Video Codecs

I know this has been asked a million times, but what is the optimal codec for playback in Cubase (ideally HD)? Do I need a Blackmagic decklink card, because I’m tired of the video taking 1-3 seconds to catch up every time I hit play. Also nudging through frames is pretty laggy and sometimes isn’t synced exactly at first. Currently I’ve been using HD H.264 .mov files. Thanks

DNxHD from Avid works very well, it’s both PC and Mac compatible.
Free download from their website.

Ollie

Hi,

newbies question:
I download the package from Avid and install it… but, what do I do now to use those codec?
thank you

Well it’s a Quicktime codec so from wherever you make your Quicktimes from, you just select the codec and options instead of h.264 or whatever.

Keep in mind that DNxHD is fairly high bitrate (35-45mbit at its lowest depending on the framerate) but it is an “All Intraframe” codec which should solve your scrubbing problem.

You can still use h.264 and get decent interactivity - just set the keyframes to no more than a second apart when compressing. If your computer is older/slower, try setting them to half that of the framerate of the movie (every 15 frames for 30fps, 12 for 24fps…)

I’ve tried nearly everything, and H264 works the best, never had a single issue. I’m using a recent 15" MBPro Retina with the stock 2GB NVIDIA GeForce.