Final video format

Hi Forum,

I have EOS 60D, Macbook Pro with iMOVIE 11 and ideas on a small doco I want to shoot.


Problem I have is that I have played with the gear and come to a stand still with regards to giving the final product to family and friends to view......why?

I am shooting 1080p, importing video to iMovie 11 and editing as required.

I then have several options, export to a .mov file, youtube or burn to DVD with iDVD.

Its the iDVD part that stumps me. I compiled a 10 minute play around video that looked great, vivd and crisp on the mac, exported to iDVD, burnt it to disc, played on my Panasonic 1080p Plasma.......and......​.........wham, the picture looks crap, really pixelated and crap. What do I need to do? Burn to Bluray?


Surely there must be a way of giving someone a DVD with your crisp vivd video on it and not have them resort to sitting in front of a computer or worst yet youtube!

What do you wedding videographers do? What do you give the client as their final copy of the wedding?

Help......!!!!!!!!!

First off, DVD does not support hi-def formatting, so it's going to look like SD footage on your plasma. Also, if by "pixelated" you mean "interlaced" it's because iMovie only exports in interlaced formats (like 1080i). You could burn to blu-ray if you have the hardware.

As for youtube, export in a .mov with H.264 compression (see the link in my sig). This is how you get the 720 or 1080p options on youtube.

It might be better to export in fullest resolution you can and then open iDVD and import your exported video, as the transfer function does use a low res.

snapshot2011 wrote in post #12603273
Surely there must be a way of giving someone a DVD with your crisp vivd video on it and not have them resort to sitting in front of a computer or worst yet youtube!

Why is youtube worst? Yes, sitting on a desk watching a movie is not an ideal spot, yet youtube is free (dvd's are not), youtube is in HD (dvd's are not), and sending videos out to people is free (postage is not).

If its the "presentation" factor of youtube that gets you, you might want to try Vimeo to class things up.

In the near future when most (if not all TV's) have internet connection and web apps, blue-ray players (which most do now) connect to the internet, and TVinternet boxes (apple tv, boxee, roku...etc), dvd's will not even be on the radar, and folks will watch your videos on their TV in *HD* over youtube.

Sorry to hijack the thread but i thought it was revelent rather than me starting a new thread, i'm currently exporting my 550d footage as FLV for youtube would i get better quality exporting as something else?

Most clients in the last year have wanted a Bluray.

Almost everyone nowadays has a HDTV, so naturally they want to see themselves in the sharpest format.

ok,


let me ask this again then.


If you shoot wedding videos, what do you shoot in?

SD or HD?

If HD, what is the format you give to the customer and on what media?

Video formats can be very confusing when you first start...

let's clarify the most common mistakes people make in the beginning.

Canon DSLRs shoot in 1080p. You can also set your camera to shoot in 720p.

Both of these formats are WIDESCREEN format. They are also both HD Video.

You cannot burn HD video as a DVD. A DVD player can't "play" the video bitrate fast enough... and DVD is also not WIDESCREEN aspect ratio. So you have to letterbox a HD source, then lower the quality to get it in a DVD. That is ALOT of work, and actually takes some expertise to get done properly. So it is actually easier to burn HD video to Blu-Ray.

But you need to buy a Blu-Ray burner. They cost about $110. So it is not going to break the bank. Blank media comes in 25GB and 50GB.

25GB blanks cost about $1. 50G blanks cost about $9. Most people get the 25GB ones...

After you finish editing your HD video (I am not going to try to explain all that here in this thread).. you export it. The term is called "encoding". Basically you pick Blu-Ray and tell it you have a 25GB blank, and encode the file. The software will make the specs correctly for the video to be played... on Blu-Ray only. Then after it is encoded, you burn it in an app just like you burn a DVD.

This is very simplified explanation, but just trying to show the steps.

One should note that a large video in HD can take many HOURS to encode. Like let it go overnight! You need a really fast computer and fast RAID drives if you want a workstation built for encoding HD video. A fully blown video workstation will use the new 6G SSD drives... to get the fastest encoding speeds. And you need as much RAM as you can afford. For pro setups, time is money... so a high-end video workstation can be $10K with SSD drive and numerous striped RAID drives... and 48 GB of RAM.

But you can encode on your regular desktop, just don't be surprised when it tells you your 30 minutes of HD footage is now going to take 10 hours to encode.

So when you choose to shoot HD, then plan on delivering in HD via Blu-Ray. If the client doesn't want Blu-Ray, then you might want to consider a different camcorder to shoot in SD format. You can convert DSLR video to SD format... but it takes "time to convert" to SD, and other editing issues as well (like letterboxing or cropping since the formats have different aspect ratios!) . If the client just wants a DVD... get a $1-2K SD camcorder.

KurtGoss wrote in post #12608910
One should note that a large video in HD can take many HOURS to encode. Like let it go overnight! You need a really fast computer and fast RAID drives if you want a workstation built for encoding HD video. A fully blown video workstation will use the new 6G SSD drives... to get the fastest encoding speeds. And you need as much RAM as you can afford. For pro setups, time is money... so a high-end video workstation can be $10K with SSD drive and numerous striped RAID drives... and 48 GB of RAM.

Maybe if your ripping a 2k master.

I do 1080p/720p on my laptop all day long in after effects and premiere and yeah, it takes overnight to render the movie master but you don't need that much power. Hell my editing box at work is only 3.0 dual core with 8gb and I can work all my DSLR video ripped to prores all day long.

Lower the preview quality when your working with it and it should help greatly. I dont know about iMovie since I never use it, but I can't imagine it being more intensive than FCP, Color, and After Effects.

And 720p is standard HD delivery. If I have a shakey shot I will shoot in 1080p and stabilize. If you want to delivery HD format, you either going to have to burn a data disk with the file on it, or burn a Blu-Ray playable disk. Pay to play.

LiberationFrequency wrote in post #12608935
and yeah, it takes overnight to render the movie master but you don't need that much power.

so which is it... it "takes you overnight", or you don't need that much power?

The above mentioned $10K setups include dual RAID 6G SSD DRIVES (THOSE ARE $1200 EACH).. so just the SSD drives alone COST MORE than your average user's entire PC, that's why it is a pro setup -- then "overnight" encoding takes just a few hours.
Did I say you could not encode on an average PC... I think that's where the discussion of overnight came in. To most user's... overnight is a long time.

Canon 5Ds and 7Ds shoot in 1080p... why would you go to 720p... ever? I have NEVER had a client request 720p. It's either SD or HD, and HD meaning 1980p... the client wants it the best delivery method possible, and currently that is Blu-Ray 1080p.
I can't deliver a 2K or 4K project that my client can "play" easily, and besides - the budget for a project using RED format or something similar is huge budgets... so in THAT scenario... you would have MULTIPLE $10K workstations!

I am not sure why you felt you needed to jump into the conversation with poor advice to a new editor of HD Video. Delivering 1080P Blu-Ray is much more effort and cost than SD. And that was the point of my post.

On lower budget videos, like weddings or business events -- clients will often want HD quality, but when they hear the price difference, they quickly go for regular DVD quality. I find it is about 3x more cost to provide a client with HD vs. SD.
And the post editing work for HD vs. SD is at least twice the time, but can easily turn into 4-5 times the amount of time.

I let the client choose based on hourly rates, and I can't tell you how many times a client after viewing a final burn has requested a very tiny minor change -- which requires a new "encoding".

Ok,

Fair response, but I also ask this.


A lot of retail stores seem to sell these cheap camcorders that have hard disks built in to store the video and they shoot in 1080p.

So, once the hard disk is full, what do they do with the footage?


1080p so from what I am reading this is gunna be damn hard to dump to a DVD and I am very sure that most camcorder home users do not own a bluray burner let alone possess the software to do the job.


So what do these users do with the footage?

When we owned the old VHS-C camcorder we would buy a new tape when going on holidays or a special occasion. So what do users do now? You can't change the hard disk on the camcorder so they must burn to DVD, but this process seems to be a longwinded one and why would they convert to SD if they own a 1080p camcorder?

When I got married we were given a video tape,


About ten years ago people were given their wedding on DVD


What now?

One thing that I have found with rendering video: Using a MacBook Pro 6,2 (late 2010 manufacture, 2.8GHz Core i7 dual core processor), rendering on the internal hard disk (500GB 7200 rpm) takes a significant amount of time. Rendering to an external Iomega 1TB 7200 rpm disk connected via Firewire 800 takes about one third the time. This is not a scientific statement, but an anecdotal observation. Whatever the difference is, the external Firewire 800 disk is WAY faster. If you need to improve your rendering times, this is an inexpensive way to go, provided you have or can add Firewire 800 capability to your computer.

Some general tips for faster render:

1. Always render from one drive to another. So if your clips are on your D drive, you want your rendered output to go to your E drive.

2. Unless your external drive is eSata (if you don't know what this is, it isn't), always render to another internal drive. The USB/firewire interface is slower than the native drive speeds AND uses up some precious CPU power.

3. Buy some fast drives! You may not have the coin for an all SSD system, but at least make sure your drives are 7200rpm (or faster) and have 64m cache. Watch Newegg.com for some deals.

4. Defrag your drives once a week while you sleep.

5. RAM is so cheap right now, there is no reason that you should not be maxed out. Newegg had specials this week like 8 gig for $54. Don't assume that one brand of RAM will always work with another. Best to buy all the same model (unless you like to experiment).

6. Run a 64 bit operating system.

7. Not so much on a laptop, but on a desktop you can swap a faster processor. Microcenter.com has the best prices on processors by far.

8. Shutdown all background programs when you start to render. Don't check email or work in Photoshop. You want all of your 8 cores rendering and nothing else.

in any final cut program, you have a scratch disc and you have a source disc. When it renders, it writes the renderings to the scratch disc while reading from the source. When both are the same drive, it's trying to pass a lot of media to and from the same disc simultaneously, which is why you get the slower rendering time. In FCP and FCE you can set the scratch disc in the user settings, not sure on imovie. I think Vegas works on the same principle, not sure on Premiere.
(Note: two partitions of the same hard drive will not improve)

One thing that is universal, though, is your editor saves a format for its working space. Ideally you would set this to the format of your source files. If your source files and your work space are different, then rendering will have to first convert/render to your working space, then render your effects, and then render/convert to the output format (all on your scratch disc). If your working space and your source are the same, you eliminate one step. In FCP/FCE this is defined in your "Easy Setup." In Premiere and Vegas it's in the settings menus.

snapshot2011 wrote in post #12614550
About ten years ago people were given their wedding on DVD


What now?

Now, most clients expect a bluray disc, although older clients (think 50th wedding anniversary) might still want DVD because they don't have a HDTV yet.

A bluray burner runs $89 or so, and will burn DVDs also.

snapshot2011 wrote in post #12614550
A lot of retail stores seem to sell these cheap camcorders that have hard disks built in to store the video and they shoot in 1080p.

So, once the hard disk is full, what do they do with the footage?


1080p so from what I am reading this is gunna be damn hard to dump to a DVD and I am very sure that most camcorder home users do not own a bluray burner let alone possess the software to do the job.


So what do these users do with the footage?

You need to archive your footage on hard drives. (bluray is too slow for general archiving)

These drives don't have to be the fastest out there, so you can get 2TB drives for $59 and fill them up.

Don't waste money on external hard drives, get an external DOCK instead:

http://www.newegg.com …ck-_-17-153-071-_-Product

A Dock lets you just drop in a bare hard drive (laptop or desktop) and go. These docks go on sale all the time for $15. You can get eSata, USB2, USB3, and firewire.

Label the drive, wrap it back up in its anti static bag it came in and place in your safe or safety deposit box.

BTW, the biggest step in getting faster rendering for MAC users is to move up to a Hackintosh.

An inexpensive Hackintosh runs 2x as fast as a MAC Pro for about 1/2 of the price.


I know, I used to roll my eyes at the data wranglers who would brag about how fast their Hackintosh were; but now I've got to admit, once you try one, it is all over. If you have to sit at someone's Mac Pro to edit, it feels like you are on a 10 year old computer.