video cameras

[Tom Honeyman]

I basically agree that we should keep copies of the original,  
untransformed media files, whatever they may be. By all means, make  
derivatives, but hang on to the original!

But I just want to put a warning about using "mov" format. MOV, and  
AVI are just wrappers around media streams. They contain general  
metadata, and explain the encoding of the streams of media (video,  
audio, subtitles etc) contained within them. So basically you could  
transcode a media file into any number of encodings and still save it  
as a mov file. Or you could receive mov files from different sources  
and require different codecs to play them back.

So, potentially you could have a collection of videos that use  
completely different codecs, all saved as mov files. A casual  
inspection of files would not reveal that however, and this is the  
dangerous bit. In transferring a media file from one computer to  
another, the average user wont know until they try to open all the  
files that they actually have all of the necessary codecs to play  
them. Exactly the same problem applies to AVI. Of course, there are  
ways around this, but still, it's worth knowing.

As for forward compatibility, well that depends on Apple.

-tom

On 26/03/2010, at 11:46 AM, Aidan Wilson wrote:

> If you transfer from a HDD camera as soon as you can, then the file  
> will be in .mov format, which is about the best format around when  
> it comes to forward-compatibility and cross-platform-ness, and it  
> will be an exact clone of what's on the camera.