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Blue_MiSfit · 23rd May 2019, 03:09

Sounds like you're going to do some post-production on these files.

I'd personally suggest keeping them in ProRes 422 HQ. This will actually be higher bitrate than your DV sources, but DV is a terrible format (4:1:1 or 4:2:0, non-square pixels, interlacing all required etc). ProRes is much more flexible and will keep 4:2:2 10 bit quality out of your NLE (important after you apply color adjustments).

If you MUST make them smaller (why oh why) then I'd suggest HEVC or AVC today, personally. Both are widely supported, and there are great free encoders and decoders. Export from your NLE into whatever its native format is (again, ProRes 422 HQ is often a great choice) then use a too like ffmpeg to encode very high quality lossy HEVC or AVC, preserving the 4:2:2 10 bit nature. For example:

Code:

High quality lossy 4:2:2 10 bit AVC encoding with x264
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 16 -preset superfast -tune film -x264opts keyint=15 output.mp4

High quality lossy 4:2:2 10 bit HEVC encoding with x265
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx265 -crf 8 -preset superfast -x265-params keyint=15 output.mp4

Play with the crf values (higher = more compression = smaller files). I found that for some fairly complex 24p content, using crf 8 for HEVC gave me ~8 Mbps average, which is a nice 3/4 reduction from DV. The same CRF value for x264 makes much larger files, but that's expected since the scales aren't aligned. In that case, CRF 16 gave me similar file sizes, but of course the HEVC version was higher quality.

Honestly though, at these file sizes just buy a couple hard drives and keep it in ProRes or whatever (just don't do post production and then re-export DV. Yuck!)

23rd May 2019, 03:09	#5 \| Link
Blue_MiSfit Derek Prestegard IRL Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 5,989	Sounds like you're going to do some post-production on these files. I'd personally suggest keeping them in ProRes 422 HQ. This will actually be higher bitrate than your DV sources, but DV is a terrible format (4:1:1 or 4:2:0, non-square pixels, interlacing all required etc). ProRes is much more flexible and will keep 4:2:2 10 bit quality out of your NLE (important after you apply color adjustments). If you MUST make them smaller (why oh why) then I'd suggest HEVC or AVC today, personally. Both are widely supported, and there are great free encoders and decoders. Export from your NLE into whatever its native format is (again, ProRes 422 HQ is often a great choice) then use a too like ffmpeg to encode very high quality lossy HEVC or AVC, preserving the 4:2:2 10 bit nature. For example: Code: High quality lossy 4:2:2 10 bit AVC encoding with x264 ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 16 -preset superfast -tune film -x264opts keyint=15 output.mp4 High quality lossy 4:2:2 10 bit HEVC encoding with x265 ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx265 -crf 8 -preset superfast -x265-params keyint=15 output.mp4 Play with the crf values (higher = more compression = smaller files). I found that for some fairly complex 24p content, using crf 8 for HEVC gave me ~8 Mbps average, which is a nice 3/4 reduction from DV. The same CRF value for x264 makes much larger files, but that's expected since the scales aren't aligned. In that case, CRF 16 gave me similar file sizes, but of course the HEVC version was higher quality. Honestly though, at these file sizes just buy a couple hard drives and keep it in ProRes or whatever (just don't do post production and then re-export DV. Yuck!)