Best compression method for video editing?

[foidulus]

Not exporting.

At work we are redesigning our video capture system, and being a code monkey and not an AV person, I was wondering what the best storage format was. Uncompressed would obviously be best, but since we have to store a lot of video, its just not feasible spacewise.

The videos will be recorded and stored until we run out of space. If someone sees an interesting video, they will edit it in FCP on an 8 core mac pro, then usually export it to DVD.

My boss insists that MPEG-2 is the best way to go forward with this, but for a variety of reasons I would rather use H264, but I really don't know which would be best for editing in FCP. Any suggestions?

 

[spinnerlys]

Depends on the footage (PAL, NTSC, HD).

.H264 is for the final product, not suited for editing.

The best codec in my opinion is the one that the video/film material is delivered and/or then captured with.

No losses due to re-compressions.

 

[foidulus]

Depends on the footage (PAL, NTSC, HD).

.H264 is for the final product, not suited for editing.

The best codec in my opinion is the one that the video/film material is delivered and/or then captured with.

No losses due to re-compressions.

Almost all of it(for the time being) will be NTSC, with the option of moving to HD in the future.

 

[LethalWolfe]

The best codec in my opinion is the one that the video/film material is delivered and/or then captured with.

That's pretty much it. Keep the files native. The only type of exception to this would be if the original file came to you in a non-edit-friendly format (such as h.264 or DVD/MPEG-2) in which case you'd want to transcode the file into an edit friendly format (such as Apple's ProRes) and use that transcoded file as your master to edit with and store.


Lethal

 

[spinnerlys]

If it is NTSC just use the DV codec, if it is material from a DV cassette.

The DV codec has a bit-rate o 25 Mbit/s, so one hour of DV material will take 12GB of storage (not much in todays age of storage options).

If it is Beta SP or Digi Beta, then you need a higher bitrate of course, you can use the DV codec for editing and the recapture the material in the timeline at a higher setting (ProRes 422 or DVCPRO50 or uncompressed).

Creative Cow has a good forum on FCP.