Tiff?

TIFF is probably the best image you could work with, in terms of both quality and file size.

BMP I believe, has better quality, but is a way larger file size.
 
Hans Moleman said:
so would i capture the footage as tiff? would that increase picture quality, is it even possible?
Click to expand...

Well. . . no. Don't go capturing your footage as tiff's, I don't even think that is possible, ulness your working with the Andromeda. Anyways, the only reason you would export to a tiff sequence is if you are doing frame by frame work, such as uprezzing or any photoshop sequences. Otherwise, there is no reason to do so. If you want to work with uncompressed footage, ie. for color correcting at 16bit in AE, you can always export an uncompressed avi clip.
 
A big problem with TIFF is it's flexibilty, making it almost a non-standard standard. I've fequently come across tiff images which were unviewable because of it.

But if you're only working with yourself, and not passing the images around to other people, no problem.

I prefer PNG, though. :)
 
png files are good as well, but they do have a downside, they take about twice as long to create and open than tiff files do, so if your exporting alot of them, that can account for a lot of extra time.
 
Hans:

The DV footage you capture is encoded with a lossy codec. This means that the image you see when you playback your footage has much less information and added problems(such as artifacts) than the actual information 'seen' by the camera.

When working with lossy codecs(such as DV(MPEG), jpeg, DVD encoding,etc), every time you encode the footage with a lossy codec again, it deteriorates. It's kinda like making a bad copy of a bad copy with a Xerox machine.

Therefor, if you are going to color-correct or do anything in post with your DV footage, it is preferable to save it in a lossless codec such as an uncompressed video format, or uncompressed image format(TIFF, PNG, CIN, DPX). This way, there is no further deterioration or alteration of the footage that is not due to your own color correction or changes ~you~ willfully made.

When you take this footage and put it on DVD, it deteriorates further because the DVD(MPEG) encoding is also lossy. At this point the footage has gone through 2 lossy stages: DV and DVD. You want to minimize the number of lossy encoding stages, by working in an uncompressed format in between. If you instead worked with a compressed format in intermediate, then you'd have 3 or more compression stages which deteriorate the footage further.

Cheers,
Juan
 
pertierr said:
Hans:
When working with lossy codecs(such as DV(MPEG), jpeg, DVD encoding,etc), every time you encode the footage with a lossy codec again, it deteriorates. It's kinda like making a bad copy of a bad copy with a Xerox machine.
Click to expand...

I thought that if you made a direct copy of a DV file it would not lose any quality. I understand that the codec itself is lossy, but I was under the impression that there is no generational loss with DV. If I am wrong someone please correct me.
 
You're correct, normally with working on DV the best possible quality you can get is what you get out of the tape. However, what I'm referring to is if you take the DV footage and for example, re-encode it to DV then you're just applying the lossy DV encoding again and it will deteriorate.

Of course, if you have your DV footage saved in a file and you just copy the file there is no deterioration because there is no re-encoding happening. Copying is a lossless operation.

Cheers,
Juan
 
Hmm....guess my understanding of that was a bit skewed. I thought that even when you re-encoded there was not necessarily a generation loss. I can understand a generation loss in MPEG2 encoding as I have seen its effects first hand. I'll have to check into this. I have great respect of your knowledge pertierr as I have seen the result of it: Andromeda. Thanks for your explanation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top