In video editing, depending on what you want to do (archiving, streaming, hi-def movie, dvd, etc...), you will have to choose between several video and audio codecs inserted in a multi-media container.

Containers

“A container format is a computer file format that can contain various types of data, compressed by means of standardized audio/video codecs. The container file is used to identify and interleave the different data types. Simpler container formats can contain different types of audio codecs, while more advanced container formats can support multiple audio and video streams, subtitles, chapter-information, and meta-data (tags) - along with the synchronization information needed to play back the various streams together.”

I couldn’t resist giving you that definition from wikipedia.org about container formats. A container is just a video file format that combines all the data (video, sound, synchronisation of video and sound, tags, etc...) that make up your movie. Here are some examples of multi-media containers: IFF, AVI, ASF, MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, OGG, RealMedia, MKV, MP4, etc...

Cinelerra supports rendering three containers which can hold both video and audio: AVI, MOV and OGG. Notes: There are also containers that only contains video (MPEGVideo) or audio (AIFF, WAV, MPEGAudio, AC3).

Codecs

“Codecs (in the modern, software sense) encode a stream or signal for transmission, storage or encryption and decode it for viewing or editing.” (according to wikipedia.org)

There are a ton of video codecs! Just see the impressive list on: http://www.fourcc.org/codecs.php . A video-codec compression can be lossless (eg: H.264lossless, HuffYUV (meant to replace YCbCr)) or lossy (eg: Dirac, MPEG-4 Part2, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MJPEG, Theora, WMV, Indeo etc...). Audio codecs can be non-compressed (eg: AIFF, WAV, PCM), lossless compressed (eg: ALS, FLAC, WMA9lossless...) or lossy (eg: AC3, MPEGAudio, AAC, Vorbis, WMA).

Cinelerra supports rendering to the following codecs: H.264, MJPEG, MPEG-4, YCbCr, PNG, JPEG, Theora, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (for video) and AIFF, AU, MP3, Vorbis, MPEG-4Audio, WAV, U-Law (for audio).

The question is: Which video and audio codecs are best supported by Cinelerra for each multi-media container?

• Ogg container (.ogg)

• Microsoft AVI container (.avi)

Video Codec	Audio codec	Saves	Reopens	Read with mplayer	Notes
h.264	mp3	✔	crashes	video audio ✔	video error: “no frames”
	vorbis	✔		video audio	idem - bad sound
	mpeg4 audio	✔		video audio	video: idem - no sound
	twos complement	✔	crashes	video audio ✔	video error: “no frames”
MPEG-4	mp3	✔		✔ video audio ✔	bad synchronisation
	vorbis	✔		✔ video audio ✔	bad synchronisation
	mpeg4 audio	✔		video audio
	twos complement	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchronisation
microsoft MPEG-4	mp3	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	bad synchronisation
	vorbis	✔		video audio ✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔		video audio
	twos complement	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	good synchronisation
jpeg	mp3	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	bad synchronisation
	vorbis	✔	crashes	video audio ✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔	crashes	video audio
	twos complement	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	good synchronisation
Motion jpeg	mp3	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	low video quality - bad synchro
	vorbis	✔	crashes	✔ video audio	low video quality
	mpeg4 audio	✔	crashes	video audio	low video quality - good synchro
	twos complement	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔
png	mp3	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time - bad synchro
	vorbis	✔	crashes	✔ video audio	idem
	mpeg4 audio	✔	crashes	✔ video audio	idem
	twos complement	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time - good synchro
DV	mp3	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro & quality -weightfile
	vorbis	✔	crashes	✔ video audio	idem
	mpeg4 audio	✔	crashes	video audio	black screen
	twos complement	✔	crashes	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro & quality -weightfile

• Quicktime container (.mov)

Video Codec	Audio codec	Saves	Reopens	Read with mplayer	Notes
h.264	mp3	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	vorbis	✔	✔	✔ video audio
	mpeg4 audio	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	twos complement	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	U-Law	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	IMA-4	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	Unsigned	✔		✔ video audio	bad sound
MPEG-4	mp3	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	vorbis	✔		✔ video audio	no sound
	mpeg4 audio	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	twos complement	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	U-Law	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	IMA-4	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	Unsigned	✔		✔ video audio	bad sound
microsoft MPEG-4	mp3	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - medium video quality
	vorbis	✔		✔ video audio	no sound - medium video quality
	mpeg4 audio	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - medium video quality
	twos complement	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - medium video quality
	U-Law	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - medium video quality
	IMA-4	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - medium video quality
	Unsigned	✔		✔ video audio	bad sound
jpeg	mp3	✔		✔ video audio	bad sound
	vorbis	✔		✔ video audio	no sound
	mpeg4 audio	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	twos complement	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	U-Law	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	IMA-4	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	Unsigned	✔		✔ video audio	bad sound
Motion jpeg	mp3	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	vorbis	✔		✔ video audio	no sound
	mpeg4 audio	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	twos complement	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	U-Law	✔		✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	IMA-4	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	good synchro - good video quality
	Unsigned	✔		✔ video audio	bad sound
png 1)	mp3	✔		✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time
	vorbis	✔		✔ video audio	idem
	mpeg4 audio	✔		✔ video audio ✔	idem
	twos complement	✔		✔ video audio ✔	idem
	U-Law	✔		✔ video audio ✔	idem
	IMA-4	✔		✔ video audio ✔	idem
	Unsigned	✔		✔ video audio	idem - bad sound
Png with alpha	mp3	✔		✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time - good video
	vorbis	✔		✔ video audio	idem - no sound
	mpeg4 audio	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time - good video
	twos complement	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time - good video
	U-Law	✔		✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time - good video
	IMA-4	✔	✔	✔ video audio ✔	long rendering time - good video
	Unsigned	✔		✔ video audio	idem - bad sound
DV	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
Uncompressed RGB	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
Uncompressed RGBA	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
YUV 4:2:0	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
DV	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
YCbCr 4:2:2 (yuv2)	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
YCbCr 4:2:2 (2yuv)	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
YCbCr 4:4:4	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
YCbCrA 4:4:4:4	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔
YCbCr 4:4:4 10bit	mp3	✔
	vorbis	✔
	mpeg4 audio	✔
	twos complement	✔
	U-Law	✔
	IMA-4	✔
	Unsigned	✔

• Raw DV container (.dv)

• MPEG Video container (.m2v)

• YUV4MPEG Stream container (.m2v)