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MP4 Codec
Greetings,
What is the best MP4 codec to use with premier?
A friend using an old version of Premier has approached me with this question.
She wishes to both decode and encode MP4.Many thanks
GReg
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6 Replies
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Premiere doesn’t like highly compressed formats such as MP4. You would be better off by using regular AVI files.
Aanarav Sareen, ACE
Adobe Certified Expert, Premiere Pro -
Interestingly, Premiere Elements 2.0 appears to support mp4 use.
see https://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328587.html
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Aanarav’s right. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
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Not sure where “should” comes from, Timothy. That surely depends on what the user wants to achieve.
Mpeg 4 / MP4 is surely here, and may become bigger – it’s made a start in the HD world in the H.264 codec, and of course DivX has made use of it, along with a Quicktime flavour and variants in Microft’s video9. If Mpeg4 takes off as a distribution format, then ability to edit it will become an asset.
And of course .avi files can run from uncompressed to very heavily compressed. Mpeg 4 of course is a broad standard, and can be used at varying compression levels.
More from adobe on this at
https://www.adobe.com/products/dvcoll/pdfs/DV_Compression_Primer.pdf
https://www.divx.com
https://streamingmediaworld.com/video/docs/MPEG4 -
I know, I know. The “should” means “are you ready to deal with potential problems caused by this technology”. Using delivery codecs like MPEG-2 and -4 for editing have their share of headaches, and when possible I avoid advising people attempt to edit with them. There are good tools out there for doing it, but Premiere is not necessarily one of them, though it’s success actually depends more on the way the file was encoded and the which decoders are on the system, rather than the application’s behavior. I’m sure in a few years editing MPEG-4 will be a lot smoother, but at the present time there are too many variables for you to hang a reliable workflow off of without spending a lot of money for the type of tools (and the engineers) the broadcast industry is using.
From a delivery perspective, of course, I agree that MPEG-4 is becoming a very popular and useful format. I’ve been encoding things down to MPEG-4 and H.264 for viewing on my iPod, and the quality is great.
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I agree with Tim, Mpeg4 is a delivery format, not designed for editing.
John Hartney
werks.tv
Elgin, Illinois – Chicago Metro
847.608.1357
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