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Final Cut Compression help needed for Live music performance.
Hello Everyone,
I need a little help deciding the best way to do something. I am not very knowledgable about video codecs.
I am a musician and for my live performance I use Ableton Live. This software allows me to have a video channel along with my audio material. I will have 2 audio channels of music, an audio channel for my microphone and the video channel. Everything plays back in sync from a Macbook Pro 2.2 with an internal 7200rpm drive. I shoot the video onto a screen from a LCD projector having the mac “dual screen” it out.
My big question is what codec should I use? I have decided 720X480 is a good size. Ableton only allows Apple’s QuickTime format (.mov).
I was told on the Ableton forum that JPEG would be the least taxing on the computer and also look good enough even with the settings at about 60% quality.
Do you guys agree?
From Final Cut Pro I see Motion JPEG A, Motion JPEG B and Photo – JPEG… which one is the “right” one to use?
And just to verify my footsteps in Final Cut I go File -> Export -> Using Quicktime Conversion then select Quicktime Movie then click Options and under Video Settings that’s where I pick the compression codec… Am I correct?
I really don’t want to mess this up… especially because it will an hours worth of video so I don’t want to redo my work.
A huge thank you in advance to any Cow members that can suggest anything here!!
Jon Davis
Powermac dual 2.5 G5, Production Bundle, Canon ZR60
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3 Replies
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Every computer and software combo can behave differently.
I suggest you do a TEST (or two or three) using a short (3 min. or so) clip.
Then do the long version after you see how well everything behaves.
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Hi
Photo-JPEG @ 60% or so is a good choice – the MJPEG codecs were for hardware video cards.720×480 is really a non-square pixel size for DV editing – for computer screen work square pixels would normally be used. But using 720×480 with square pixels would give a slight widescreen aspect ratio which you might prefer.
One option is to make your QuickTime movie at 360×240 pixels, then use QT’s scale to double size option, which would play out 720×480, but with a far smaller movie file size.
Save your movie after it has been enlarged and it will always play at the larger size. -
Hi Everyone,
So I went ahead and tested all the codecs available to me from Final Cut Pro. Here are my results:
https://www.wiretotheear.com/2007/10/25/the-best-codec-for-video-in-ableton-live-on-a-mac/
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