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H.264 for archiveing?
I keep a project archive on my hard drive for all past video projects. The archive is currently holding hundreds of clips on a 500gig drive. The problem is that over the years I’ve archived the various clips at: AVID 1:1, AVID 2:1, Blackmagic 8bit, Blackmagic 10bit, DV, etc. I want to standardize my archive and convert all the clips to a matching codec. For one, making a new demo reel in FCP (5.0) would be a nightmare with the unmatching media. I’m considering using apple’s new H.264 codec to do this. I’m planning on using compressor to batch process the job. I was wanting other opinions on whether H.264 would be good enough for master project archiving. What settings should I use in compressor? Thanks for the help.
-dk -
10 Replies
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H.264 is a distribution format rather than an editing format. In my opinion its not a great archiving format, but you could get away with it if your finished projects are never going to be edited, never going to be sold as stock footage, etc.
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Lay back to DV tape and put it on your shelf. That’s what I would do.
O&O-Gunner Productions
FCP-Avid-After Effects -
What codec would you recommend? Looking for highest quality, but smaller size. Need to be able to edit in FCP 5.0…. can FCP not edit H.264? AVID 2:1 works great for file size but I cannot work with it easily in FCP. Blackmagic 8/10bit is huge.
-dk -
How ’bout good ol’ DV?
O&O-Gunner Productions
FCP-Avid-After Effects -
I’m with Gunner. Output to tape and put on the shelf. Re-capture when needed.
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1st generation quality H.264 is outstanding, however is is not designed for editing, and so generational loss and the introduction of compression artifacts will make it a poor choice for archiving if you intend to edit or use it for anything other than playback on a monitor.
Go to tape as the others have recommended, or convert your files to uncompressed QT, and store on your HD until HD DVDs are ready to rumble in the near future. HD DVDs will be excellent for storage such files.
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Is this fo HD or SD media?
id HD jpeg seems more viable in SD jpeg is still better than DV and compresses much faster – true it is also much larger than H.264 but you can edit it in FCP with no hang-upsif you need totally loosless compressed codec then sheer seems pretty good as well – I archive my film DI @ HD res in sheer codec – cuts the file size half but retains full qualty and supports 10bit
-Kaspar
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I’d say either MotionJPEG A / B or PhotoJPEG at 75% quality would be a better option than H.264 as the latter uses temporal compression which makes it unsuitable for editing. Marco Solorio will hopefully chip in here but until then check his codec pages, specifically the 4:2:2 C page.
https://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
cheers
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Digital Anarchy Microcosm – $99
https://www.digitalanarchy.com/micro/micro_main.html
It will output lossless compressed streams, but will not play them back realtime unless you have a horse of a workstation. The reason I use Microcosm is because it is cross platform and comes with a license for both Mac OS X and Windows. You will have to import your spot masters, render them to your editing codec and then edit. You could batch convert the spots you want to use before import into FCP since it works throught QuickTime.BitJazz: SheerVideo
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Also H.264 is veerrry verrrrrry slow to encode (the price we pay for that great quality), making it unrealistic for archiving lots of footage. Go with PhotoJPEG or DV.
Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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