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avi (uncompressed) vs. mov (animation)
Have a 1080 clips I would like to pre-render for use later. Some of the source clips are mov (PNG) and mov (Photo-JPEG).
Results: avi (uncompressed) is ~50+% bigger than mov (animation). Both have alpha channel. Is there an advantage either way? Do I lose anything by converting source mov to avi? For consumption later on, is it better to use avi or mov?
Thanks.
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3 Replies
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Uncompressed AVI is fail-safe. I have ten year old AVI files that still open in Vegas. I personally avoid MOV because it is the most abused container in the video world. You never really know what’s in there. And you may find that when you do want to use the media later, you have to cross your fingers and hope that whichever version of Quicktime you have installed likes the format of your media.
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
If you don’t need an alpha channel you can render the whole thing as Photo-JPEG. If you need to preserve the Alpha channel you can render the whole thing as PNG. I haven’t had any problems with MOV files if you stick to the standard codecs.
If you want to render to AVI then I would recommend CineForm as a good archive format assuming you are working in HD. Uncompressed is overkill IMHO, but Stephen is right… if you want to be guaranteed that the file will open years from now, uncompressed doesn’t use any codec so you won’t have a codec problem.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
From what I remember, Photo Jpeg is a lossy codec rather than PNG being a lossless codec. I would personally choose a lossless format for video footage you want to preserve what you shot.
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