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Sequence codec presets?
Posted by lcheadle
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Re: Sequence codec presets? January 18, 2007 06:36AM |
> What is the deal with selecting a compressor in your sequence settings? How does that effect
> what compressor you select upon exporting?
That's not the main function of Sequence Settings. Sequence Settings affect which quality you're editing in. Capture Settings determine what quality you capture in, but then it goes through another layer in the Sequence Settings. For example, if you capture your clips at Uncompressed 10-bit SD (DigiBeta quality) but then edit in DV NTSC, not only would you have to render anything you edit into the timeline, but you're losing quality. And then when you export, unless you choose DV NTSC or better, you will lose more quality.
> if I desire making a h264 QT movie file for web purposes should I select that compressor as
> the sequence preset?
Definitely not. H.264 is not a format intended for editing; it is a delivery format with heavy compression. People often get this confused: H.264 is touted as a good-looking format for final delivery to the web. But it is not a broadcast-quality format like Uncompressed 10-bit SD. H.264's charm lies in its ability to compress footage heavily (already the antithesis of broadcast delivery) while preserving a good amount of image quality without generating huge files.
Which codec you choose for editing is much more determined by which tape format you shot/receive, and how much storage you have for raw footage, and which mastering format
you choose down the road. For example, if you shot DigiBeta but you know your final mastering format will be DV tape and nothing else, you may want to capture from DigiBeta but at DV NTSC quality. But if there's a chance you have to output the show to a DigiBeta master, then capture at Uncompressed 10-bit SD. At work, I tackled four commercials in a row which were shot with HDCam, but we didn't capture at 1080i as the show was shot because they shot too much raw footage, and the amount of storage needed to capture all of it at 1080i would have become prohibitive. So we captured with Uncompressed 10-bit while using a Kona 2 capture card to crop the footage to a 4:3 frame, because our final master was going to be SD, DigiBeta. There were one or two shots we captured in 1080i because we were doing green-screen and needed to do major blow-ups, but that was it.
Web output is practically a non-issue, because you can always output a lower-quality, compressed version of high-quality material. Can't go the other way if you pre-compress it at the capturing stage. For example, capture from DV tape in Photo JPEG at 320x240 and you'd never get a good-looking DV tape copy of the show. But capture at DV NTSC and you can export a Photo JPEG or Sorenson 3 320x240 movie file later.
If you don't know what your final delivery is, you need to choose a high-quality editing codec while at the same time making sure you have the storage space to tackle that format. Or be prepared to have to online-edit the show and recapture from tape down the road.
www.derekmok.com
> what compressor you select upon exporting?
That's not the main function of Sequence Settings. Sequence Settings affect which quality you're editing in. Capture Settings determine what quality you capture in, but then it goes through another layer in the Sequence Settings. For example, if you capture your clips at Uncompressed 10-bit SD (DigiBeta quality) but then edit in DV NTSC, not only would you have to render anything you edit into the timeline, but you're losing quality. And then when you export, unless you choose DV NTSC or better, you will lose more quality.
> if I desire making a h264 QT movie file for web purposes should I select that compressor as
> the sequence preset?
Definitely not. H.264 is not a format intended for editing; it is a delivery format with heavy compression. People often get this confused: H.264 is touted as a good-looking format for final delivery to the web. But it is not a broadcast-quality format like Uncompressed 10-bit SD. H.264's charm lies in its ability to compress footage heavily (already the antithesis of broadcast delivery) while preserving a good amount of image quality without generating huge files.
Which codec you choose for editing is much more determined by which tape format you shot/receive, and how much storage you have for raw footage, and which mastering format
you choose down the road. For example, if you shot DigiBeta but you know your final mastering format will be DV tape and nothing else, you may want to capture from DigiBeta but at DV NTSC quality. But if there's a chance you have to output the show to a DigiBeta master, then capture at Uncompressed 10-bit SD. At work, I tackled four commercials in a row which were shot with HDCam, but we didn't capture at 1080i as the show was shot because they shot too much raw footage, and the amount of storage needed to capture all of it at 1080i would have become prohibitive. So we captured with Uncompressed 10-bit while using a Kona 2 capture card to crop the footage to a 4:3 frame, because our final master was going to be SD, DigiBeta. There were one or two shots we captured in 1080i because we were doing green-screen and needed to do major blow-ups, but that was it.
Web output is practically a non-issue, because you can always output a lower-quality, compressed version of high-quality material. Can't go the other way if you pre-compress it at the capturing stage. For example, capture from DV tape in Photo JPEG at 320x240 and you'd never get a good-looking DV tape copy of the show. But capture at DV NTSC and you can export a Photo JPEG or Sorenson 3 320x240 movie file later.
If you don't know what your final delivery is, you need to choose a high-quality editing codec while at the same time making sure you have the storage space to tackle that format. Or be prepared to have to online-edit the show and recapture from tape down the road.
www.derekmok.com
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