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HD Video
- Thread starter koffiejunkie
- Start date
I personally dont have too much experience working with HD video but my cousin shoots and edits HD professionally and to do it you require 2 things. Huge storage capacity and lots and lots of time. He will typically leave his HD renders going throughout the night and sometimes the next day!
AFAIK iMovie automatically converts footage imported to Apple's Intermediate Codec (although I stand to be corrected) whereas Final Cut allows you to edit HD footage in its native format. To maintain quality that is your best solution as with each new conversion you lose quality. Conversion and compression should ideally only happen when you have a final product. The level of compression will then depend on your storage medium (Blu-ray vs DVD etc).
AFAIK iMovie automatically converts footage imported to Apple's Intermediate Codec (although I stand to be corrected) whereas Final Cut allows you to edit HD footage in its native format. To maintain quality that is your best solution as with each new conversion you lose quality. Conversion and compression should ideally only happen when you have a final product. The level of compression will then depend on your storage medium (Blu-ray vs DVD etc).
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Unfortunately iMovie is now geared to the Steve Jobs world where no-one uses DVD's or Blu-Ray and everyone posts their videos on YouTube. Great for Mom and Pop to share footage of their little one's first bicycle ride with the family but if seriously good HD video quality is important to you then Final Cut Express is the way to go.
Can sell my car and get one
Been considering getting a mac pro (actually i reallly want one), but I am not too keen on spending 40k, even though it will b 40k well spent.
koffiejunkie
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Nope, I haven't had time. As I said before, trying other tools to do the same thing is not what I'm after, so this is pretty low on my to-do list. I'll get around to it some time.
That's where I'm getting stuck at the moment.
That's correct. The files I have from the iMovie import use Apple's Intermediate Codec.
koffiejunkie
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For interest's sake, I got hold of Visual Hub. It's a little faster, but the quality is worse. Even on "go nuts" setting, and with all the right goodies enabled in the settings, I'm still getting some major blocking. Looking at the bitrate, it's only about 25MB/s, while the source is over 70MB/s. Raising it high enough to get rid of the blocking takes me back to about the same size and speed as with iMovie HD.
I also tested FCE - once you hit "Export" it looks exactly the same as iMovie HD.
I also tested FCE - once you hit "Export" it looks exactly the same as iMovie HD.
It depends on the source video. I use XDCAM EX (HD) that's 1080p24 or 1080p30 or 1080p25 depending on the setting of the camera - that imports straight into FCP with a Sony provided applet. The video is MPEG-2 GOP compressed at 35Mbps and at full HD at 30 fps progressive (1080p30) 116 min = 32GB (one SxS card). That includes 16bit stereo audio in PCM format.
Bluray videos are usually 1080p24 and are recorded in H.264 AVC on the disk. I would not recommend using H.264 for editing as it is very slow and is a delivery format and not an intermediate one.
In Final Cut Studio 2 you also have the option of using the Apple ProRes codec, that really crunches HD video down to small sizes. To edit in uncompressed HD however takes a LOT of storage and FAST storage - normal FW800 RAID is not good enough. Its not necessary for usual tasks and I never do it (heck don't even have such super fast storage)
and as Discovery HD accepts XDCAM EX/HD video it makes no sense to do it unless you're some high end Hollywood movie studio.
Bluray videos are usually 1080p24 and are recorded in H.264 AVC on the disk. I would not recommend using H.264 for editing as it is very slow and is a delivery format and not an intermediate one.
In Final Cut Studio 2 you also have the option of using the Apple ProRes codec, that really crunches HD video down to small sizes. To edit in uncompressed HD however takes a LOT of storage and FAST storage - normal FW800 RAID is not good enough. Its not necessary for usual tasks and I never do it (heck don't even have such super fast storage)
and as Discovery HD accepts XDCAM EX/HD video it makes no sense to do it unless you're some high end Hollywood movie studio.
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koffiejunkie
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I'm not interested in editing. I just want to get it out in a format that:
1. Is not stupidly big, and
2. Can be played by by regular non-technical folk without me having to expose myself to their windows infested computers to make it work.
What would you suggest for the output format?
1. Is not stupidly big, and
2. Can be played by by regular non-technical folk without me having to expose myself to their windows infested computers to make it work.
What would you suggest for the output format?
I'm not interested in editing. I just want to get it out in a format that:
1. Is not stupidly big, and
2. Can be played by by regular non-technical folk without me having to expose myself to their windows infested computers to make it work.
What would you suggest for the output format?
For distribution it would be H.264 in MP4 wrapper. Your clients' PCs should be fast enough to be able to play that back alternatively DivX or even better xvid. Those 2 codecs are free. X264 is also free.
But instead of keeping it 1080p why not resize down to 720p?
http://www.macworld.com/article/140302/2009/04/compresshd.html
Is a cheap H/W solution for H.264 encoding.
Free solutions (software) for Mac:
FFMpegX
MpegStreamClip
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Actually BD is 25GB per layer - current BDs are 50GB in size. They can accommodate a full feature film (2 hrs+) plus numerous DTS EX 7.1 soundtracks.
BD video maxes out at 1080p24 (ie 1920 by 1080 at 24 progressive frames per second). BD is not capable of 1080p60 for example - its not part of the standard.
So yeah if you think that a DVD9 is 9GB - 50GB is not much more. 1080p24 or 1080i60 is also 4x the size of PAL SD so that compensates for it but the H.264/AVC codec isn't that super-efficient - not that much better than MPEG2 - at least on BD.
koffiejunkie
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- Aug 23, 2004
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That's what I was using.
Fortunately it's not a client, and I didn't have any obligations. So I gave them the ivideo files - let them figure it out
That was my first suggestion. Wasn't met with much enthusiasm.
I don't have a Mac Pro - just the MBP. I have looked at the Elgato USB jobbie though - I can't imagine how it can be very good, but if I ever need to do this regularly, I'll give it a try.
If your people don't mind the reduced resolution, do that. Then encode using the 2 pass method - additionally turn on extra features such as CABAC, L4, GMC, HQ etc. Save it as an MP4 extension file.
Your clients will be able to play the file using the CCCP codec pack on their PCs.
http://www.cccp-project.net/
or the Windows version of VLC.