Had the need to come up with a way of compressing an HD commercial file down to a size that we could relatively easily transfer from the producer to our studios for airing of commercials in HD. Our system relies on the Black Magic Design's Multibridge Pro to output HD-SDI into our system, and their Media Express capture/playback utility requires uncompressed video files. This meant that a 30 second spot from a producer that was typically 2.2 to 2.8Gb in size, and transfering via FTP from their system to ours required extremely long transfer times because of bandwidth restrictions (choking) on the internet. Even though we both have dedicated T-1's and/or T-3's on our ends for connectivity, the internet was only allowing a max of 1.5Mbps data rate transfer. This made a 30 second spot take 6Hrs. plus to transfer...Really unacceptable for what we need to do, especially as clients often want changes made on short notice. Our only option was to put the spots on data DVD's, or hard disk and have that brought over to the station.
Apple however, has recently released their ProRes H.264 codecs, which have really worked to provide a solution for this problem.
Originally designed for Final Cut Pro, it has also been incorporated in QuickTime Pro v 7.5 and above. This version of the QuickTime codec is recognised by Vegas 8 Pro, and has allowed us to reduce FTP transfer times for 6+ hours to 20-25 minutes. The file sizes went from 2.5Gb to 390Mb, and the quality of playback is visually indistinguishable from the uncompressed files...At least on the ones we've seen so far...This combination of the ProRes codec, and the integration of Vegas 8 Pro with Balck Magic Designs products have provided an extremely useful, and workable HD platform for Windows, where our only other alternative would have been FCP on a Mac.
Just thought I'd pass this along, as it's solved a huge problem for us, and I can also see where the QuickTime implementation would be good for client approvals of HD material as well.
Cheers!
JRZ
(edited to corect a spelling error)
Apple however, has recently released their ProRes H.264 codecs, which have really worked to provide a solution for this problem.
Originally designed for Final Cut Pro, it has also been incorporated in QuickTime Pro v 7.5 and above. This version of the QuickTime codec is recognised by Vegas 8 Pro, and has allowed us to reduce FTP transfer times for 6+ hours to 20-25 minutes. The file sizes went from 2.5Gb to 390Mb, and the quality of playback is visually indistinguishable from the uncompressed files...At least on the ones we've seen so far...This combination of the ProRes codec, and the integration of Vegas 8 Pro with Balck Magic Designs products have provided an extremely useful, and workable HD platform for Windows, where our only other alternative would have been FCP on a Mac.
Just thought I'd pass this along, as it's solved a huge problem for us, and I can also see where the QuickTime implementation would be good for client approvals of HD material as well.
Cheers!
JRZ
(edited to corect a spelling error)