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Quality Loss, Codec choice, etc.
Myself and 2 friends are making a short film (10-15 min) and it counts as a final grade in 2 classes (multimedia broadcasting and 3d animation 1)
We’re all fairly new to AE, and our problem is as follows.
After capturing the footage off my camera (panasonic w/ vhs-c) using an ATI TV Wonder Pro, i captured it as divx mpeg. i had heard uncomp is the best way to go, but it was too large for my mother’s desktop to handle (older comp, but not obsolete). after doing that, i had to reconvert it to divx again… for some reason AE wouldn’t accept it unless i did so on my laptop. now after that, i used virtual dub again to clip our shots. now after pulling them into after effects we’re noticing quality loss (again, could very well be from capture method from camera to pc) and blank, black frames in our clips.
we need to know any tricks or secrets about retaining video quality, and still having a file that won’t eat through my hard drive capacity.
also any suggestions on best format for pulling the footage off the cam would help. thanks a lot all… really hope you can help us here, as we’re already falling about 2 weeks behind schedule.
Chris
“You are free to sever the chains of fate that bind you…”
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2 Replies
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if you need to capture compressed (and that’s not that big of problem), you don’t want to have to recompress it to get it into ae or any other software. you would really like to find a codec and format to capture in that will go into ae with out needing to recompress it.
divx is a very problematic codec, one form of divx may work in one app but not another, as you’ve found. photo jpeg, dv or mpeg would probably be better options.
the black frames you are seeing are probably due to the hard disk not being able to keep up with the data rate that you are capturing at. not knowing the specifics of your system, dv may be a good option since it uses data rates that are within firewire400 standards, and most computers from the past several years are capable of that. you may want to look into an external firewire drive for you media, if you continue to get dropped frames.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
First of all, Divx is a distribution codec, meaning that it should only be used for things like outputting your final movie for the web. It should never ever be used in production. If you want to avoid quality loss, the first step is to use a codec more appropriate to video production. Given the source of your video you should probably use the DV codec, which doesn’t take up a whole lot of hard drive space.
After Effects would not accept your video because it does not like non-production codecs, Divx being one of them.
Next thing, avoid (like the plague) compressing your video multiple times, especially with a codec like Divx. Even with a high quality production codec, some quality loss is introduced every time you recompress video. This is especially true with something like Divx though, because it’s whole role in life is to toss away quality in order to crush video sizes down.
Third, don’t use VirtualDub to edit. After Effects makes it pretty easy to assemble a tight, clean edit that you can change later if needed.
The best workflow would be to capture the footage as DV, pull that footage directly into After Effects, edit and do whatever else is needed in After Effects, then output to whatever format your instructor has asked for.
Hope it works out!
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