movie formats: avi vs quicktime

[dmbartender]

ive concluded that im gonna wait till april to buy a camera so i can choose between teh sd500 and nikon 7900. spec-wise one difference i noted was that the sd records movies in avi format and the nikon in quicktime. is any one better than the other, and can i convert between the two or from either one to a more universal format like mpg?

[Rhys]

ive concluded that im gonna wait till april to buy a camera so i can choose between teh sd500 and nikon 7900. spec-wise one difference i noted was that the sd records movies in avi format and the nikon in quicktime. is any one better than the other, and can i convert between the two or from either one to a more universal format like mpg?

Conversions are possible and converters are available. I'd advise against doing conversions as after having investigated thoroughly all the vCD, video DVD and moving image manipulation software on the PC, I find it all really sucks. A lot of it's liable to trash your computer necessitating a reformat and reinstallation of the system plus programs and data.

Quick-Time is an Apple format and is comprised of a series of over compressed JPEG images. AVI is a Microsoft format and is comprised of a series of uncompressed JPEG images. Qualitywise, I'd go for AVI although if the MP4 codex was used more commonly, the files could be smaller.

Windows Media Player will play AVI but not Quick Time. Quick-Time players will play AVI. This is why Microsoft has just lost a large court case in the European Union. They include WMP with XP as an integral part. As many other people wish, I wish the'd excluded it. As a result of this court case they are now not allowed to sell XP with WMP built in. It'll all get very interesting now :)

Basically, Quick Time videos suck. AVI is better quality.

[haikai]

ive concluded that im gonna wait till april to buy a camera so i can choose between teh sd500 and nikon 7900. spec-wise one difference i noted was that the sd records movies in avi format and the nikon in quicktime. is any one better than the other, and can i convert between the two or from either one to a more universal format like mpg?

i haven't had catastrophic problems, but conversion is usually not worth the effort if you can bypass it by choosing the camera with the format you prefer to begin with. conversion usually degrades the quality anyway, and some of the free conversion utilities can be iffy... i normally have more success by extracting the frames and recompiling them into a new movie format of my own choosing using something like Adobe Premiere. it would be great if digicams could record uncompressed (as if memory storage space wasn't enough of a problem already!).

i prefer .avi... it's just more flexible and is supported by more programs. i tend to be able to squeeze better quality at lower file sizes from it, but maybe i'm just not fluent enough with using quicktime. there are media players you can use these days for windows that play quicktime as well so i never even touch that featureless quicktime player anymore. :p

hai

[Jack C]

dmbartender, if you are planning to make movies, why are you looking at digital cameras? :confused:

From my experience, if you want to make respectable home movies, you have to get a digital camcorder. From the movies out of the a digital camera, the quality will be mediocre regardless of format( .AVI, .MOV). The amount of time they can record is dependent on memory size and the larger the memory, the more expensive the video cost will be.

If you are still planning to make movies out of your digital camera, Haikai and Rhys are right about one thing. DivX(.AVI) format is more popular in the Windows computers. If you own a Windows computer, than you should get the camera supporting DivX. If you own a Macintosh computer, than Quicktime(.MOV) is the preferable format because there are more tool on the Mac that supports Quicktime.

On a side note, I must disagree with Rhys on one thing. Quicktime does not suck. The video quality depends mostly on the device and the person recording the video. If the video recorded is horrible, then irregardless of the transfered format, then movie will be horrible. ;)

DivX( .AVI) and Quicktime( .MOV) are better for different things. If you want to encode a video that you want to stream from your website, DivX is the better format because it can be encoded into a smaller size while maintaining a good video quality. If on the other hand, you want to make a DVD with your video, then Quicktime is the better format because it is better at recording high definition encoding(HDTV) of video and audio.

For long video recordings, I would leave the digital camera and pick-up a digital camcorder. My favorite is the Canon GL2 Mini DV Camcorder.

[Rhys]

On a side note, I must disagree with Rhys on one thing. Quicktime does not suck. The video quality depends mostly on the device and the person recording the video. If the video recorded is horrible, then irregardless of the transfered format, then movie will be horrible. ;)

Fair comment. I should have explained further. The video clips I've seen from digital cameras that use the QuickTime format all seem to have a problem with the images boiling in the background, caused by severe over-compression. Those I have seen in avi format all seem to be pretty flawless.

[gary_hendricks]

On a side note, I must disagree with Rhys on one thing. Quicktime does not suck. The video quality depends mostly on the device and the person recording the video. If the video recorded is horrible, then irregardless of the transfered format, then movie will be horrible. ;)


Hi Jack - I agree that MOV is not all bad. I've seen some folks using AVI but the video came out terribly.

[dmbartender]

Thanks guys, that helps i guess. I don't reall plan on taking large movie files, its just that i want to be informed when im gonna spend all that money for a camera. I can safely say that 99% of the time im gonna take stills, but there is always that drunken moment of one of your friends that you have to capture on video cause a picture won't do it justice...im sure you all know how that is

[Jack C]

I saw a multidevice camera/camcorder/voice recorder/mp3 player/flashlight at an expo in Las Vegas a couple of months ago. It is called the "MobiDV H-10 Digital Camcorder". I got to play around with it a bit. It is a really fun toy with but I am not sure of the quality. I guess it is not so great in any of its functions because it is multi-functional device. It is currently selling in Hong Kong but I think it is coming out into the US market this year.

One good thing that the company rep. told me was that the MobiDV records movies in MP4. The bad thing is you need some large flash memory cards(that means expensive). If you want to look at this device, it is made by Axisoft Tech. Their homepage is: http://www.axisoft.com/product-camcorder.htm

[Videoman]

I don't know if I've ever seen a bigger selection of mis-informed replies on a single discussion board in all my life.

QuickTime is capable of importing and viewing over 50 different media formats. Those can be converted to about as many other formats as the user chooses with a very vast degree of user selected effects and options all from within QuickTime.
QuickTime is NOT a codec! (codec stands for "compress/decompress) QuickTime "uses" codecs to play back video. These codecs come in a variety of flavors ranging from a crappy low quality, low resolution web video all the way up to FULL uncompressed High Definition video and beyond. It is used every day in the film industry for processing real live movies that you see on the big screen. These files come in somewhere around 400+ MegaBytes per second (or much more) and have a resolution of around 4K pixels (for a reference, High-Def is, at most, 1080)

Windows Media Player can do, maybe 8 file formats some good, some not.
AVI comes in two flavors, AVI type-1 and AVI type-2. AVI type-1 interleaves the audio and video into a single stream, which makes it incompatible with some video editing programs. AVI type-2 allows for a separate video channel and between 1-4 audio channels. The problem with Windows Media format is that you are stuck using nothing but Windows Media Codecs (not very many of them) There are programs that can re-encode from one to the other but they can be costly for one that does a decent job.
The real issue at hand here is not which format you should use but which TOOL you should use. Firstly, a digital still camera will NEVER give you anywhere near the quality of video as even the cheapest video camera. It's just not designed for it. Secondly, wether it keeps the information as a .mov or an .avi is really a very distant concern. Both can vary in quality vastly. To say that QuickTime sucks is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The particular codec used, and the way the information was encoded can suck, but that has absolutely nothing to do with QuickTime. There are $100K cameras that use QuickTime formats for their recording, do you think they suck? The notion that .mov files are compressed and .avi files are not is completely false!
There is MUCH more information on this subject than I could even fit into this board so I will stop now and recommend you go to a photo/video store and speak to a real professional who may know a little more about the subject because you are being seriously misled.

If you don't believe me, take a gander at the QuickTime Movie Trailer (http://www.apple.com/trailers/) site. There you will find examples of the finest video available on the web and all of them in QuickTime.

[D70FAN]

I don't know if I've ever seen a bigger selection of mis-informed replies on a single discussion board in all my life.

QuickTime is capable of importing and viewing over 50 different media formats. Those can be converted to about as many other formats as the user chooses with a very vast degree of user selected effects and options all from within QuickTime.
QuickTime is NOT a codec! (codec stands for "compress/decompress) QuickTime "uses" codecs to play back video. These codecs come in a variety of flavors ranging from a crappy low quality, low resolution web video all the way up to FULL uncompressed High Definition video and beyond. It is used every day in the film industry for processing real live movies that you see on the big screen. These files come in somewhere around 400+ MegaBytes per second (or much more) and have a resolution of around 4K pixels (for a reference, High-Def is, at most, 1080)

Windows Media Player can do, maybe 8 file formats some good, some not.
AVI comes in two flavors, AVI type-1 and AVI type-2. AVI type-1 interleaves the audio and video into a single stream, which makes it incompatible with some video editing programs. AVI type-2 allows for a separate video channel and between 1-4 audio channels. The problem with Windows Media format is that you are stuck using nothing but Windows Media Codecs (not very many of them) There are programs that can re-encode from one to the other but they can be costly for one that does a decent job.
The real issue at hand here is not which format you should use but which TOOL you should use. Firstly, a digital still camera will NEVER give you anywhere near the quality of video as even the cheapest video camera. It's just not designed for it. Secondly, wether it keeps the information as a .mov or an .avi is really a very distant concern. Both can vary in quality vastly. To say that QuickTime sucks is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The particular codec used, and the way the information was encoded can suck, but that has absolutely nothing to do with QuickTime. There are $100K cameras that use QuickTime formats for their recording, do you think they suck? The notion that .mov files are compressed and .avi files are not is completely false!
There is MUCH more information on this subject than I could even fit into this board so I will stop now and recommend you go to a photo/video store and speak to a real professional who may know a little more about the subject because you are being seriously misled.

If you don't believe me, take a gander at the QuickTime Movie Trailer (http://www.apple.com/trailers/) site. There you will find examples of the finest video available on the web and all of them in QuickTime.

Yikes! While the rest of your editorial may be correct...If you are going to castigate the crew, then accuracy counts. CODEC stands for Coder-Decoder. ;) Also although generally true, there are some digital still cameras that take better videos than most Hi-8 and VHS-C recorders, so I think you meant compared to DV (which is true to a point).

Just want to set the record straight...

[ProblemSolver]

AVI is better than Quicktime although not that good also. If you record more movies than take pictures, get a DV camcorder - Like the Handycam PC55. If both, then choose the SD500 :D

[haikai]

QuickTime is capable of importing and viewing over 50 different media formats. Those can be converted to about as many other formats as the user chooses with a very vast degree of user selected effects and options all from within QuickTime.

i don't think one has nearly the flexibility with .mov you speak of without Quicktime PRO. you gave plenty of information to back up why quicktime is just as good as .avi, if not more so. for the amateur home user though, who doesn't have access to Quicktime Pro and wants to use some of the free tools available online, it seems .avi seems a little easier to handle (maybe only because it's still a Windows world for the masses).


If you don't believe me, take a gander at the QuickTime Movie Trailer site. There you will find examples of the finest video available on the web and all of them in QuickTime.

quicktime is great for this kinda stuff, but is there a reason why it isn't more widely used for large non-web movie files (again, for home playback, not uncompressed footage)? the reason i tend to choose .avi is that when it comes to longer movies it seems more difficult to get good quality within reasonable file sizes. is there a quicktime codec you'd recommend for this and is it freely available? i guess what i'm looking for is the .mov equivalent of Divx for .avi.

-hai

[Videoman]

mpeg-4 is a fantastic codec for video. DivX is just a hacked early version of mpeg-4. The newer DivX is improved over that, but still requires the viewer to download a new codec to view it because it doesn't ship on any current computer or media player. The current crop of mpeg-4, as found in QuickTime, is also the same mpeg-4 that satellite television companies are switching to for broadcast purposes as well as replacing mpeg-2 as the new DVD video standard so I think it has been proven well enough to hold up to long format encoding.
QuickTime actually IS the most widely used format in "non-web" applications. It's the basis for MOST hardware devices such as cameras and video equipment, you can thank Microsoft for it's greedy proprietary licensing scheme for that fact.
Sorenson Video is considered to be the highest quality web-video format available on any media player and is only viewable with QuickTime.
The point made of using QuickTime Pro to unlock the many features is 100% accurate. Unfortunately you have to pay for QTPro in order to use it to it's fullest potential but many other programs for converting video will use QuickTime, even without the Pro being unlocked. (besides, it's pretty cheap to unlock at $29)

The correct definition of "Codec" can actually be described both ways but is most commonly referred to as "compressor/decompressor" unless referred to in a hardware only application (most specifically telecom) where it is considered as coder/decoder. Type "codec definition" into Google to see the many descriptions including the one below from xilinx.com (http://www.xilinx.com/publications/glossary.htm).

"codec
Short for compressor/decompressor, a codec is any technology for compressing and decompressing data. Codecs can be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination of both. Some popular codecs for computer video include MPEG, Indeo and Cinepak.*
In telecommunications, (short for coder/decoder) a device that encodes or decodes a signal. For example, telephone companies use codecs to convert binary signals transmitted on their digital networks to analog signals converted on their analog networks.*
The translation of a binary value into a voltage that can be transmitted over a wire.*"

I'm sorry if it seems like I was bashing a little too hard but there is a growing trend of amateurs with half the story who pretend to know it all. The only thing this does is create more mis-informed individuals who then pass the same information on as fact. I currently own a video/media production company and have been working in video and photography for over 20 years now. My only goal is to help users make well informed decisions without the inaccurate marketing hype that is constantly being crammed down their throats. A better informed consumer is a happy consumer.

[rlallen]

Abrupt as Videoman's post may seem... I for one appreciate hearing from one who "knows" what he is talking about and is not afraid to say so. The trick for the reader is to "know" who really "knows"!
Videoman, thanks for taking the time to inform us more fully about the difference between QuickTime and avi formats. :)