QuickTime or AVI?

[Stewart Boyles]

by no means am i a pro but I have found that quicktime seems to preserve the quality for me…But i also export all my stuff out to the Animation Codec at the best settings. File sizes are bigger but it keeps the resolution…

See yas

stewart

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

What we use depends on how our final, rendered movies eventually makes it to tape (or perhaps disc). If it’s a disc then it depends on who will be receiving it and how they will receive and view it.

To cut a long story short, if it’s going out to tape, then the best CODEC to choose is the one that is natively supported by your card. If it’s a simple Firewire i/o, then either QT or AVI should do if you’re on the PC – although I have a preference for QT.

If you’d like a more specific answer then you’ll have to provide more information on how you digitize and output your video footage.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[N8tracks]

Explain what you mean by “animation codec, is the million+?

[Jeff Herring]

if the settings for animation are “million” it’s straight up video.

if it’s “million+” it can also contain an alpha channel (for keying over other footage)

[Stewart Boyles]

exactly!!!

but more than that. Animation is the better codec that I have used. Sorenson isn’t bad either but not as good as Animation.

Why do they call it Animation?

Stewart

[N8tracks]

Forgive my ignorance. but basically I capture from my a Canon XL1S to DV/AVI, non-Square pixel. This was the default I assumed was best. My primary output is to DVD via Encore, and the web via Flash by way of Sorensen Sqeeze. My primary format is 720*480. and I noticed most NTSC users are using 720*486. this is another default I assumed was best. whats up with that? as u see I am new to the more important details of this art.

but I’m gettin there.
N8

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

It sounds like you’re using a built-in Firewire connection to transfer your footage from camera to the computer.

720×480 is the pixel resolution for NTSC DV video. 720×486 is the pixel resolution for D1 NTSC video.

Encore 1.0 dopesn’t support QT movies but Encore 1.5 does.

If your workflow goes from AE to Encore, then I suggest that you output directly to MPEG-2 from AE and bypass QT’s Animation CODEC. The MPEG-2 file can be directly imported into Encore without another decompression-recompression pass which will inevitably result in a loss of quality.

Most users use QT’s Animation CODEC, with a quality setting of 94% (or thereabouts – with no keyframes) as an intermediate CODEC (file format) because it retains a lot of the source quality while minimizing the filesize to a manageable variable.

In your case, you don’t require an intermediate file as you can go straight to an MPEG-2 file (for Encore) form within AE.

Output for Web is slightly different as Flash MX use the Sorenson Spark CODEC; which isn’t available form within AE. In such a case, you will need an intermediate file format (CODEC) for Flash to import and then to compress for optimization for Web delivery.

The intermediate file format has to be of a high quality; taking into consideration of the pros and cons of quality and file sizes. As mentioned, the Animation CODEC seems to do a good job for such a situation.

Having said that, I suggest that you compare between outputting two versions of a sample movie – (1) QT with Animation CODEC, and with the DV CODEC that you use to transfer footage into your computer.

There is also the unknown here which is how you get your files into AE. DO you go through an editing software or do the transfered footage go into AE from the camera without passing through any other software/processing?

By now, you would have realised that there is no possibility of finding a correct answer unless a workflow process is first described. But I am hopeful that you may have picked up a few pointers.

There are a lot of variables and circumstances involved in optimizing video for various delivery media and there is also the workflow process that has to be taken into account.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
https://www.broadcastGEMs.com
customizable animated backgrounds with Adobe After Effects project files

[N8tracks]

I use to output directly to Mpeg2 but its seemed AVI files gave me better quality, yet once transcoded in encore the quality was gone. I in the past captured footage and did no processing prior to AE or Premiere. I’m considering making everything QT files now, and I use Encore 1.5. Perhaps I should use QT while I’m working and make my final ouput MPEG2 so Encore does no transcoding? as for web I could make a second output in QT and then use Sorensen Spark Pro for Flash. Does this sound right?

Now I’m gonna really sound green. what exactly is D1 and D2?

and thanks to all you calfs (cow babies) I’m proud to be amungst you.
N8

[Joeythedog]

If I could add a question of a similar nature, thanks.

All of my original material is created in Photoshop, After Effects and Illustrator. Some of the digital artwork are digital photos PSD.s fine tuned in photoshop. I am currently using NTSC D1 720×540 sq pixel compositions in AE. I render these as (stretch) NTSC D1 720×486 video for windows .AVI’s. The avi’s are then imported to premier for edit and soundtracks .wav. The finished Premier movie is saved as a non compressed .AVI and then imported into Encore where I do the transcoding (all best quality)7Mb vbr 2 pass for video and pcm sound. My movies are not very long so DVD 5 has enough space.

Does this seem to be the best way to go for DVD’s that are played back on television sets and/or home entertainment systems?

Thanks, hope I didn’t confuse any issues

[Steve Roberts]

Sounds fine if you choose the AVI route. I go the Quicktime route using FCP, Compressor and DVD Studio Pro, but that’s my preference.

But … never, ever stretch in the output module if you are rendering fields. It will mush up your fields and you’ll get ugly horizontal lines everywhere. If you want to render fields, drag the 540 comp into a DV 480 (preset) comp and scale it 90%, then render the DV 480 comp.

You should note that there are other issues at work here: for instance: 1)if your source comp contains field-rendered video sources filling the frame, I think it’s best to work in a comp that matches the frame size of the video source. To temporarily make it look normal, use Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction. Switch PAR correction off when rendering. 2) if you take 720×486 field-rendered video into a 720×480 comp, move the video up one pixel, so there’s 2 pixels above and 4 below. Don’t use it with 3 px above and 3 below: it will flip the field order. (you can also go 4 above and 2 below)

Get Trish and Chris Meyer’s books to decode the preceding. 🙂

Steve