Rangefinder - November 2013

Many photographers have em- braced the video capability of their HDSLRs to the point of making
motion capture a large part of their revenue
stream. In addition to continuing to provide
professional-level still capture, many are
now also producing film-quality footage for
weddings, events and commercial clients.
As technology improves, there is also an
increasing interest in working with video
that that has not been optimized or com-
pressed by the camera using the H.264

codec. Instead many want the option to work with uncompressed or RAW video as well as the ability to pull still images from video footage. There are definite advantages to working with these new capabilities but there are also disadvantages to consider.

H.264 MPEG Codec

Before delving into some of the newer
choices, it’s important to understand what
you are working with currently (likely the
H.264 MPEG codec). This is a standardized
video codec, which does several things with
your video after it’s captured by the camera’s
sensor. (Some cameras may use AVCHD
codec which utilizes less compression and
possibly higher bit rates, but which demand
more processing power to handle).
The processing of the video file in this
manner is very similar to what happens to
a still image when it is saved as a JPEG. The
video is processed by the camera’s image
processor and is tweaked for sharpness,
contrast and color saturation. This provides
quality video straight from the camera. As-
suming that the video has been properly
exposed and captured with a correct white
balance setting, you’ll have video that looks
good for general use or which can serve as
the material for further enhancements using
your favorite video editing application such
as Apple’s Final Cut or Adobe Premiere.
One of its biggest advantages is that files
are compressed, allowing for the ability
to save more high resolution video onto
a CompactFlash (CF) or Secure Digital
(SD) card. The files are compatible with
all video-editing applications, though they
are often converted into another file for-
mat such as Apple Pro Res so that the data
can be handled more efficiently.
This compression results in some data
being lost in order to provide smaller files
that are then stored on a media card. This
can result in some artifacting, which might
be noticeable in areas of high contrast. De-
spite the data loss, however, these files are
often more than adequate for most videog-
raphers’ needs.