As some of us live in cross-platform worlds (Mac/PC) and create video on or receive video from a Mac to play on SCS, the question arises "What is the best video codec to use when creating video for SCS playback on a PC?". I have no trouble (so far) with any of the MOV or MP4 files I have gotten or created, but I know that some codecs are more math-intensive than others (H.264) and if your playback PC is not the most fire-breathing thing on the planet, video stutters and the CPU usage of SCS climbs to 75% (and I seriously have NOTHING else running on a Dell M65 (32-bit Win 7, 4GB RAM). I was hoping someone could advise me on the best choice for exporting or transcoding video for SCS.
When we say MP4 or MOV files, we are talking container. Inside both of those is the data compressed with a video codec such as H.264 or Apple Motion JPEG or something. As I peruse the web and find discussions of the optimal codec for editing I read that Microsoft Native AVI or MPEG-2 are the preferred formats. Given that you want your editing to go fast and not spend a lot of time decompressing, it would seem like the same consideration would apply to the format of the video used in SCS -- low decompression overhead.
Of course, looking at the disk drive light on the laptop suggests I might be limited by the bandwidth there and that a file that's too large would choke the system too.
Am I on the right track? Any suggestions?
Jeff
Freelancer in the DFW, TX Metroplex