Format for master video file ?

Pol Davril wrote on 6/19/2010, 12:25 AM
Hi,

I'm new to digital video and here is a very basic question.

When I create an audio file, I render the master to WAV to keep the best audio quality. Afterwards, I can save it as mp3 to have a smaller file size to send or post on a website.

In a similar way, when I create an image, I save the master as hi res BMP first (or any lossless format as CPT from Corel). Then, I can convert it to JPG or GIF for publishing, at any size or resolution.

But what about video ? I'm really confused !!
Obviously, there are a bunch of formats in Vegas, a lot of codecs...
For my video projects, I plan to post FLV files (about 480 pixels width) but I need to keep a hi res master.

Which video format, which image size, which codec to keep a DVD-like quality (with a reasonnable file size) ?

Thanks.

Comments

rs170a wrote on 6/19/2010, 3:53 AM
It all depends on what your source video footage is.
For example, if it's from a miniDV camcorder, then DV-AVI would be the best format.
Try to render it to match your source video (unless it's mini-DVD).

Mike
Former user wrote on 6/19/2010, 5:45 AM
Like Mike said,

the best quality is the native format. DV for Mini DV, MPEG for MPEG etc, unless you need to RENDER to achieve that format. Then you want to render to a lossless or near lossless format. Uncompressed being the best, but obviously has very large and sometimes impractical file sizes. There are other codecs such as Lagarith and HUFFYUV that are lossless compressions that make smaller sizes that uncompressed.

If you plan on archiving video, plan on having a lot of storage. External harddrives are the most common right now (because the life of optical media is still up for debate) and multple backups are recommended.

Dave T2
ushere wrote on 6/19/2010, 6:12 AM
as mike and dave said - native. however, if you have multiple formats to deal with, along with assorted audio and graphics, etc., i find mastering to .mxf more than adequate (and as dave pointed out), multiple back-ups - hd's are cheap. i usually keep both the whole project and master in a folder on two diffrent drives.

as for the other questions - i render from the tl to whatever is required, from ws dvd through to mp4 for web / phone. it all depends what's needed. you aren't producing a real 'master' unless you intend to delete all the associated files, veggies, etc., in which case the above still applies.

the joy of nle and cheap storage is your projects are never really 'locked' up in a single 'master'. keep the whole project in a folder and you're ready to re-edit tomorrow, or next year (as long as someone's going to pay for it....)

robwood wrote on 6/19/2010, 6:23 AM
i work mainly with RGB media, so this may or may not be of interest, but i use QT PhotoJPEG at 100% and it works great... used to use QT-PNG 100% but render times was 2-3 times longer.