Best format for HDV footage online

I'm wondering what format people are using to export their HDV footage for online consumption.
I've tried all the preset avilable in PP CS3 and either the quality sucks or the file size is way too big.
I've seen a bunch of HDV footage online and some incredible looking video (really HDV quality looking) but can't seem to get the correct settings to achieve that.
It is also possible I don't understand all the pull down kinds of things. I'm shooting at 30f. The footage is primarily intended for online/computer rather than HDTV.
Also does smaller dimensions automatically mean reduced quality? I've seem some great looking HD quality videos online and the "HD" quality is quite apparent.

Steve,
Dimensions that will be effective (for online purposes, assuming the visitor has a high bandwidth connection).
I believe 1/4 the original size of HDV will be a good starting place. So that's 480x 270 (or is it 360x270).
That's the other thing, I see some HDV online that seem wider than others. Is that because they were shot using 24f?
I've tried the various formats the media encoder allows for. I'm not really happy with the resulting quality of any of the formats. As mentioned to Christopher, the smaller I make the dimensions the worse the quality gets.
The Quicktime format in particular sucks (at least with encoded using PP CS3). The resulting video looks completely washed out and artificial). I have seen other people post their footage using quicktime and it looks great (no color correction).
The other question is: Seing that the main intent is for online purposes, should I shoot at 720p instead?

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What is the best format for HDV video for a computer playback

Hello guys,
I have made a very nice HDV video and after the frustration and awful results with compression for
SD DVD, I have decided just to export that video as a file, put that file on DVD, so people can just pop that DVD into their computers, copy that file on their HD and play it. (so there is no compression needed for over internet data transfer, Bit Rates for space, etc). The video is
HDV 1080i 60. If I export it from FCP as a QT Movie the quality is beautiful. But when being watched on the computer screen, there are those interlace lines visible, when any faster motion in the video occurs. So I am wondering, what would be the best export option in order to provide best qualities for computer playback. Would it be some of those QT progressive modes, like 1080 p24? Or any other?
Thank you for your help.
Cheers,
K.

Chris Walsh1 wrote:
Why are you using FCP 6.02? Why didn't you do the update to 6.04?? I did, and I am having tons of issues
That is pretty much the reason. It is fresh out the gate and so far untested. I am not an early adopter of any new technology (soft or hardware wise). I like to wait it out and see what other peoples' experience is. A bit of a prickish way to put it is: "In Chess, the pawns go first." (I'm a big Chess nerd -- I have Chess analogies for just about everything).
But even if the latest FCP, OS X and QT versions were humming along without any reported issues by the "power users" (by that I mean people who are editing on their systems 40+ hours a week in a professional capacity) I still wouldn't have upgraded because I am in the middle of three projects.
Well, that isn't entirely the truth. I started all three projects on a PowerMac G4 running OS X 10.4.11 and FCP 5.1.4. In the midst of this I started an across-the-board upgrade -- new computer, monitor, OS and FCS. But what I did (am still doing) is migrating from one to another and testing the performance on the new one before committing. In doing my research before hand, I see that the magic cocktail for stability appears to be OS X 10.5.2, FCP 6.0.2 and QT 7.4.5 so I built my new MacPro to that and stayed there. I have migrated all my current projects to the new system and have been putting the new setup to the test and is passing at every turn, so I feel confident I can work on this new system and will be retiring the PowerMac soon, but throughout this process I always had my stable G4 setup available so I wouldn't risk losing any work.
Might the reason the video you compressed "looked great" be because you didn't do the update?
Maybe, but I can't say with any certainty.
In the old compressor, I had no problems (in earlier versions of my project) compressing the video. It always looked GREAT! In 3.03, I get weird issues that don't make sense to me at all.
In the older version of compressor, this never happened. Even on this project.
Then I would think the update is the likely culprit.
Here is what I would like to try as my final attempt. I just bought yet ANOTHER computer. A Mac Pro/Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeo. I'd like to try to load Final Cut Studio on this machine, but where should I stop my upgrading? What is good stable working system for everyone??
OS X 10.5.2, FCP 6.0.2 and QT 7.4.5 is working great for me, and it appears for others here as well. I am running a new octo-2.8GHz Mac Pro.

Best compression for HDV footage

i got a 15 minute final production that was shot in HDV, im new to compressor but did a sucessful export and test viewing this morning , but im not sure if it was the best setting or if there are tweaks that should be made.
i used HD DVD MPEG-2 30 minutes
Dolby Digital Professional 2.0
HD MPEG-2 19.0Mbps
any tips appreciated.

There are always tweaks. I would make sure that the attributes for the setting I'm using are correct for my source. You know, right frame rate, field dominance, etc. I guess you've figured out how much space you have vs. what you need, so playing with the bit rate doesn't sound like it's something you're worried about. Compressor has some filters that may or may not be useful. It can preview them in the preview window. I would only make my final determination after viewing my DVD on a real player piping out the signal to an t.v. or ntsc/pal monitor. Given that you've successfully created your stream, right now it comes down to art.

Best Format for Archiving Video Files

I am importing old VHS and 8mm family videos for my cousin, to both burn them to DVD, and to archive the movies in case he wants to edit them later.
I am planning on purchasing for him, a "write once," external HDD, probably firewire, (though I am open to suggestions), to put both the backup Video TS folders on, as well as the Quicktime movies themselves.
My guess is, the best format for the QT movies would be their original DV-NTSC, but at around 13GB an hour, this can add up pretty fast.
The h264 .mov codec looks great, takes forever to render, and it seems the file size difference to DV-NTSC is nominal at best.
Obviously the future is some kind of HD, so these movies will never look great years from now, but I want them to be preserved for him at the best quality possible, at the smallest file size, if it will not compromise the quality too much.
I know I can render them significantly smaller as h264 .mp4 files, or as DIVX, (which also takes a long time), but I imagine they are of significantly reduced quality that would be visible in future video editing he might do.
If DV-NTSC is the only way to go, so be it. But if not, then any suggestions for what other format I could use to save these QT files, without visible loss of quality is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for all the advice. And I mean everyone.
Here is my latest dilemma.
Though 15 years old, the original Vhs's play beautifully. Aside from some (expected) glitches in the beginning or end of some of the shots, the video has not degraded appreciably. This is great news, as my cousin wanted to make back ups before degradation begins.
First, I captured the Vhs movies and corrected some bad color, mostly due to poor white balancing, and on the computer, they looked great in comparison. I burned DVD's and they looked terrible in comparison with the originals. Now I know I am going to lose some resolution when going to DVD, but it seemed harsh, so I ran some tests.
I burned a DVD of the original capture, with no color correction, just the raw footage and the DVD did not look much better, so it wasn't the color correction.
Not satisfied, I made a copy from the FCP timeline straight to Vhs, (I should note, through the ADVC-110.) This looked significantly degraded as well.
Finally, I made a straight dub from Vhs to DVCam, figuring that had to look good, and that also looked significantly degraded, compared to the, (now looking pristine), Vhs original.
As the original Vhs looks so good, what good would a TBC do? Or a proc amp?
Is there some secret to capturing and exporting Vhs that I am missing? Or, will it always look significantly degraded, even straight to DVCam?
+David Murray wrote: There is an industrial way to get good VhS copies but it is extremely expensive+
I don't know what this is, but I am sure it is clearly out of our league, but David M., if you are still following this thread, I'm curious, would this ultra expensive method actually result in a dub that looks like the original? I am actually really shocked at how bad the straight DVCam dub looks. It really does not look much better than the color corrected, computer exported version.
The Vhs tapes of my cousins daughter are as precious to him as anything he has.
As they date back 15 years, he is concerned about the longevity of the tapes.
As there are over forty hours of them, he wants them to be in an editable format, so later he or his daughter can make a highlight reel, or whatever. So thus the QT movie archive/backup on HD.
Whether as Finalcutter said, that this drive, even if unused, and put in a cool dry safe, might not function years down the line, makes it iffy, but what other choice is there for editable versions, unless I break the QT movies up into 20 minute chunks and archive them to over a hundred DVD's instead. Perhaps that is the safest solution, though certainly time consuming.
As failure of the HDD somewhere in the future is likely, though not certain, I am still not sure that the HDD holding all his QT movies for future editing is the wrong way to go.
As it is a digital version, and not an analog copy, I get that a DVCam backup of the originals is the best option. I will suggest to him that we do this as well, even though he does not have DVCam himself. But again, is there something I am missing here? Why does the Vhs to DVCam copy look so degraded? Is there anything I can do to keep the original quality, or will it die with his original Vhs as it slowly degrades over time?

Best format for shooting on greenscreen

What would you recommend is the best format to shoot footage on a green screen? My client's video person consistently shoots wide shots on green screen via DV, and the source files they provide me are always fuzzy around the edges of the person. Thanks in advance.

I like the links you've already been shown, but felt like tossing in a few more.
This offers some useful info on color resolution and would help explain why DV is about the worst choice for keying.
This post has an excellent collection of a lot of people's knowledge on keying. Very good bunch of know-how.
Here's a thread over on CreativeCOW that discusses getting a good keylight key.
Here's a tutorial on getting a decent key from a terrible chroma background.
Here's a tutorial on easily creating junk mattes that are really tight which makes keying much easier - especially on a poorly lit screen.

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I will be exporting from FCP4.5 and am wondering what is the best format to get the best possible quality from FCP to DVDSP? Also, should I go through compressor and what settings should I use?
I also want to make my own video transistions, what is the best format for those as well?
Thank You

The movie is 90 minutes.
You didn't mention your video format. You can export your movie as QuickTime Movie (not QT Conversion), same settings and self contained (my favorite flavor). The use that movie in Compressor and use the Best Quality DVD: 90 min presets encoding your video to MPEG2 and your audio to Dolby 2 (AC3).
That's the best standard workflow. With standard I mean that sometimes some kind of footage can need different treatment.
Hope that helps !
Alberto

Best format for ps3 and apple tv

What is the best format for viewing movies on a hdtv (1080p) via ps3 and apple tv?
Not sure what my best option would be in the sharing/export options, also should I make it 16:9 even though all the footage was 4:3?
Message was edited by: rwltrz4

Thanks.
I've posted up on their forum too (the folks over there are not as responsive as you guys, helpful, but not in the same volume )
I kinda hear what you're saying, but the encoding time (fps and time taken) is pretty slow on my PPC G5 iMac at the moment, and if the Turbo.264 is doing most of the processing then from what you say it'll stay the same on a new Intel Mac. I really hope not, or it'll be me throwing in the whole notion of recording TV on my Mac and heading off down the shop for a PlayTV for the PS3.
Either that or hope for a decent upgrade to the Mini at Macworld, sling the Apple TV on to ebay (film rental selection here in the UK is still pretty weak) and replace with a Mini, plug the tuner in that and watch native EyeTV recordings without the need for lengthy encoding. I reckon Front Row, and an iPhone Remote will do almost as good a job for my music as the Apple TV does.
One day we will look back and laugh at the notion of an hour long TV show being 'encoded' for playback at all, let alone waiting more than 2 minutes for the process to happen!

Best format for upload to a website

i would like to know what is the best format for upload to a website, what i got now is an exported quicktime self contained movie from fcp 25 minutes in length.
the footage itself is shot on mini dv and edited on an uncompressed 8 bit sequence, when exported to quicktime it is 28 gb in size so it is kind of a heavy one.
is it possible to upload it in one piece ( apple recommends exporting to mpeg4 yet i got a bad quality out of this using mpeg streamclip.
what would be the best compreessor for this
than you very much

i got a bad quality out of this using mpeg streamclip.
Check the links that Cristina posted, then let us know if your quality improved, using Compressor...it should.
One question for you regarding quality...are you referring to overall quality of the full frame image, or are you displeased with text/graphics.
If this is the case, then I'd wonder if you edited in a DV sequence, then dropped the edited content into an 8bit timeline for exporting at better quality.
This can cause degradation of the image (particularly text/graphics), since you're taking a 720x480 frame and ever-so-slightly vertically scaling the frame up to 720x486.
Let us know what you did...and your results w/Compressor.
K

Best format for converting video

What is the best format for converting videos for your iPod? I am using handbrake but there are alot of settings. What is the best one? mp4,avi,ogm? and what about codecs? aac audio, mp3 audio,h.264 video mpeg 4 video, .mp4 video? Need help?

See this Wikipedia article for some encoders:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora#Encoding

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Cheers

AVI and MOV are both simply "containers". The video and audio files inside them can be many formats with less or more compression. The MPEG-4 compression can be very good, of course, depending on the quality of the original file. The MOV files you saved must be using a different type of video compression that may be better quality but takes up more hard drive space. The "best" type of compression is probably a personal choice. What type of software are you using to save the files? QuickTime Pro?
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fish614
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What are your settings for these devices when you record?
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ATR

The best format for output

Hi All,
working in animation project to be broadcasted on a TV channel as HD1080 50i,
1- all the animation layers was rendered from TOONBOOM as .SWF to keep it in vector for compositing issue.
Dose SWF lose any quality? we always use TGA sequence with alpha in our past SD projects but now we found SWF is a smaller file size and allows zooming Because it keeps all vector lines.
2- compositing each scene in after effects cs6 and then render them.
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Many thanks,
sherif

Thanks Rick for your reply,
Regarding the SWF i moved to flash pro forums and they are supporting me now,
My system is a pc, win.64, I7-3930K, 64G RAM, EVGA GTX680 4G, Many HGST 3TB with raid controler,
Some advised me to go with Quicktime Prores HQ or DNXHD or DPX ,
In this year project my client's requirement for delivery is :
DNxHD 120 Codec, wrapped with QuickTime rapper, which means a file with MOV extension and the codec used is DNxHD 120 ( 1080@50i HD)
So do i work with dnxhd 120 from the beginning to the delivery? (and it will be my only master source) or another format encode it at the end to dnxhd 120? ( i will distribut this project to many channels after the first run exclusivity period end with different requirements).
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Sherif

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Before you do anything make sure that anything you have on your external hard drive is moved somewhere else as all information will be lost in this process. Then make sure it is plugged into your mac
Here's what you need to do next. If you click on your Macintosh HD on your desktop then click on applications. Then scroll down and click on utilities. In there you need to click on disk utilities. When this opens you need to select your external hard drive from the list on the left.Then on the tabs at the top click on partition but just leave it all as is except you need to change the format from Mac Journaled to Fat 32 then click apply. It will then be ok for use on both Mac & PC but be warned they don't like each other so some stuff will work and some stuff won't. If it formatted for Fat 32 then mac will sometimes not read it through a wireless connection. (I am trying to figure this at the moment and can't seem to get it to work).
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Best format for importing scanned photos into FCP in HDV?

Hi,
I'm importing a lot of scanned photos into FCP, for an HDV project. I will be zooming into these images, panning, and so on.
What is the consensus on the best format to use? I was thinking TIFF but then reading about PNG I am thinking this is perhaps better.
I am dealing with large (up to 1200 dpi) image files, so size is an issue.
Many thanks for your thoughts.

Right, use a PSD with photos on different layers, Import the one document into FCP, each photo is on a different layer in FCP and you can zoom in as you wish by using key frames, once you set all your photos (Layers) the way you want all the same or different etc... you copy and paste them into the time line. I do this all the time and add transitions or effects. works well even with company logos off of a web site. You can zoom in all you want. dude
from a link you provided
PSD
Increasingly then image editability is becoming important. The obvious way of maintaining maximum information and maximum editability is to stick with the native application-specific format. Of course it was to avoid this go-it-alone anarchy that file format standards had to be developed in the first place, but the situation with bitmap images is quite special. Currently the vast majority of designers are working on their images in Photoshop and then exporting them to TIFF to use in their DTP application. Why not just cut out the middleman and support the industry standard Photoshop’s PSD format directly?
After all the format is well known. The core format PSD 3.0 format is built on a short header specifying the image size and colour channels and then three information sections called the Colour Mode Data Block, Image Resources Block and Layer and Mask Information Block defining features such as duotone settings, channels and paths and layer opacity and blend mode respectively. After that comes the image data. Naturally the PSD format can support all the advanced features we’ve already looked at such as duotones, clipping paths and channels but it also offers one feature that no other file format does. While every other format must be flattened on export, PSD is the only format that supports layers. Any program that supports PSDs directly can then leverage this layer information as Adobe ImageReady and Deneba Canvas show. Currently the DTP support is fairly basic but the possibility of changing image blend modes or editing layer text or tweaking adjustment layers depending on the actual spread in which the image appears is creatively mouthwatering.

What is the best compression for HD footage for online use?

I have a sequence with the following specs:
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While a lot of people have Flash, not all of them have the latest version (or even the previous version). Newer versions of the Flash Player support better video codecs. I still encounter people (corporations) that are still only using Flash Player 7…

Best format for HDV footage online

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