Which Format Is Best?
MPEG-1, WMV, MOV, M4V, AVI…the list goes on. Remember the good ole days when everything thing was on VHS? (And then LaserDisc came out…man, that was exciting.) There’s so many file formats to choose from. And while they all technically/supposedly/are-rumored-to playback in most presentation softwares, which is the best format for VJ-ing?
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UPDATE!
Since this was posted, I have discovered a better codec for the best VJ playback experience. Instead of going with PhotoJPEG, use H.264 …except you want to KEY ALL FRAMES! Read more about this here.
For those of you using Stomp to batch export, here is a screen-shot of the new settings.
All I have to say is….awesome! Thank-you so much for those tips! I had no idea the photo jpeg codec was better to use than H.264. And you'd better believe I will be downloading Stomp to batch my files and crop to make my own triple-wide videos! Thanks so much!
kirsten b on December 4, 2009
Nancy-
No matter the downloaded format (MPEG-1 or QuickTime H.264), I ALWAYS convert to PhotoJPEG @ 50% (medium).
Even if i'm just using ProPresenter.
I talked w/ Brad Weston @ Renewed Vision about this and he highly recommends the same… for many reasons, including a better playback when using the Palindrome effect on video BGs.
I have also had better experience with PhotoJPEG (against H.264) when playing "live lyrics" such as Igniter's easyslides or iWorship Flexx (a situation where you would play back many foreground videos within one song/presentation). H.264 sometimes wants to lag a second and the transition isn't as smooth as i'd like. With PhotoJPEG, it's like glaze on a Krispy Kreme (both pro & pvp).
have fun converting! :)
proctor on December 4, 2009
Great stuff – thanks! If I understood you right, you will even compress a clip if it was downloaded from a quicktime format. We don’t use ProVideoPlayer, just Propresenter. Do you think it would still be good practice to run everything from worship media sites through the photo jpg codec, or just the mpeg1 files?
nancy t on December 4, 2009
Okay, I just had to comment a second time to let you know that I bought Stomp and am already loving being able to batch process and CROP my background loops to fit our triple-wide screens! Best Tip Ever!
kirsten b on December 4, 2009
A helpful program that is an free alternative to QuickTime Pro or Stomp is QTAmateur. It has a useful Batch Export feature, where you just drag and drop, set your settings, and export them all. It's what I use.
brad s on December 5, 2009
Thanks for this post, Stephen! Looking forward to giving this a try as I notice even in ProPresenter sometimes don't run quite as smoothly as I'd like.
Katie on December 5, 2009
HEY! I was just in that tall building that is on your desktop last night :) miss you bro!
Luke McElroy on December 6, 2009
Question. So i tried converting some videos to the photo-JPEG codec. They were WMVs (horror I know!) to start with. I converted them to QT and they work just fine. I convert the original to a photo-JPEG and I lose sound on some. Any idea why that might be happening? I didn’t do anything to the sound settings.
Katie on December 7, 2009
worshipVJ… thank you again for sharing your experiences. You gave Nick R. a much earned shout out which I can relate to since I've called on him a few times as well.
Jim S. on December 9, 2009
Stomp is a handy little program but I thought I'd also recommend another utility called MPEG Streamclip that handles batch conversions and allows you to make crops (though the visual crop of Stomp is a bit nicer). It's cross platform, handles practically any kind of file you want to throw at it and free for the downloading over at http://www.squared5.com/
Andy Dragt on December 11, 2009
I have been trying to clarify with worshiphouse media on what kind of editing (if any) is allowed to be performed on their videos, because I have been turning them into H.264 for use with easyworship. So I e-mailed them asking what was allowed, because in their terms of service they say “no remastering”. They responded back saying that you cannot edit the original file in any way, because that was the agreement they had with their producers.
Ian Johnson on December 16, 2009
Ian-
Thank you for your attention to detail. As a producer on WorshipHouse, i really appreciate and respect that.
Sorry for not replying sooner, but i wanted to get down to the bottom of this and see what the WorshipHouse guys have to say about this issue.
I highly respect the guys at WorshipHouse and want to always be on the same page with them.
Here are some things that I have learned:
- converting/compressing videos aren’t “supported” by WorshipHouse b/c if something goes wrong and you mess up the video, they (nor the producer) can offer support for that video. However, b/c of their new “My Media” feature on the webstore, you can always re-download a ciip in case you mess one up.
- also, re-compressing video is more for “power users”… a large majority of users do not have issues with h.264. I consider this blog audience to be “power users” or on the road to being ones. that’s why i blogged about it.
- i’m also curious why you would convert anything to QuickTime for playback in EasyWorship, since it’s a PC software. I would guess that MPEG-1 is the way you need to go.
to provide further clarity, here is the email i received from WorshipHouse (and they gave me permission to post this):
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“Thanks for the email. This is an interesting issue / question. We are constantly wanting to do research and provide customers with the best files for what they are using. We have found that 99.9% of people will be absolutely happy with either the MPEG or h.264 files we deliver. We know that some are power users like you and might want something different.
The place this issue at hand crosses into a gray area is that we can’t “support” editing a file and we know that “re-mastering or re-compressing” or whatever may not be editing, but it is done in an editing software and it does actually change the file to be a different one than what the producer knows we are selling. If it is just re-compression I don’t really care because the producer won’t care either. The thing is though when a file is re-compressed it is no longer the file that we have delivered so we can’t “support” that new file because we weren’t the ones that made it. This is fine if the customer understands that but what sometimes happens is that the customer will say “I re-compressed the file and now there is (*instert any number of problems with file here that we don’t know how to fix*) a problem and I need your help fixing.
on a side note: we do know there is a problem on some of our h.264 encodes with ProPresenter and we are working closely withe them on fixing this issue. The issue is more complicated than us just encoding differently because of the episode engine that we use and how they have written the software to read files. They are obviously busy with the new version 4 launch but we are currently waiting for them to process some tests on a new encode of h.264 we have that we think may be the solution for much smoother playback.”
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I hope this helps! Great question!
admin on December 22, 2009
Just wrote a long treatise on H.264 vs. P-JPEG… clicking off and then back in the comment field deleted the entire comment. =( Javascript Fail!
Allan White on January 3, 2010
Allan – so sorry for that. the admin just fixed the problem.
what was the nutshell of wisdom you were about to bestow?
proctor on January 5, 2010
Stephen, thanks for this video! This is great information, I posted a link on our site. Very valuable for churches using video…
Josh Willits on January 14, 2010
Thanks Admin for the response.
I am still new to which way to properly compress something for use in easyworship and so I appreciate any info on the proper way to do it.
That is really cool that they allow that. I have been trying really hard to not "fudge" my conscience by just doing whatever I wanted to as far as re-mastering their files given the explicit statement to not re-master. So I am happy to learn that I can, yet your saying I should use MPEG – 1?
Ian Johnson on March 28, 2010
Googled for this question, found this thread, again! No idea what my earlier treatise was.
Haven’t had too many problems with H.264; I like not having to have, well, a huge hard drive just for loops. But now I’m finding performance is more important, and drives just keep getting bigger!
I sometimes need to use the “dumb codecs” as I call them – dumb means low CPU overhead, which means higher performance for things like Keynote and ProPresenter.
Allan White on April 7, 2010
Stomp looks nice – very user friendly. The core image effects are something really none of the other encoder products have. The visual cropping is gold; Compressor’s is a pain to use.
Speaking of pain, so glad you moved on from QT Player conversions. Batch processing rules!
I use MPEG Streamclip (http://squared5.com) daily. It’s free, for Mac & Windows, has very powerful pre-processing (some of the fancy features that Compressor has), is batchable, and is very efficient.
I can see why VJs would love Stomp, though – adding color/blur/etc. at the final encode stage saves a lot of rendering. If Stomp could do decent watermarking (the others blow at it), I might give it a shake.
Allan White on April 7, 2010