How did files end up mp4?

onionsayswhat wrote on 1/26/2015, 8:29 AM
I am a novice and confused by something.

I shot a lot of video footage always w my camcorder set to High Def.

I am pretty sure I always had it set that way as once I set it I never changed it.

Now after I captured the footage to my computer hard drive, when looking at the, "TYPE" field, some clips are listed as AVCHD which I believe is HD format but other clips show as AVI and MP4??

I don't think AVI or MP4 are high definition? Am I right about that?

Am I still able to use the AVI and MP4 clips in the same project along with the AVCHD clips?

What will happen if I do?

Any insight into why some of the clips are AVI and MP4 when everything was supposedly shot in the HD?

I GUESS the answer could be maybe I did not have my camera always set to HDef (though I am fairly certain I did)

or

I messed up when importing the clips?

Any other insights?

I guess I can just go back to the original footage and check if it was shot in H Def and if it was, just re-import.

Any insights or feedback will be greatly appreciated!

Comments

Markk655 wrote on 1/26/2015, 12:02 PM
What is your camcorder make and model? How did you import your files?
onionsayswhat wrote on 1/26/2015, 12:19 PM
Camcorder is Canon Vixia hv40.

I captured the footage to my computer hard drive via firewire.

I know there is a setting on my camcorder that specifies high def or standard both when shooting the video and also when capturing it to the computer. I think MP4 and Avi are standard definition?

So for the most part I always had the camcorder set to capture to the computer in high definition but I guess if they are showing on the hard drive as mpv and avi that I must be mistaken and a couple of times failed to set the camcorder to HD either when I shot the video or when I captured it.

I guess I must have it's just I am surprised as I was really careful about the camcorder settings but maybe I just messed up.

Later I can check the actual tapes to see what I shot in and re-capture them if I did shoot in High Def.

Meanwhile, does it mess up a project to have some clips HD and others mp4 and avi? Can you mix them all together?

Markk655 wrote on 1/26/2015, 2:59 PM
The HV40 is a tape based camcorder. It shoots in standard and high def. The standard def files are the AVI files. The 1440x1080 files (HDV) are considered to be mpeg2. If you run MediaInfo, you can see what the video format is inside the mp4 wrapper.

You can mix many different formats together. But depending on the aspect ratio (16:9 or 4:3), you may end up with black bars on the side or top depending on what you render your movie to.
Chienworks wrote on 1/26/2015, 3:36 PM
"I think MP4 and Avi are standard definition"

Those file extensions are just containers, which can contain a huge variety of different video formats. Either one, or any of the others like MPG, MTS, etc. can be any resolution you want from smaller than 80x50 to bigger than 8192x4608.