Compression question at DVinfo.net

Alain Aguilar · October 12th, 2004, 10:53 PM

If this has been posted before please let me know where it is...I just need to know what's the best loosless compression software in Premiere and After Effects. After I worked really hard in a couple of projects I Noticed that the quality wasn't the same as my original video. To capture I used Microsoft DV AVI. I then would export this to an AVI using Microsoft DV AVI "again". The fianl result was horrible! Is there a great difference between Premiere's Microsoft DV AVI-Microsoft AVI-QuickTime; After Effects's Microsoft AVI-Animation and Uncompressed ?

Thanks

Glenn Chan · October 12th, 2004, 11:48 PM

Huffyuv and animation are lossless codecs.

There are some out there that compress slightly better, but animation should work very well for you. In AE, set lower field first since that corresponds to what DV footage is.

2- The DV codec may screw up computer generated elements. It does not like super contrasty edges like computer generated text with no antialiasing. If going to DV tape, DV compression will be applied to your footage.

Alain Aguilar · October 14th, 2004, 02:53 PM

I did run into issues with the computer generated elements that wern't anti-alliased properly. Well, I learned.... Let's say I'm working in Premiere and I need to do some Touches in AF. I should export in Animation then from AF export it back to Animation?. Let say I do this several times how much of the quality would go down? Does anybody exports Uncompressed?

Glenn Chan · October 14th, 2004, 03:17 PM

Lossless means that there is no generation loss from importing, making changes, and (re-)exporting.

I haven't tried myself, but it should be true. If you can't spot anything wrong with footage that has been through several generations then don't worry about it.

2- I believe you're better off working lossless and your hard drive will have trouble keeping up with uncompressed footage. Uncompressed video is huge (very roughly 65GB/hour) and requires about 18MB/s in sustained throughput from your hard drive (as a rule of thumb, your hard drive would need to spec 54MB/s sustained to prevent dropped frames). These are very rough numbers.

Dan Euritt · October 14th, 2004, 05:28 PM

the only time that the hard drive thruput would be a showstopper is when you wanted to play the animation back in real time... fortunately ae can do previews in small, draft-mode windows that should allow you to work in uncompressed mode... but it'll be slow to render and slow to work with, probably only feasible with a short project.

you might also experiment with a slight blur to make the animated edges less of a compression problem... but every time that you re-compress it going from premiere(dv) to ae(uncompressed) and back again, you'll lose quality... you'd have to do all your editing with the codecs glenn suggested to avoid that.

Alain Aguilar · October 14th, 2004, 10:09 PM

Thank you guys, I did learn my lesson by not using the right compression before and that will not happend again. I just tried the Animation codec and it worked great. It did take long to render and created a bigger file, but at least it retained the quality. Uncompress would not work for me since I have limited HD. Just out of curiosity what compression do the "big boys" use in their fancy studios?

Jan van den Hemel · October 15th, 2004, 12:24 PM

I always convert my footage to Targa sequences as soon as it's captured. Takes a serious hard drive, but the result is worth it.

October 12th, 2004, 10:53 PM	#1
Alain Aguilar Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: North Bergen Posts: 170	Compression question If this has been posted before please let me know where it is...I just need to know what's the best loosless compression software in Premiere and After Effects. After I worked really hard in a couple of projects I Noticed that the quality wasn't the same as my original video. To capture I used Microsoft DV AVI. I then would export this to an AVI using Microsoft DV AVI "again". The fianl result was horrible! Is there a great difference between Premiere's Microsoft DV AVI-Microsoft AVI-QuickTime; After Effects's Microsoft AVI-Animation and Uncompressed ? Thanks __________________ Alain

October 14th, 2004, 02:53 PM	#3
Alain Aguilar Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: North Bergen Posts: 170	I did run into issues with the computer generated elements that wern't anti-alliased properly. Well, I learned.... Let's say I'm working in Premiere and I need to do some Touches in AF. I should export in Animation then from AF export it back to Animation?. Let say I do this several times how much of the quality would go down? Does anybody exports Uncompressed? __________________ Alain

October 14th, 2004, 10:09 PM	#6
Alain Aguilar Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: North Bergen Posts: 170	Thank you guys, I did learn my lesson by not using the right compression before and that will not happend again. I just tried the Animation codec and it worked great. It did take long to render and created a bigger file, but at least it retained the quality. Uncompress would not work for me since I have limited HD. Just out of curiosity what compression do the "big boys" use in their fancy studios? __________________ Alain

October 15th, 2004, 12:24 PM	#7
Jan van den Hemel Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: PAL land Posts: 87	I always convert my footage to Targa sequences as soon as it's captured. Takes a serious hard drive, but the result is worth it. __________________ J.

October 12th, 2004, 11:48 PM	#2
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Huffyuv and animation are lossless codecs. There are some out there that compress slightly better, but animation should work very well for you. In AE, set lower field first since that corresponds to what DV footage is. 2- The DV codec may screw up computer generated elements. It does not like super contrasty edges like computer generated text with no antialiasing. If going to DV tape, DV compression will be applied to your footage.

October 14th, 2004, 03:17 PM	#4
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Lossless means that there is no generation loss from importing, making changes, and (re-)exporting. I haven't tried myself, but it should be true. If you can't spot anything wrong with footage that has been through several generations then don't worry about it. 2- I believe you're better off working lossless and your hard drive will have trouble keeping up with uncompressed footage. Uncompressed video is huge (very roughly 65GB/hour) and requires about 18MB/s in sustained throughput from your hard drive (as a rule of thumb, your hard drive would need to spec 54MB/s sustained to prevent dropped frames). These are very rough numbers.

October 14th, 2004, 05:28 PM	#5
Dan Euritt Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Carlsbad CA Posts: 1,132	the only time that the hard drive thruput would be a showstopper is when you wanted to play the animation back in real time... fortunately ae can do previews in small, draft-mode windows that should allow you to work in uncompressed mode... but it'll be slow to render and slow to work with, probably only feasible with a short project. you might also experiment with a slight blur to make the animated edges less of a compression problem... but every time that you re-compress it going from premiere(dv) to ae(uncompressed) and back again, you'll lose quality... you'd have to do all your editing with the codecs glenn suggested to avoid that.