• Compression Techniques

  Which is the BEST video codec ??

  Posted by Rick Ag on October 4, 2009 at 1:53 am

  I know this question is very old, but now I’m very confused with all I have read
  Which could be the BEST video codec for SD video?? (in order to do EDITING, NOT to be uploaded)
  Obviously talking about a reasonable size ratio files and best possible good quality (don’t tell me RAW OR UNCOMPRESSED, you know what I mean), I always use quicktime Sorenson 3 but I know that apple declared Sorenson 3 obsolete, so which could be the best video codec with approximately the same size rate of space in files than sorenson 3 ? , sorenson 3 was not bad and a small difference in quality than Photo Jpeg or Jpeg2000 codecs but a big difference in size ratio, by the way I have tried the quicktime H.264 in the best posible quality but it’s terribly poor

  So which could be a better codec than sorenson 3 but with approx. the same size ratio in files ? for SD video

  Thank you in advance

  Rich Rubasch replied 16 years, 11 months ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Craig Seeman

  October 4, 2009 at 4:06 am

  [Rick Ag] “(don’t tell me RAW OR UNCOMPRESSED, you know what I mean), “

  I have NO IDEA what you mean. Edit in the codec you shoot in. Uncompressed is good so I don’t thin you explain what you mean. You could do Apple ProRes.
• 

  Daniel Low

  October 4, 2009 at 1:43 pm

  You have been editing using Sorenson 3? Seriously?

  [Rick Ag] “sorenson 3 was not bad and a small difference in quality than Photo Jpeg or Jpeg2000 codecs but a big difference in size ratio”

  There is a huge difference in quality between Sorenson 3 and PhotoJPEG. Then an even bigger difference between PhotoJPEG and JPEG200 (which is the choice of codec for Digital Cinema BTW).

  [Rick Ag] “by the way I have tried the quicktime H.264 in the best posible quality but it’s terribly poor “

  Do you mean that you found it lower quality than Sorenson 3?

  [Rick Ag] “So which could be a better codec than sorenson 3 but with approx. the same size ratio in files ? for SD video “

  Sorenson 3 never was designed for SD video, it was designed for delivery to the web at very low bitrates and sub-SD frame sizes even though it does quite well at that level.

  So like Craig has said, edit in the format of your Camera or source, of use ProRes and deliver using a codec and format most suitable for your method of delivery (web/DVD/BluRay etc).

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• 

  Rich Rubasch

  October 4, 2009 at 8:58 pm

  W chose DVCPro50 for several reasons. It comes in a 720 x 480 frame size so it matches DVD production workflow and encoding. It looks great and behaves swimmingly on our Mac edit stations. It is efficient. It is 4:2:2 which puts it heads over straight DV.

  Try DVCPro50.

  Rich Rubasch
  Tilt Media

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