Which standard for international distribution?
 

I am collecting video from a variety of sources. Most of it is ntsc 29.97, some of it might be PAL. Some is 720x486 8-bit uncompressed and some is dv 720x480.

I am converting it to one standard for international distribution to news media. It will be downloaded from the web but not displayed on the web. It is for eventual broadcast. It has been suggested that I should make it H.264 30p 720x480, which will be an easy conversion for anyone downloading it. Is this reasonable?

I have made test conversions from 30p to PAL and to 29.97 and it seems to look okay. There is no music and very little dialog so a slight change in the speed and pitch of the audio is acceptable.

What standard would you choose if you wanted it to be easy to convert for news outlets and look good around the world?

I would leave everything in the original standard in order to avoid double conversion. For example if your original footage is PAL, you convert it to NTSC, a TV station in PAL land will need to convert it back to PAL - you may not see a degradation after the first conversion (although there is), but there will definitely be degradation after two conversions.

Let the users convert it according to their need - your job is to supply them with the highest possible quality. Alternatively, you may want to supply both standards - it's up to you...

Thank you.
 

But assuming that my client is determined to have a standard format for distribution, is h.264 30p 720x480 a reasonable choice?

H.264 (a.k.a. AVC and MPEG4) is a consumer/delivery format, not an aquisition/editing format. If your content is for news media, go with an all I-frame compression - you need quality much higher than any MPEG can produce.

The format most online video footage companies use is QuickTime JPEG either A or B, better yet, Animation.

If the footage is DV, then please leave it at DV. Professional users don't like videos that have been degraded through unnecessary processing.

I have to balance download time with quality. That's why we were thinking H.264.

I will look into Quicktime JPEG A or B. Any broadcast news outlet would be comfortable with that?

I assume the JPEG sequence would be a smaller download than animation.

In speaking with three local news outlets they all pretty much said unless it is their preferred brand of HD--which it cannot be-- then it falls into the broad category of "something weird" and they don't worry about the details after that. At that point their decision to broadcast it or not depends on content not file type. But I still strive to provide the best quality at the smallest file size and in a form that will be easily convertible into whatever standard.

This thread is advocating for h.264
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...highlight=jpeg