Video data rates

Widetrack wrote on 5/27/2008, 6:58 AM
I'm going to digitize a bunch of Beta SP tapes using a

---EARLY BRAIN DEATH EVENT--I wrote "Matrox" system, but it's actually a--

Media 100 system
on a Mac. The man who owns the system tells me he has to export the captured files to get a file I can use in Vegas, and he's asking what data rate I want the files to be. I'm pretty sure the Media 100 captures as MJPEG.

Though I'd like the video to maintain the highest quality possible, I know uncompressed video would overwhelm my hard disk.

I've always worked in DV, so I never had to think about this before. I suspect the answer depends mostly on the speeds of my disk and processor. My disk is a WD 250GB that runs at 7200 rpm, and I have a core2 Duo 6600 running at 2.4GHz.

What data rate do I tell this guy to render my video files at?

Are there any incompatibilties I might encounter using Mac-generated AVIs?

Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/27/2008, 10:30 AM
You will need to have the right codec installed. If it really is MJPEG that shouldn't be too difficult.

Ask for the highest rate he can deliver, which i'd guess would be somewhere in the 15,000Kbps to 30,000Kbps range. That will give you quality similar to or slightly better than DV, and comparable file sizes.