• Compression Techniques

  H.264 source to AVI video

  Posted by Christian Cinetto on July 2, 2009 at 6:06 pm

  Hi, I have a problem in managing a video post producted in AE and given to me as an H.264 720×405, squared pixels.
  My customer wants an avi version of it, but starting from FCP 6.0.5 it doesn’t give me any satisfactory result.

  May someone suggest me the right parameters to use in FCP sequence and how to get the best delivered avi format?
  I guess that they could accept also an mp4 version, but I do not if in this case I could have a better result.
  Thanks

  Craig Seeman replied 16 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Daniel Low

  July 2, 2009 at 6:41 pm

  What kind of AVI do you want. AVI is just a wrapper, rather like Quicktime. You need to specify a CODEC for the AVI, such as uncompressed, DivX or..?

  __________________________________________________________________
  Two years from now, spam will be solved. – Bill Gates, World Economic Forum 2004
• 

  Christian Cinetto

  July 2, 2009 at 6:53 pm

  Hi Daniel,
  they have two different needs: one version to put on their streaming server and another one to insert in a PAL DVD. They asked me an AVI because all their systems are windows and they want to do some different versions on they own . The file size is not a problem, only quality is the first concern.
  Thanks
• 

  Craig Seeman

  July 2, 2009 at 7:09 pm

  You’re still going to need a codec that they can handle. DVCPro50 AVI? Apple has an Apple ProRes for Windows decoder. If they had that it might allow you to give them an Apple ProRes file.

  Asking for AVI is like saying I want a sandwich. What do they want IN the sandwich? Giving a ham sandwich to a vegetarian ain’t going to work.
• 

  Christian Cinetto

  July 2, 2009 at 7:17 pm

  Yes, you are totally right of course. My basic doubt was about the poor quality which could come out from a compressed video (H.264) to another codec. I also noticed that FCP doesn’t like too much to work with H.264.
• 

  Craig Seeman

  July 2, 2009 at 7:47 pm

  H.264 is NOT an easy codec to work with.
  AVCHD, which is H.264 based, gets converted to Apple ProRes (or AIC if so desired) for editing. This might change in the next version of Final Cut Studio though.

  Generally H.264 is a delivery codec and, in the case of AVCHD, an acquisition codec. AVCHD Intra would be a different story but I haven’t worked with that yet.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up