Final Cut Compression help needed for Live music performance.

Hello Everyone,

I need a little help deciding the best way to do something. I am not very knowledgable about video codecs.

I am a musician and for my live performance I use Ableton Live. This software allows me to have a video channel along with my audio material. I will have 2 audio channels of music, an audio channel for my microphone and the video channel. Everything plays back in sync from a Macbook Pro 2.2 with an internal 7200rpm drive. I shoot the video onto a screen from a LCD projector having the mac "dual screen" it out.

My big question is what codec should I use? I have decided 720X480 is a good size. Ableton only allows Apple's QuickTime format (.mov).

I was told on the Ableton forum that JPEG would be the least taxing on the computer and also look good enough even with the settings at about 60% quality.

Do you guys agree?

From Final Cut Pro I see Motion JPEG A, Motion JPEG B and Photo - JPEG... which one is the "right" one to use?

And just to verify my footsteps in Final Cut I go File -> Export -> Using Quicktime Conversion then select Quicktime Movie then click Options and under Video Settings that's where I pick the compression codec... Am I correct?

I really don't want to mess this up... especially because it will an hours worth of video so I don't want to redo my work.

A huge thank you in advance to any Cow members that can suggest anything here!!


Jon Davis

Powermac dual 2.5 G5, Production Bundle, Canon ZR60