Choosing The Right Format For Your Video Work.

You have finished your edit, inserted the music, and all ready to export. You click on the export button and a whole list of video codecs pop up. You are sitting there going through the list wishing you know what is the difference between each codec and which one should I choose?

Worry no more. This quick tutorial will guide you on the codecs that you need to choose to get your video project up and running. Either going for DVD, Vimeo, or Youtube.

Before we get into the details, let me give you a brief explanation of what codecs/format are. Codec and format are two separate things. A format or also known as container format is a wrapper that wraps the video information around so that it is one readable file. Codec however is the compression that is being used to compress the video information.

For example, Quicktime movie (.mov) is a format that is widely used in both Mac and Windows machines. H.264 on the other hand is the type of compression that is being used to compress the video and hence wrap around with a Quicktime (.mov) format. H.264 can also be wrap using .mp4. Now with a simple understanding of what codec and format are, let’s go to the next part.

There are three parts to every video work that you do. The first is an acquisition which follows with editorial and ends with delivery.

Acquisition is pretty much the format that your camera records in. If you’re using Canon DSLR, then your camera acquisition format is Quicktime (.mov) with the codec, H.264.

The problem with camera codec is that it is highly compressed and the format could not be edited right of the camera because the format is not right for the editing software (NLE). These kinds of codec are known as finishing codec. You will need to transcode this codec to an NLE friendly format. Here is a list of NLE friendly codec used with their respective format containers.