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The best codec?
Hi everyone.
I am wanting to convert some mpegs4s (which dont open in premiere 6.0) to a file which will open so I can edit them.
I am wanting to know what is the best codec to use? I have tried a few (ms dv, cinepak, intel indeo 4.5, r32) but the quality on all of them are at best, total garbage. And the file sizes are huge (some 180 meg for a 1 min file)!!!What is the best codec to use which will allow me to edit, and at the same time not compromise much (if any) quality and keep the file size nice and low.
It’s a tall order, any suggestions?
Lawrence
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8 Replies
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The best codec for your purpose is NONE.avi or completely decompress the video. The files will be 10x the size of your other efforts and the results will probably be about the same. Further, after editing the files and recompressing again will further degrade the video.
Mpeg 4 is a highly compressed file and not designed for editing. -
I appreciate the codec isn’t the best. The files I am wanting to edit are stock (royalty free) footage. Unfortunately the only available format is in mpeg4.
Looks like i’m going to have to buy a new hard drive for this project.Thanks mike.
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[l_vaughan] “The files I am wanting to edit are stock (royalty free) footage. Unfortunately the only available format is in mpeg4”
Are you sure the vendor sold you the footage doesn’t have other file formats? If they only sell mpeg4 they must not do too much business in stock footage. -
I suspect a sample reel.
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The files are off the internet. Not an amazing site however – I did not pay for them. https://www.archive.org/
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[l_vaughan] “The files are off the internet. Not an amazing site however – I did not pay for them”
Royalty free files usually have to be licenced by the owner for a fee, royalty free doesn’t mean free for use by anyone, the files belong to someone, even if they are on a site like that, they are someones demos, they use mpeg4 as they basically unuseable for most video purposes.
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https://www.archive.org/ is actually a great site and still growing, some of the footage is pretty compressed, but if it’s a small segment, quality may not be such an issue as I am guessing it probably is older footage as well. Do export uncompressed however.
Vince
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For archive.org footage you should be grabbing the mpeg-2 files, not the mpeg-4 files. mpeg-2 files on archive.org are the best quality.
For a lossless codec, try lagarith or huffyuv. Both can be found via google. I used lagarith on my last project; no quality loss and about half the disk space of uncompressed.
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