What video format to use

[Mintyman]

Hi all,

I am new to video editing and need to know what the best format to use is? I
capture film from a DV camcorder as .avi files and import into premier 6 fr
use in my director projects. My
projects include video and audio and are to distributed on a CD so bandwidth
issues should not apply (I hope). So, I am looking for a best format/size I
can get? I see some people using Mpeg, some .avi and some using .mov files.

I will be distributing it to a wide audience so the ability to view the
video on all platforms is important.

Also, what is the best frame rate to use. The eye seems stuff at 24 frames
per second. Should I use this or can i get away with lower. And what about
keyframes? Any other things, please let me know.

Please help!

[Richie Bisset]

I tend to use either mpeg files, although you need an xtra to play
these back(used to use onStageLE xtra to play them back but i've
switched to the mpeg advance xtra) or .mov's if i'm doing a quicktime
file(.mov) i usually use sorensen 3 for compression. The main problem
with quicktime is that the user must have quicktime installed on their
machine for it to work. this is not a problem in most instances, but
as i found out recently if you have a corporate client wanting a cd
for nt machines set up by their it departments there is a high chance
the users wont have quicktime installed and would have a major
headache trying to get their it dept to install it.

i've recently found out however that if you publish your video as raw
dv then import them into flash you can publish the flash and import
that into director to allow completely stand alone video playback that
doesn't depend on anything else. obviously there's a slight issue with
video controls in this, they'd either have to be in the flash or
slightly different from how you'd normally do them in director.

hth,

richie


On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:23:24 -0000, "Mintyman" <mintyman@ntlworld.com>
wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I am new to video editing and need to know what the best format to use is? I
>capture film from a DV camcorder as .avi files and import into premier 6 fr
>use in my director projects. My
>projects include video and audio and are to distributed on a CD so bandwidth
>issues should not apply (I hope). So, I am looking for a best format/size I
>can get? I see some people using Mpeg, some .avi and some using .mov files.
>
>I will be distributing it to a wide audience so the ability to view the
>video on all platforms is important.
>
>Also, what is the best frame rate to use. The eye seems stuff at 24 frames
>per second. Should I use this or can i get away with lower. And what about
>keyframes? Any other things, please let me know.
>
>Please help!
>