garageCube

Hi,

In the manual it says to use a the graphics codec if using black and white content.

I'm using final cut 5 and compressor and can't work out how encode videos to Graphics as there are no options for that. Wondering if it's called something else thats the same?

Is using a jpeg or png at grayscale the same?
Any other software out there that will use the apple codecs?

Or something simple i'm missing possibly?

At the moment i'm using photo jpeg at 80% and play back is OK, but not great once more layers are added.

Hoping the graphics codec might help this,

any light on the matter would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks
Tom

Generally PhotoJpeg is best (size vs quality), unless you need an alpha channel (then use Animation or ProRes 4444). Resolumes free DXV codec is also be another option but I haven't spent anytime with it.

Stuttering footage with multiple layers could be caused by the throughput of your HDD than anything. Theres only one head trying to find the info on a drive and asking for more than one clips means its hunting around trying to find the 1 & 0's.
If they are only short clips, loading them into ram will help although Modul8 is currently limited in the amount of stuff you can store in ram due to it being 32bit.
Truth be told, if you need quick reliable playback of multiple clips you really need a fast raid-0 setup or solid state HDD.

lotech wrote:Generally PhotoJpeg is best (size vs quality), unless you need an alpha channel (then use Animation or ProRes 4444). Resolumes free DXV codec is also be another option but I haven't spent anytime with it.

Do not use Animation codec. It is not designed for playback but storage/sharing - huge files and take a lot of resources to play.
PNG with Millions of Colors+ is the way to go with alpha. PNG is suitable for BW graphics a swell.
Resolume DXV codec supports alpha and is fast only within Resolume as far as I can tell.
As for encoding - I use After Effects for final output always. Even when editing in FCP. Somehow AE produces better looking and playing compressed file. Why, I have no clue.
BTW ProRes4444 that supports alpha does not play as well as PNG+, but looks fantastic. Color depth and detail and all the works.