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What codec to compress with and kbs to encode at?
I got myself into a problem by having large files, and AE doesn’t like xvid so I’m stuck on a format to use. I originally dubbed my footage from DVcam showtapes to DVD, then converted the DVD to xvid and thats fine, but my problem comes now when I have to edit in AE. AE doesn’t like xvid so I don’t know of another codec to use that wont take extremly long to transcode, but will also be decent quality. I’m looking at my footage, and it seems that the unedited xvid footage is encoded at 3176kbs and when exporting cut sections from Premiere its pumping it up to 27,771kbs (using DV AVI settings). So whats a decent codec to export using, and a kbs setting to render at, and one that AE likes? Thanks for any help
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6 Replies
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You should capture your DVCAM tapes in an editing app, leaving them at DV and work with those in AE. Do not recompress them.
Compressing to MPEG-2 is a bad idea for anything but final delivery. MPEG-2 is lossy and does not contain the complete information for every frame. The same goes for many other codecs.
You should not use a lossy codec for source files going into AE. It’s not like an editing app: it does not need to work with low-data-rate files, in fact, it prefers clean source with as little compression as possible.
To reiterate: You should capture your DVCAM tapes in an editing app, leaving them at DV and work with those in AE. Do not recompress them.
Then, once you’re done in AE, render to the codec required by the next stage in the process. If you’re going back into an editing app using a DV sequence, render to DV. If you’re going to a compressor for MPEG-2 encoding for DVD, then render to a lossless codec such as Animation or AVI uncompressed.
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If unsure, always stick to the CODEC of your source AND/OR the CODEC that you are outputting to. The cases where the latter should not be the case is when you are rendering out to a low quality medium such as the Web or DVD. For these cases, render to the final delivery CODEC only at the render stage.
HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project fileshttps://www.myspace.com/rorkrgbspace
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My main problem is that I had to dub the footage to DVD before I could get it onto my pc, so I was coming from VOB’s to xvid just to save space, but thanks for the advice, and in the future I’ll just leave it uncompressed to begin with.
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[sulkorp] “… in the future I’ll just leave it uncompressed to begin with.”
You mean “leave it as is, in the DV format, without recompressing it”.
You see, DV is actually compressed, not “uncompressed”. This is an important technical distinction. 🙂
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Ah, k Then yea I’ll leave it as DV. The thign I was wonderign though is that since my source files are xvid and 3000~kbs, it seems exporting as DV and pushing the kbs up to 28000 is kinda a waste of space, is there any way around this?
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Go back as far along the pipeline as you can. If the earliest source files available are xVid, then you’re working with crappy source files, to put it bluntly. If you have no choice but to use xVid files, then use Quicktime to convert them to the Animation codec for import into AE — then at least you’ll be converting them to a useful codec without recompression. Basically, you’re “freezing” them at that quality level. Most other codecs would lower the quality, and you can’t afford that.
Don’t ever compress source files to xVid again if you intend to do anything with them. 🙂
DV is an acquisition format. You can edit in it, and AE doesn’t mind it, but you should avoid recompressing it more than once.
Animation, Microcosm and Photo-JPEG (Anim & Micro are better) are decent intermediate codecs, used between applications when recompression is likely.
Low-data rate codecs such as Sorenson, MPEG-2 and xVid are good for final delivery only.
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