recommended books or websites ?

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
Anybody have a recommended book or website to help me understand and demystify the overwhelming number of options for video and audio codecs (but especially video codecs) and settings for rendering digital footage for output? I use Sony Vegas Pro, the options for video codecs are overwhelming-- Sorenson, Cinepak, Cineform, H.whatever, lions and tigers and bears oh my.
Randall
 
some of those choices, like cinepak, don't get used any more... it helps when you can eliminate the dead wood... start by deciding what container(or wrapper) you want to use; .avi, quicktime(.mov), etc.

since you are on a pc, you can probably eliminate the quicktime output right off the bat, which narrows it down some.

it might also be easier if you stated what you need to do, then ask which codec to use for that?
 
craigbowman said:
Although Apple created the quicktime system its been cross platform for over fifteen years.
Click to expand...

why would anyone on a pc want to use a video container that might introduce the dreaded quicktime gamma shift?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=quicktime+gamma+shift&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

although i will admit to changing containers from avi to qt in order to pull out the 4 tracks of embedded audio in the dv avi files that were recorded to my fs-4... but that did not involve any transcoding.
 
No suggestions for resources...

But if your destination is web, you basically only have 3 (good) choices:

1. WMV9 (both audio and video should be encoded with windows media codecs)
2. H.264 QuickTime (file extension can be mp4, m4v, mov; use AAC for the audio)
3. Flash (make sure to use the On2 VP6 codec introduced in Flash 8; note that you need to make an swf player to serve up the video online)
 
you don't need an swf player to put an flv flash file on a web page... but you'll need it if you want to get the video indexed in the search engines(?)

i use vp6, but the latest version of flash is supposed to be h.264-capable... with a flash player, you'll have many choices of player design, and you'll be able to use a full screen switch on the player.
 
OSV said:
why would anyone on a pc want to use a video container that might introduce the dreaded quicktime gamma shift?...
Click to expand...

So how do I and my colleagues prevent this from happening to our files? I guess some of us are wielding pure magic. Woooo!





Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clark
 
OSV said:
it must be magic, because not everyone has been so lucky :)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=quicktime+gamma+shift+pc
Click to expand...

Luck never had anything to do with this.
We take in the same data as everyone else. When they have a gamma shift show up in their output files and for the same input data ours don't, you think we're lucky. Don't be absurd.

I guess you like to be at the mercy of whatever happens and think there is nothing you can do. We like to be totally in the know and control which we are.

But if you want to really think its luck or magic go ahead.
 
Gamma shift only happens on certain codecs. Quicktime's h.264 encoder on the PC shifts the gamma to 1.8

So on the mac, it looks great, and on the PC it looks washed out.

I'm pretty sure Sorenson 3 codec does not do this. Jpeg2000, and animation are accurate too, however playback on JPEG2000 is slow (due to their horrible implementation on the PC) and Animation requires a hefty raid to play back at HD framesizes.
 
craigbowman said:
But if you want to really think its luck or magic go ahead.
Click to expand...

you were the one who said that it was magic, not me... from one of your fellow red users: "So, I have a Quicktime output from AVID (using Same as Source on an Avid 1:1 timeline) that I move it over to my Mac - surprise surprise, QT Gamma shift issue crops up, blacks are grey, everything is washed out."

h.264 does indeed appear to be one of the trigger points for the quicktime gamma shift, it's apparently been documented with the raw canon 5d test footage, which is recorded in a mov container... as posted by some russian guys on the dv info forum.
 
OSV said:
you were the one who said that it was magic, not me... from one of your fellow red users: "So, I have a Quicktime output from AVID (using Same as Source on an Avid 1:1 timeline) that I move it over to my Mac - surprise surprise, QT Gamma shift issue crops up, blacks are grey, everything is washed out."

h.264 does indeed appear to be one of the trigger points for the quicktime gamma shift, it's apparently been documented with the raw canon 5d test footage, which is recorded in a mov container... as posted by some russian guys on the dv info forum.
Click to expand...

I was trying a bit of dry humour when I first mentioned "magic". Your initial response made it obvious it went right past you. Dry humour doesn't seem to translate well. I thought it would be rather obvious that the reason we don't have any issue with gamma shifts, and I'll say particularly when an h.264 file is encoded, is we can take preventative measures so it isn't an issue.

Its like the old joke...

Patient: Doctor it hurts when I go like this!
Doctor: So don't go like that.

And no, that doesn't mean we don't encode h.264 files into a quicktime container. We actually do a lot of that and the gamma shift would happen if we took no action, but we do, and thus our output is shift free. So ruling out using quicktime on pc for everyone because there's a bug some can't deal with certainly doesn't ring true from where I sit. Thus the original comment about magic which I would hope by now you get.

If this is still unclear then so be it. Just call me obtuse. I'm going to go have a guiness.
 
craigbowman said:
So ruling out using quicktime on pc for everyone because there's a bug some can't deal with certainly doesn't ring true from where I sit. Thus the original comment about magic which I would hope by now you get.
Click to expand...


Just so everybody knows, encoding h.264 files is fine for Mac and PC. Just don't use quicktime to encode them. Mainconcept has a good encoder, and x264 is great for a free encoder. (actually has

Quicktime plays them back just fine though. (Assuming you don't encode interlaced, High profile, and some other advanced stuff)

I just wish that Apple could get their h.264 support down in Quicktime. Its one of the only publicly available media players that even supports h.264
 
craigbowman said:
So ruling out using quicktime on pc for everyone because there's a bug some can't deal with certainly doesn't ring true from where I sit.
Click to expand...

umm, o.k., why keep your qt gamma shift fix a secret, why haven't you helped the 63,300 people in those google search results? that's 63,300 reasons why you don't need qt on a pc.

demistate, the free vlc media player supports h.264, no gamma shift problems there... the nero showtime player will play 24Mbps avchd back on my 6750 dual-core at the full frame rate, and nero recode is arguably a better encoder than the mainconcept reference encoder... but the latter is indeed a very good h.264 encoder.
 
Yes the latest version of flash is compatible with H264. So you can have the best of both worlds. You just open your flash software, import the .mov file then encode to flv as usual and there you have it.
 
I think once you find a bit rate that suits you you tend to stick with it. If there is little movement in the video (e.g person talking to camera) then I find you can encode at a much lower data bitrate and the quality is still great.
 
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