Best Format for Hours of Interviews

[Anonymous]

Im editing a video for a local school’s band, and am now in the process of doing interviews with some of its members. I am shooting using a Panasonic AGHMC170 in 1440×1080 HD, then downconverting to 720×480 NTSC DV Widescreen as the rest of the footage is this way. However, NTSC DV Wide takes up too much space, and the interviews are about 20 mins.

What high-quality format can I use that’s smaller but will still prove easy to edit?I was thinking maybe MPEG2 DVD, or some sort of MP4? Thanks!

[rs170a]

Any time you render, you lose quality. For that reason alone, it’s always best to stay with the original format. Hard drives are very cheap these days (2 TB. models are under $100) so buy one or more and keep your video quality at it’s best.

Mike

[Anonymous]

Agreed, but since I have to downconvert to 720×480 DV Wide anyway, I was looking for the best size/quality codec possible.

[rs170a]

I personally wouldn’t resize the footage from your Panasonic as you lose the ability to zoom in on it if you want to.

I deliver in SD (DVD) but do all my shooting & editing in HD as I love the ability to zoom and pan if I want to without losing quality.

Having said all that, if your 720×480 footage is DV-AVI from a miniDV camcorder, that’s the format I’d recommend.

Mike

[Anonymous]

which format would be closest to dv avi in terms of quality but as small as possible? i can’t buy another drive in the time frame for this project so finding a smaller codec is the answer.

i used to shoot on a handheld 3ccd jvc everio which had a hard disk and recorded in MPEG2 dvd; quality wasn’t bad. would it be a good format?

[rs170a]

i can’t buy another drive in the time frame for this project…

Why not? Do you live in the boonies?

Any big box store like Best Buy, Future Shop or Costco has 1 TB. drives for well under $100.

The only time I render using a different codec is when I’m getting a project ready for delivery, be it a DVD, the web or something else.

Otherwise all files stay in their original format.

I know that’s not the answer you want to hear but that’s always been my philosophy and I see no reason to change it.

Mike

[XTR-91]

h.264

[Anonymous]

yeah right? In what container? MPEG2?

[birdcat]

Play nice kids.

When I need to create sub-project files that have good quality that I can edit (read little or no compression) I usually choose AVI for SD and MOV for HD.

For final disc output, for SD (DVD) it’s MPG and for HD (BD) it’s M2V, with AC3 for audio for both.

for the web, I don’t render out using H.264 directly but use QuickTime pro to create my videos (MP4 with H.264 for YouTube & Vimeo).

[Author]

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