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Best HD codec to transfer video files over the internet
I will be working with a client who lives in another country. He wants to send me their videos to be edited and color corrected and I was wondering which would be the best codec that would give me the best quality with a small file size. He will put the files inside my FTP. This is for broadcast and are 10 TV programs that run for 2 minutes each.
What would be your codec choice for this kind of work?Daniel Griffin
http://www.youtube.com/dagrial -
7 Replies
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Go for dnxHD codec.
https://www.avid.com/US/industries/workflow/DNxHD-Codec
this is a free codec from AVID. Have the materials transcoded to that codec and have it installed in your system as well.
If the above is not an option, then for bandwidth considerations
the least would be AVCHD or h.264 for HD files.
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DNxHD is a good choice as Ramil said. If you’re working on a Mac then ProRes is a great choice. Those two formats would retain an ample amount of quality for color correction and compositing.
If you just want small files to edit then h.264 or AVCHD is the best size vs. quality codecs. Keep in mind these codecs “throw away” a lot of information and aren’t the greatest when pushed into color correction or compositing situations.
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Thank you guys! I’ll give this codec a try to see what I get. My client is filming with a Canon 5D which as I know gives H264 files. The TV station requires us to send the final edit in an XDCAM codec. So I don’t what will happen with the video after all this transcoding, we will have to test I guess.
Daniel Griffin
http://www.youtube.com/dagrial -
If he’s shooting on a 5D just have him send you the raw h.264 .mov files. You can transcode them yourself once you get them. That’ll save them from doing it (and possibly messing it up) and make the files easier to move across the intertubes. Nothing is really gained by having them do the transcode on their end.
Once you get them transcode to ProRes or DNxHD do your edit, color correct, etc. Then output to XDCAM.
Ryan
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Yes Ryan, that’s what I thought but I don’t know if the 5D Raw files will be too big for us to transfer over the internet. We will have to see.
Thank you for your comments!Daniel Griffin
http://www.youtube.com/dagrial -
I shoot with a Canon 7D (the 5D’s “little” brother) and the files aren’t huge. Because of the FAT32 formatting the file sizes are limited to 4GB. So no file he sends will be any bigger than that.
If he takes the 5D file and then transcode to lower bit rate h.264 then you are losing quality (too much in my opinion). I would strongly argue against transcoding a Canon DSLR footage to a lower quality data rate before editing.
Is it feasible to send a hard drive? He could load all the files on a hard drive (or even flash drives) and send them to you via UPS/FedEx or something.
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The problem is 4Gb it’s a lot for us considering it takes about 1 hour to download 200Mb from the server. Unfortunately my client is in Brasil and I am in Perú where we don’t have very high speed internet connections.
Daniel Griffin
http://www.youtube.com/dagrial
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