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Understanding Codecs & Compression
I am doing marketing vids for a large corporation and we upload everything to youtube. Unfortunately, I’ve been in news for 16 years and don’t have the knowledge base for being effective in rendering a good quality for youtube. I am shooting on the XF300 and the 5D MarkIII and I want to maintain a good quality for HD but decrease the file size. The ProRes files are 10+GB and I’m using MPEG-4 for compression and upload. Any suggestions for smaller files while maintaining quality? Working on FCStudio 3 & Adobe AE5.5. Thanks for your help in advance!!
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6 Replies
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Data rate between 3-5k is good for h.264 YouTube.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Creative Pro Users Group -
I guess when you say “smaller files” you have the ProRes files in mind. FCP works best with ProRes so you are totally correct to use that for editing.
Although the H264 files for instance, that your 5D produces are much smaller in size they are much more heavily compressed and H264 (and MPEG 4) are not good formats to edit with in FCP largely because they are not frame based codecs.
So when you transcode to ProRes you will always end up with a much larger file. You dont say which ProRes you are using but one thing you could do is use ProRes LT. That is a slightly lighter codec than 422 or HQ and is certainly sufficient to preserve the quality of the cameras you are using. You will find the file sizes slightly smaller if you do that.You are using good quality cameras producing full HD images and thats always going to produce large file sizes. So in terms of your edit you are already using the optimum quality.
You can edit with H264 directly in PPro but there are still limitations with what it can handle so you may want to look at that especially if you do a lot of AE work.
All in all though you are not really doing anything to really compromise the quality for HD certainly not for YouTube.
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Thank you for your help. I am actually using the 422(LT) for a final render so I have a nice final project. Its just taking a very long time for those 10+GB files to transcode to MPEG-4 and I want to make sure there’s not a faster way to accomplish this without sacrificing any more quality. But you answered my question on that , so I thank you.
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One thing you might want to consider is something like this https://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2_mini_max/
I have used the Matrox for accelerated H264 creation and it certainly flies though creating the files.
They are not my favourite I/O boxes but for H264 creation they knock hours off your time especially if you are doing this week in week out.best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
If you know you are filming for the web, then shoot and edit in 720p instead of 1080p. This should help.
Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Films
DunnRight Video.com
Video Marketing Toolbox.netSony EX-1,
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 7D
Mac Pro
with Final Cut Studio Adobe CS6 Production -
That was my thought as well but the powers that be want 1080.
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