MPEG2 and dv (avi) editing

MIKE P wrote on 6/13/2008, 6:25 AM

Hey all. I have been dormant for a while. I am videoing a wedding this weekend and will be using my camera (Panasonic GS300) and a a borrowed cam (Sony SR85). My cam is miniDV, and I edit all the time with footage from that. The Sony is a HDD camera that records MPEG2 files (I believe). My question is...

How do I get the best result when I edit these two formats together in one project? Should I just use clips directly from both cams (i.e. avi and mpg), or should I render the mpg footage to avi first before editing.

My end product will be SD DVD. All footage will be SD, 16:9.

Thanks folks!!!

Comments

OneBuckFilms wrote on 6/13/2008, 11:53 AM

I'd say always go as close to the source files as you can.

MPEG2 is lossy, and DV AVI codec is a variant of MPEG-2, and is ALSO lossy.

For this reason, import your movie clips as directly as possible, and generate your final movie from there.

MIKE P wrote on 6/13/2008, 12:35 PM

The one camera can only store in MPEG2 (as most SD HDD cams do). So, my question really is whether or not to render the MPEGs to avi before editing.

Eugenia wrote on 6/13/2008, 12:59 PM

You don't render anything before editing. You just pull in your project both the mpeg2 and DV files and you edit them. They can work together just fine.

Chienworks wrote on 6/13/2008, 2:36 PM

Avoid format conversions as much as possible.