COMPRESSION AND VIDEO FORMATS
In the world of digital video production and distribution, few topics are as complicated and confusing as the choice of format to use.
There are many reasons.
First of all, it must be said that not all video formats are compatible with all digital platforms.
This can lead to major problems with the input, output, upload and download of the required files.
Therefore, one cannot generally speak of the “best video format”.
A lot depends on what you need and which platform you should use.
Second, video formats can cause big problems because there are so many of them.
And to make things even more complicated, a large number of these formats are now largely out of date.
In this article I will reveal everything I know about this topic.
I have to be honest: for me, like most filmmakers, this has always been a difficult topic.
I still remember the hours I spent with my editor trying to figure out which video format could best be sent to the manufacturer.
I will never forget the call in the middle of the night from one of the most famous Mediaset producers who yelled at me: “Hello Francesco, you cannot see the file you just sent me.”
I hung up and after banging my head against the wall, I called the editor to tell him what had happened.
Finally, you need to realize that a video format is more than its file extension.
The term “video format” per se confuses people because it contains two different components: the codec and the container.
With that premise, we can get to the heart of this article, which, believe me, was really hard to write.
1) Let’s start with the vocabulary
First, here is a list of the most commonly used words:
A) FRAME / RATE SPF
The number of frames per second.
I recently wrote an article on this topic, which you can find here.
B) VIDEO SIZE
This data is used to measure the width and height of the video.
The most common measurements are (in pixels):
426 x 240 (240p)
640 x 360 (360p)
854 x 480 (480p)
1280 x 720 (720p)
1920 x 1080 (1080p)
2560 x 1440 (1440p)
3840 x 2160 (2160p)
C) PROPORTIONS
The aspect ratio of an image describes the proportional relationship between width and height.
D) CODEC
Codecs are programs that digitally encode and decode data, making it easy to store and reproduce.
When it comes to codecs, it basically means that our video file has been compressed.
After compression, this file must be stored in a container, which we will discuss later.
There are different types of codecs, e.g. B. the recording codec.
This is the software that your camcorder uses to compress your movie files.
Then there is the export codec, which is instead the format we assigned to our output video.
Finally we have the codec for the master in which we will save our final project.
The most common codecs are:
MJPEG
MPEG-4
H264
H265
WMV
PRO RES
DNxHD
Let’s see them together:
MPEG-4
The ‘MPEG-4 is one of the most popular codecs in the world.
It was introduced in late 1998 and is mainly used for applications such as video telephony or digital television, for streaming films over the Internet and for storing CD-ROMs.
The advantage of MPEG-4 is, in fact, the ability to compress a two-hour video on a CD for a high quality result.
Thanks to this, MPEG-4 has become very popular with users around the world.
Today, MPEG-4 is compatible with a wide range of devices, from satellite television to cell phones.
H264
The H264 is part of the latest generation of codecs and offers high quality videos with relatively low bit rates.
The standard offers up to double MPEG-4 compression.
In addition to improving the quality of perception, the H.264 standard can deliver high quality DVD-Videos with less than 1 Mbit / s.
Personally, I use H264 for the videos that I upload to YouTube.
H265
L ‘H265, also known as High Efficiency Video Coding or HEVC, is the latest in a long line of video codecs.
Like its predecessor, the H264, the H265 was developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Expert Group for the broadcasting industry.
Compression is great for H264, but is used for resolutions of SD, HD and 4K films.
