What codec?

Hi! Brand new Catalyst Pro system with a Mac Pro. Using mostly one layer. Going to a projector 1024 x 768. What codec should I use?

Too lazy to do all the tests... :)

And another question; if I render to DV, playing the movie in QTP will render it in low quality. Do I need to "cmd + J" and click in the high quality button, or does the Catalyst do this for me?

Thanks!

If you do a quick search of the forums there is plenty of info about codecs and which are best.

It still depends on many factors - whats in the clip, is it a feature or just a background. Some things look great as DV, others look ordinary. Some things are fine as Photojpeg 50% others need to be at least 75% to get the best compromise between speed and quality.

At the end of the day it is what satisfies your eye or that of the person paying you to do it. Best to at least test a couple of the options.

I am pretty sure that Catalyst defaults to High Quality mode regardless of what the Quicktime Player preference is. It has always appeared to do that for me.

Cheers

Toby

Catalyst plays back movies the way they were rendered. The High Quality setting in QuickTime Player is for playback.

Which codec you use really depends on what you are doing, how many layers you wish to playback and the hardware you have with your Mac. DV has the best performance - Macs decode DV very fast. However, DV can appear a little soft with text and other fine detail, as a lot of colour information gets chucked away. DV is also designed to work at standard definition. It has a fixed compression ratio (5:1), so the playback performance for DV clips is always the same.

I tend to prefer to use Photo-Jpeg for text or fine detail or for funny resolutions. Photo-Jpeg also has the advantage of having no fields - i.e. it's progressively scanned. Photo-Jpeg is a variable bit-rate codec. The compression ratio is determined by how busy the frames are and the quality setting. You can use Photo-Jpeg at 1024 x 768 or any other resolution. 50% quality works for many things. 75% can be a bit heavy going on your computer if you start playing several layers.

In general I think the DV codec is useless for graphics, especially if you have text or any kind of thin lines.

I think it is a bit strange however, that with drives delivering 115 mb/s, playing uncompressed files doesn´t work well. It seems you have to have drives that deliver 10x the actual data rate of the files in order for them to play well.

I think I read somewhere that Catalyst supports alpha channels is you render to the Animation codec, is that right?

It's about drive speed and access time. Miles of bandwidth doesn't necessarily help.

The Animation codec uses lots of processor power. It works but frame rates can be a problem.