What's the best video format for editing on a Mac?

[iammiamiman]

What's the best video format for editing on a Mac?

I have some video files on my PC that I have to put on a DVD for a friend to do some future editing on his Mac. I'm not familiar with Mac at all. What would be the proper video format for me to use?

[Ron P.]

Depends on the origin of the clips, and the format (DV, MPEG,), if they are SD or HD, AVCHD. What software does your friend use on his MAC? Most of them should be able to use DV Type-2, if not MPEG-2. Beyond that, you need to make sure his MAC and his video editing program can handle the more recent forms of hi-def, like AVCHD, or AVCHD Lite.

[iammiamiman]

The clips were converted from VHS tapes to mpg format on my PC.

Eventually they will be edited on a Mac (he uses IDVD for editing).
I tried converting the mpg to avi (using my UVS 11 program) & the files got huge! Too big to even put on a DVD.

So, using UVS11 if I convert the mpg files to mpeg2 they should work for editing on a mac?

[Ron P.]

For 1 hour Video.
uncompressed (avi) 65 GB
DV (avi) 13 GB
MPEG2 High Quality 4.3 GB

Also if the target media is to be DVDs, then you should stick with DVD compliant MPEG-2. That way you will decrease the amount of quality loss due to rendering. IDVD must be able to handle MPEG-2 video clips, since it must create and use them to produce DVDs.

Now keep in mind that if you produced MPEG-1 clips from your VHS sources, then they are not going to be of good quality, in fact the end result will be terrible, since they must be up-converted to MPEG-2 to be placed on a DVD.

I moved this to the appropriate forum

[lathompson]

I suggest that you have your friend bring you a portable drive and you simply load them to his drive. I also suspect that the mpeg files you have currently, will work fine on his MAC. You might ask him what type he wants. I would be interested to know what works best on a MAC myself, as I have some clients that use them. Right now, I give everyone either AVI or MPG-2 unless they request something else. I've had no backlash to that.

[423youin]

While Final Cut does not edit AVCHD natively, it is still a simple procedure to utilize the AVCHD footage. In Final Cut you would open your log and transfer window and import the footage as Pro Res 422 which, while it creates larger files, is a great codec to edit with. Final Cut Express doesn't actually edit AVCHD, it imports it and converts it to Apple Intermediate Codec, which is a much more editing friendly HD supporting codec.MOV is not a bad choice,I've had good results converting the .mts files to .mov, with the settings h.264, 1200, 1280*720, 25fps, aac via Pavtube HD Video Converter MAC. The files look good on my Mac running Adobe Premiere, edit easily, and convert well to DVD format.