Sitepoint Members,
If I’m using MPEG4 for video, will 3 gigs of RAM be plenty for running and editing?
Thanks,
Chris
Should be ok unless you have a lot of other applications running simultaneously.
As an aside, you really don’t want to be editing video that is in mp4 format - this is typically a highly compressed format with intra-frame prediction which while great as a final output format for the web, does not make for a good editing format. Editing should be performed on a lossless or near lossless format so that visual quality is retained until final output rendering.
East Coast,
Thanks for the info on MPEG4. I bought a Sony camcorder HDR CX-550 after literally months trying to make up my mind. It handles these formats HD: MPEG4 AVC/H.264. SD: MPEG2
Yesterday I came across this youtube page
http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=55744
It says Youtube video formats are
* WebM files - Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codecs
* .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files - Typically supporting h264, mpeg4 video codecs, and AAC audio codec
* .AVI - Many cameras output this format - typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM
* .MPEGPS - Typically supporting MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio
* .WMV
* .FLV - Adobe-FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio
Does this mean my camcorder won’t work well on youtube?
What currently is the best format. I see youtube doesn’t handle AVC/H.264
I thought AVC/H.264 was the up and coming format?
Thanks,
Chris
Youtube will generally re-encode whatever video you upload into a format it uses, during this process there will be quality loss so you want to upload at the highest quality possible - however due to file size limitations and the lack of practicality in sending large files, you’d generally upload in a format that is a compromise between size and quality.
AVC/H264 is a popular recording and delivery format, as it provides good quality to size. It’s not a great editing format as each avchd stream needs to be transcoded on the fly into single frames and uses more processor while doing so, but this shouldn’t be an issue unless you have a lot of simultaneous video tracks in your editor. As long as the avchd bitrate is high enough at the start, the quality retained after the final generation of transcoding should still be ok on youtube.
EastCoast,
Thanks so much for the help.
So if I want a video on Youtube that doesn’t stop and start again and again while viewing, will AVC/H264 work providing the editing is minor and no simultaneous video tracks. If not what format should I use? It doesn’t have to be HD.
Thanks,
Chris