If you’ve done any video work in your life, there is more than a slight chance that you were staring at Adobe Premiere (or Avid, Or Final Cut) export screen and drooling a bit while you were trying to understand what the heck all those dials on the screen mean.
David Kong just release what I would as the best primer to codecs I have ever seen.
David covers everything from what codecs are (compression and decompression); what is the difference between a codec and a container; what are the pros and cons of using each codec and touches a bit about his workflow.
While there is not a single codec that you can choose and forget about it, there are several reasons to prefer a codec for different stages of a project.
Luckily, David pulls frames into photoshop to break down each concept which I find really helpful. Here is the complete agenda:
- What a codec is – And how it differs from a container.
- Different types of codecs – And why I frequently use 4 different codecs on a single project.
- Bit Depth – What it means and why it matters.
- Chroma Subsampling – 4:4:4, 4:2:2, and 4:2:0, and when it becomes an issue.
- Spatial Compression and Blocking – One of the most common artefacts you see with normal work.
- Temporal Compression – Long-GOP codecs, inter-frame compression, and ALL-I codecs.
- Lossless vs. Lossy compression – How image compression differs from data compression.
- Bit Rate – How to calculate bit rates and the differences between kbps/kBps/Mbps/MBps.
- Raw – Briefly, the difference between Raw, compressed, and uncompressed (this could have been a 40-minute tutorial on its own!)
Another video discussing the practicals of using codecs and how to face the dreadful export screen coming soon.
[How Codecs Work | David Kong via philipbloom]
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