OT: Small rant about Quicktime

Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/9/2008, 9:38 AM
I'm covering the Obama Rally being held here in Eugene, Oregon later today for a citizen journalism organization.

I inquired about file submission - preferred is Quckitime - guess we know what platform they choose to edit on.

The rant I have is that QT is not an efficient master file format except for those on the MAC platform. Yet AVI is a standard and has been so for as long as I can remember. Their position is that AVI's are more difficult to work with.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot???

I just don't buy the notion that AVI's are more difficult to work with on the MAC than Quicktime.

Then again, I'm a biased Vegas user ;-)

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

Comments

UKAndrewC wrote on 5/9/2008, 9:51 AM
The problem is that Macs have native Quicktime just as Windows has native AVI and it can be difficult to get other codecs to work.

Most editing software on a Mac (as on a PC, yes even Vegas) use Quicktime libraries and codecs.

Quicktime is only a wrapper. Within it you can use lossless codecs like PNG or even uncompressed.

I regularly swap files with Mac users using DV or DVCPRO for broadcast and occasionally MP2/4 if it's for them to put straight to DVD.

Andrew
Steve Mann wrote on 5/9/2008, 10:44 AM
"Their position is that AVI's are more difficult to work with."

Translation: If it's not on a Mac, we're clueless.
bakerja wrote on 5/9/2008, 11:02 AM
It's not necessarily a MAC thing. More likely an AVID thing. Most Avid editors prefer quicktime files and most professional post houses use AVID.

JAB
Patryk Rebisz wrote on 5/9/2008, 11:15 AM
i don't trust AVI in that you are not that well "recognized" on Macs. And since i often swap files with Mac users i prefer to stick with QT. I really don't like WMP so if i don't have to deal with it to preview files (and i don't with QT) i prefer that route.

Coursedesign wrote on 5/9/2008, 12:42 PM
The AVI wrapper has a fraction of the functionality of QuickTime.

They are not "equal but different."
Cheno wrote on 5/9/2008, 1:18 PM
I've never had a file request for .avi from any post or broadcast house unless they're using Vegas. Even the Premiere guys have asked for QT. Like it or not, it's not going away anytime soon and I find it works just fine in Vegas, even at HD rez.

cheno
Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/9/2008, 11:13 PM
ok - having stated that QT is defacto with other post houses, and that it is a wrapper - what render recommendations would provide the best image quality???

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt
Coursedesign wrote on 5/9/2008, 11:35 PM
Cliff,

That's like asking "which is the best car of all?"

For what?

Stamp size windows on a web site?

Animation for full screen display on PCs?

Full HD for CBS, footage from your F35?

or...?

craftech wrote on 5/10/2008, 6:04 AM
Sorenson Squeeze 4.5 and and Procoder 3 both do a better job rendering QT than Vegas. Actors rarely ask me for anything other than QT. That's because QT is what is requested of them for anything that goes on the web in that industry.

Can't say I blame them either. While Windows Media 9 web video looks very nice, you have to make the video much lighter before you render to WM in order for it not to go too dark for the web. Not so with QT. It explains why some of the WM web video (even some linked here by some Vegas users) are too dark to see when I click on them.

Too bad Vegas does not do a better job with QT rendering.

John
corug7 wrote on 5/10/2008, 7:04 AM
"Like it or not, it's not going away anytime soon and I find it works just fine in Vegas, even at HD rez."

I use Raylight to playback and encode Quicktime DVCPro100 files on a dual 3.6mhz Xeon machine, and it CRAWLS. I cannot get full framerate playback even with Quicktime DV at best or good resolutions. Rendering to Quicktime DV, uncompressed, or anything else Quicktime is also at a snail's pace.
Cliff Etzel wrote on 5/10/2008, 8:55 AM
CD - I need to deliver probably 720x480 wide screen master file via yousendit.com

Final destination is for the web (They're going to encode to FLV for their custom flash player).

But I want to deliver good quality content as this was my first shoot for them and want to make sure I get it right the first time.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt
Coursedesign wrote on 5/10/2008, 10:49 AM
You could use DVCPRO50 (need to download the free DV50 codec from Matrox first, search for my old post on this from 1-2 years ago).

This only takes up twice the space of "DV" (DV25) and gives much better quality thanks to 4:2:2 (a bit of chroma smoothing can create a reasonable facsimile of that if you didn't shoot in 4:2:2).

Other choices include the Sheervideo codec which is cross platform and also avoids all kinds of color space conversion problems. Highly recommended, it is lossless at a smaller size, and it is one of the fastest-rendering codecs available.

If it's heading for the web, you should be sure to do the deinterlacing yourself, so you know what the end result will look like.