MP4 or MOV

dronelover · Jun 19, 2020

So iv been researching.

Some say no difference in quality due to Different containers but same contents.
Other say that you loose quality if using Mp4 re-rendering over and over, but not MOV cineform.

whats the deal here?

i myself dont see a difference other than mov/cineform has higher file size and way higher mbps.
Im talking about 644mbps to 1041mbps output MOV compared to the original 60mbps MO4.

XerxesZ · Jun 20, 2020

Hi Dronelover,

They make look the same when you first view them, but results when edited are completely different.

"Some say no difference in quality due to Different containers but same contents.
Other say that you loose quality if using Mp4 re-rendering over and over, but not MOV CineForm"

It's not the container that is important , but the compression method. MP4s or 5 or apple's mov "container" can represent many compression types.

CineForm was owned by GoPro, and released as open source I believe, at one time as a format for editing professional videos l. Apple's ProRes is similar in purpose, but probably twice the size of CineForm, depending on the version you work with. Both appear as .mov files. Other pro formats exist too.

When editing you are often required to work with particular effects or processes that require to to render clips for other processes to follow. Each generation the quality deteriorates and by the time your render a video for YouTube, it sucks.

When you use CineForm or ProRes for all work, the quality stays quite high to the end. Then you render a low level MP4 for public distribution. The high end can be repurposed for many formats and distributions as needed. It can be re-edited again if desired.

This is very basic explanation. Whole books and videos describe this in more detail. I use Adobe Premier Pro for editing, and Adobe Media Encoder for selecting final distribution formats.

Good Luck, Hope this helps.

dronelover · Jun 21, 2020

yes it helps alot.

thanks for clearing this for me.

ill be converting my gopro footages in cineform from now on.
In da vinci there is quicktime that outputs cineform and there is avi that also does thesame.
Which of these two should i go with?

XerxesZ · Jun 22, 2020

As long as using CineForm container it doesn't matter. Your editing software may be more compatible with one more one over another. Using Premiere pro .mov is easy, .Avi may work also.