HD Newbe: Format & File Size

Jaums wrote on 7/25/2008, 3:52 PM
About to capture my first HD footage, from my Z7.

Intended output is BlueRay, tho don't have a BR burner or player yet.

Some test capturing using settings for best possible pic results in huge files as well as huge render files.

OK, I'm not surprised! But, is it as simple as that? Choose the settings for the best possible result & you get huge files and I'll need to add storage capacity to my PC? Or is there a secret or trick? Or cut back on quality settings that don't really matter and get significantly smaller files?

Thanks!

Jaums

Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 7/25/2008, 5:40 PM
The Z7 is HDV. When you capture the video, it should take about 13.5 GBytes per hour of video. This is exactly the same as DV video. I assume this is NOT the "huge" that you are talking about.

So, the question is, what format and bitrate are you using when you render?

Generally, the only time that HDV video results in large video files is if:

1. You render to Cineform intermediate files. These are about 60 GBytes per hour.

or

2. You render to HD Uncompressed. I don't know the size of these off the top of my head, but it is a very large number, well north of 100 GBytes per hour.

Rendering for Blu-Ray will certainly give you large files, but I think they are generally in the 20-30 GByte per hour range, although I haven't done a BluRay disc yet, and the number may be a little larger than that.