by Pete Fowler
One of the last steps when a person produces a video, (via a software video editing package such as Premiere, Quicktime, Premiere Elements, Pinnacle Studio, etc) is they go through a two step encoding selection process (some editing software minimize this to one step).
- First they must select a Video Container such as AVI, WMV, Quicktime, ASF, MP4, etc.
- Then they select a video codec which is “wrapped” inside the container they selected above (not all containers can wrap all codecs)
(some programs use a default codec when you select your video container – this makes it appear to be a one step process)
A major problem arises in that there are over 120 video codecs (obviously not all supported by all video containers or video editing programs). What complicates this even further is that many codecs have multiple versions or implementations …
Bottom line is that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of container/codec possibilities.
Apple has done a pretty good job of limiting its Quicktime supported codecs to a few. These are installed with the Operating System and their updating is pretty well managed. Microsoft has likewise controlled and limited the codecs it is supporting with the Windows Media Video (WMV or *.wmv) file format.
AVI on the other hand is wide open and can be a real crap shoot. Windows comes with only a few AVI compatible codecs installed, and allows users (programs) to install other AVI codecs pretty much at will. As a result, during playback with Windows Media Player, you can get into what is known as “AVI codec hell”, where multiple codecs have “registered” with the Windows Media Player, all saying they can play the same file type – Windows Media Player (or for that matter any Media Player) tries to sort out which is the best codec to use. Unfortunately the Player often ends up confused and either fails completely or plays a clip back with less than great quality. Even worse, you generate a video on one PC and select a codec (say RealVideo), only to find out that the system (for example SDUPS’s laptop) you are playing it back on doesn’t have that codec or the right version of that codec installed…result is playback doesn’t work or works poorly.
So, fundamentally, for SDUPS to effectively display videos, we need to limit the container/codec combinations that the club actively supports and updates (this is true no matter what player we use – Picasa, Windows Media Player, VLC, Quicktime, etc – all Players can fall into “codec hell”). This is much like SDUPS does with digital still pictures –> we basically all use jpeg
Given these issues, what has been decided is that SDUPS will actively support the following formats – these may change over time, but standardizing now will help insure that everything works in the near term. These aren’t necessarily “the best video solutions” (now there’s a topic that can generate a lot of debate), they are just the ones that currently provide a high probability of playback success.
Members should submit their videos in one of the following formats:
1) Windows Media Video (*.wmv) file format – the latest *.wmv codec is Version 9 or
2) Quicktime 7.0 (or higher) with either the mov codec or the H.264 codec
3) Clip length should be 30 seconds or less.
4) Please DO NOT eMail video files. Just bring them to the meeting early on a USB flash drive.
Should a member use a different video file format, the club will try and play it (as we have in the past two meetings), but it may not run or it may suffer from degraded playback quality.
For those members using ProShow Gold to output their videos, it supports both the Windows Media Video (*.wmv) and the Quicktime (*.mov) files, so a member can choose either option 1 or option 2..
For those members that use a digital point and shoot camera to capture video, you will more than likely need to bring your captured video footage into a video editing program to make the clip the correct length or to add audio – once the clip is in the video editing program you can output your video in either Windows Media Video or in Quicktime. (Olympus cameras appear to use *.mov natively).
As always. feedback is welcome. Our obvious goal is to make the video competition fun, interesting, and to insure it runs as smoothly as possible.
