mov to the memory card, however, our Canon camcorders can do AVCHD or MP4, which can be changed in the camera settings menu. Oftentimes, your video camera will determine the container for your original video file as well. avi, but there are many more.Īudio actually uses its own codecs. Popular video (visuals only) containers include. It’s common for a container to be called a file extension since they are often seen at the end of file names (e.g. A container is the file that contains your video, audio streams, and any closed caption files as well. When talking about video file types, most people are referring to file containers. Larger files on their own may be no problem, but when multiplied by the size of the audience, it can cause bandwidth problems that affect internet service providers and users. Be aware that the higher the bit rate, the larger the file size. The higher the bit rate, the less compression, which results in higher quality overall. It is also important to note the bit rate, which refers to the amount of data stored for each second of media that is played. The most common codec includes h.264, which is often used for high-definition digital video and distribution of video content. The codec of your original video file is often determined by your camera or screen recorder, which you may or may not have control over in your camera settings. Compression is your friend! In order to compress a video, your file must also have a corresponding codec. It gives you much smaller file sizes with minimal quality loss. While the word “compression” can conjure images of pixelated video, the process is both necessary and efficient with modern digital cameras. It can digitize and compress an audio or video signal for transmission and convert an incoming signal to audio or video for reception. You may have heard the phrase video codec when referring to video files.Ī codec is simply the software that compresses your video so it can be stored and played back. Let’s dig into this and try to simplify things by the end of this post! Codecs (for compression) If you are unsure, you are best to test out as many different codecs, bitrates and workflows as possible to determine what "looks" and works best for you.While there are a plethora of video file types, which consist of codecs and containers, choosing the right one doesn’t have to be complicated - but it certainly can be. So all in all, there is not necessarily one "Best" codec, just what works best for you in your situation.
I am anxious to try out the new support for FFMPEG ProRes Codec (mov) it looks very promising, and my preliminary tests look good so far.
MP4 is a very popular file format and typically takes up the least amount of space on your Hard Drive but may tap on CPU usage while encoding, which could impact performance and some have experienced issues when recording in this format.
MPEG-2 yields decent results especially if burning to DVD, although Windows 10 apparently no longer supports it natively.
To this point I have relied on AVI GoPro-Cineform as I found it gave me the best results for editing in post with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, but file sizes can be quite large. In a lot of ways it is simply a personal preference and/or a matter of what you need within the resources you have.