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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy Little Endian…… what is it?

  • Little Endian…… what is it?

    Posted by Derek Lau on June 10, 2008 at 6:27 pm

    Hey there fellow video creators…….

    The other editor and myself here at work have been exporting for broadcast…..

    when I export my final mov…. the settings are best quality NTSC DV, and best quality audio

    There is a little box under the audio called little Endian, it comes checked default for me, but she has been unchecking hers before the export… neither of us can really tell any difference in audio between our shows….

    what does Little Endian do?

    Chris Borjis replied 17 years, 11 months ago 6 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Shane Ross

    June 10, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    [Derek Lau] “what does Little Endian do?”

    Hunt little buffalo? Live in little tee pees?

    Sorry…couldn’t resist. Must be the Indian in me.

    Shane

    GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
    http://www.LFHD.net
    Read my blog!

  • David Roth weiss

    June 10, 2008 at 7:33 pm

    Derek,

    Both of you should be exporting using Quicktime Movie — current settings. That simply exports at exactly the settings of your timeline, creating a file as good as you can get, no thought needed.

    Little Endian is a compression setting that is inaudible to you because your speakers do not have the necessary dynamic range to hear the difference. Don’t mess with it, cuz if you guess wrong you’ll be limiting the information in your audio files unnecessarily.

    David Roth Weiss
    Director/Editor
    David Weiss Productions, Inc.
    Los Angeles

    POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

    A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

  • David Heidelberger

    June 10, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    Doesn’t endian-ness just refer to the order bits are stored in memory? As a general rule, one doesn’t retain more information than the other, but I could be wrong about this implementation. As a very simplified description, if you had the number 256 (pretend it’s in binary), on a big endian system, it would be stored highest significant digit to lowest: “256.” But on a little endian system, it would be stored lowest significant digit to highest: “652.” It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea.

    Endian-ness is processor-dependent. Intel-based computers (Mac or PC) used to be Little Endian, PowerPCs (G5, etc) were Big Endian. But I think for quite a while, both have been able to read both file types.

    And, incidentally, I learned in my computer science class a few years ago, the big/little endian thing is a reference to Gulliver’s Travels.

    – David

  • Ed Dooley

    June 10, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    Right you are:
    Common file formats and their endian order are as follows:

    Adobe Photoshop — Big Endian
    BMP (Windows and OS/2 Bitmaps) — Little Endian
    DXF (AutoCad) — Variable
    GIF — Little Endian
    IMG (GEM Raster) — Big Endian
    JPEG — Big Endian
    FLI (Autodesk Animator) — Little Endian
    MacPaint — Big Endian
    PCX (PC Paintbrush) — Little Endian
    PostScript — Not Applicable (text!)
    POV (Persistence of Vision ray-tracer) — Not Applicable (text!)
    QTM (Quicktime Movies) — Little Endian (on a Mac!)
    Microsoft RIFF (.WAV & .AVI) — Both
    Microsoft RTF (Rich Text Format) — Little Endian
    SGI (Silicon Graphics) — Big Endian
    Sun Raster — Big Endian
    TGA (Targa) — Little Endian
    TIFF — Both, Endian identifier encoded into file
    WPG (WordPerfect Graphics Metafile) — Big Endian (on a PC!)
    XWD (X Window Dump) — Both, Endian identifier encoded into file

    Ed

    [David Heidelberger] “Doesn’t endian-ness just refer to the order bits are stored in memory? As a general rule, one doesn’t retain more information than the other, but I could be wrong about this implementation. As a very simplified description, if you had the number 256 (pretend it’s in binary), on a big endian system, it would be stored highest significant digit to lowest: “256.” But on a little endian system, it would be stored lowest significant digit to highest: “652.” It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the basic idea.

    Endian-ness is processor-dependent. Intel-based computers (Mac or PC) used to be Little Endian, PowerPCs (G5, etc) were Big Endian. But I think for quite a while, both have been able to read both file types.

    And, incidentally, I learned in my computer science class a few years ago, the big/little endian thing is a reference to Gulliver’s Travels.

  • Chris Borjis

    June 10, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    I got the BIG Indian

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