Easy Video Compression Using QuickTime Player (Macintosh) Compression is necessary in order to provide students with a quality video viewing experience and yet still maintain a decent file size for download. Luckily, if you have QuickTime Player installed on your Macintosh, there is a simple process to convert any video you can play in QuickTime to a Blackboard‐friendly format. NOTE: If your movie is longer than approximately three minutes in length, you should not upload it into Blackboard due to the long download time that will ensue. Longer videos should be placed on the streaming server housed at Cal Poly Media Distribution Services and accessed through a posted link within Blackboard. For more information on this process, visit: http://www.mds.calpoly.edu/mds_videoservices/encoding_streaming.htm
Step 1 To begin, make sure that you have the QuickTime Player or QuickTime Pro application on your Macintosh computer. If not, download and install it from the following link: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
Step 2 Open up your desired video in QuickTime Player. For this example, a Harry Potter Movie Trailer has been opened with QuickTime Player (Figure 1). Figure 1: Main QuickTime Window Step 3 Next, click on the File menu, and then select the Share option (Figure 2). Figure 2: QuickTime Player File Menu with the Share Option Selected Step 4 QuickTime Player will now present you with a dialog box as shown in Figure 3. Select the Email tab at the top and provide a name for your output video in the textbox next to Name: (“Harry” in this case). Figure 3: QuickTime Player Share Dialog Box Step 5 Under the Size: drop‐down menu, select Large. This will produce a high quality video while still maintaining a decent file size. Figure 4: Share Dialog Box with "Large" Selected in the Size Drop‐Down Menu Step 6 You should see a summary of your output video in this dialog box noting the compression codec used, the number of frames per second (FPS), the audio compression type, etc. It will also estimate the file size that will occur post‐conversion. If you are happy with all the settings, go ahead and click Share. You will then see a progress window like the one below showing your video conversion progress. NOTE: If the video estimated size still looks too large in megabytes or if the download takes too long in Blackboard, reconsider saving your video out as a Medium size instead. Figure 5: Video Export Progress Window Step 7 Since we selected Email, Mac Mail (or whatever you have set as your default mail application) will open automatically after the video has been exported in QuickTime Player. Your converted video will be embedded within the body of the email message. Figure 6: Mac Mail Window with Converted Video Contained Within the Message Body Step 8 To extract this video as a usable file, simply drag and drop the video file from your email application to your Desktop (or to another destination folder) OR Control‐click on the video within your email and select Save Attachment… and then select the destination location to save it to and click on the Save button. Figure 7: Result of Saving Your Video Attachment to the Desktop (Harry.mov) from Mac Mail Finished You now have a compressed video file that can be uploaded to Blackboard or a server of your choice. Enjoy! NOTE: It is Cal Poly’s policy that all instructional material videos placed in Blackboard or on academic web pages must be captioned in order to fulfill CSU and federal/state mandates. For further assistance, please contact the web accessibility coordinator for your college listed in the link below: http://accessibility.calpoly.edu/web/wac.html
For more information about video captioning, please visit: http://www.mds.calpoly.edu/mds_videoservices/media_captioning.htm
For Cal Poly’s policies on making instructional materials accessible, please visit: http://accessibility.calpoly.edu/instmaterials/index.html