File Formats     File Converters      

How video is compressed is good stuff to know - especially if you are compressing for the web - or just a good thing to understand.   With HD, YouTube, Google Video, and displaying video on the web, compression has become an important topic for videographers.

Uncompressed video can occupy an enormous amount of hard drive space. That is why video gets compressed - 1 hour of SD uncompressed video takes up about 26 gigs of space  If you wrap in an AVI wrapper (which is what  generally happens when you capture video from a camcorder), it gets reduced in size down to about 13 gigs / hour.

Codec's have become very important - if you have an ipod or itouch or similiar devices, FLV (Flash video files) will not play and you will need to convert them to mpeg 4 formats - like AVCHD H264) and MP4.

Editing systems handle different compression (codec's) differently - some high end editing systems can not edit 24p - while a cheapie may handle all the codec's well.  Age of the editing system obviously plays a role - but is not always the determiner.

New cameras are coming out and they have memory cards or hard drives, and each camera may use it's own compression. Now the question us videographers must ask is "Can my editing system edit that compression along with other compression formats - all on the same timeline ?"

And not only that, but then when you take it to the web, which codecs should you use ?