there's another sidebar. If you happen to run into a file, it won't open on your computer. Download a copy of VLC media player. I've never seen something that it won't open. It's just really a great it's a free, free download for you. But but get a hold of this stuff and you'll be have a lot better time with your. Video production and dealing with your editors and shooting stuff and you'll know, hey, I got to compress it. Or if it's gigantic, I'm doing a big production, I better get a portable hard drive and Fedex it to them. Still keep a backup of it locally because you could. If you lose a hard drive, you're really screwed. So. So there you go, a little bit on video stuff and we will catch you on the next episode. Check out greatInternetMarketingTraining.com for this and a million other things we teach to help you be successful online.