DV Info Net - Best playback codec for FCP

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Best playback codec for FCP

Hi,

As part of a conference we will be receiving video files for playback from all over the world and from people working on numerous platforms. We will be playing them back from FCP via a Matrox mini and HD projector at 1080p. Projects will vary from HD and SD to video animation etc.

We want to ask people to submit the works in the same format for playback which will have to be in a single FCP session so we must ask for one codec only. My question is: what codec? Top quality is all important.

My first thought was ProRes but files are very large and as far as I'm aware this is not available to PC users.

Does anyone have any thoughts about what the best codec to ask for would be in this situation - we could do lots of conversion but we really want to avoid this!?

Thanks,

Geoff

Re: Best playback codec for FCP

Top quality and small size don't always work together. The best option is hard drive delivery. Then the files can be ProRes or Uncompressed QuickTime. If internet delivery is easier then full resolution h.264 mov or mp4 files should do. These can be sent by ftp or any reasonable on-line file service. Once you get them, transcode them to ProRes for editing and playback.

Re: Best playback codec for FCP

Thanks William. Makes perfect sense.