Project Properties / Edit File Format?

Ray Musicbear · Post by **Ray Musicbear** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 9:40 am

I am not quite sure I understand where this setting should be...

If the defualt is MPEG why?

Why not AVI?

Yes, it can be manually changed, but what are the advantages
and disadvantages of each?

Thanks for any replies...

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:43 pm

MPEG2 is a standard format understood by many video editing programs, and also used by DVD disks. It is lossy, but maintains acceptable quality unless you do lots of editing and repeated rendering.

AVI is just a container format, and creates HUGE files unless a codec (compressor/decompressor) is used to compress the audio and video streams inside the AVI file. Depending on the codec used, compression is lossless, and the full detail of the source material is maintained throughout the editing.

Which format best suits your needs is for you to decide.

Ray Musicbear · Post by **Ray Musicbear** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:12 pm

Again hello THoff,

Thanks for your reply.

Have a question though, then as I understand this "Edit File Format" is something ONLY for editing? Then it has no effect on the video you output, such as if you used the MPEG support for editing and saved in AVI format? It is only active for the editing mode?

Thanks

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 1:00 am

Correct. I use AVI for editing because disk space is of no concern to me, and because I work mostly with DV sources. When I render the file to produce a DVD, the video is transcoded to MPEG2.

If you have a capture device that can produce MPEG2 directly, you can save considerable amounts of disk space and rendering time by staying in MPEG2 format for the entire workflow.