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Old 12th September 2019, 01:32   #17  |  Link
poisondeathray
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 5,346
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stereodude View Post
Resolve also doesn't support lossless H.264.

Just double checking this...

x264 1920x1080p24 10bit422 --qp 0 imports into Resolve here . Checking the export uncompressed (video levels, retain subblack, superwhite checked in the export settings) shows no diff (my test clip was normal range, but had superdarks/brights, they are retained)






PSNR wise cineform , dnxhd/dnxhr , prores - they are quite close at similar bitrates, some score slightly higher on certain types of content, slighly lower on others . If anything, subjectively there is a tendency towards cineform being slightly more cleaner (wavelet based) , but prores and DNxHD being slightly more noisy (dct based). Prores typically scores slighly higher than DNxHD in objective measurements (no, it's not just Apple marketing, I've confirmed it many times) .


On Windows, cineform decodes the fastest out of those . On Mac, prores . It might partially depend on the software/hardware setup you are using too - some editors use GPU assisted decoding for AVC , and for some operations (like scaling for display)

Absolute fastest editing codec by a long shot is the GPU powered Cinegy Daniel2 . You can edit 8K natively on a laptop with a consumer GPU.

But there are other workflows you can argue that are better in certain situations than using full resolution intermediates - such as proxy editing





I like x264 , because it's highly configurable to whatever situation you need . PP is one of the few commercial editors that accepts x264 lossless and treats it correctly as lossless YUV (many programs convert YUV "lossless" codecs to RGB; so they are not actually "lossless" in that program) . I have no problems with x264 per se....but it could decode faster. My only gripe. You can feel the sluggishness with higher resolutions, multiple layers (even with fastdecode, I-frame) . Note once you start tuning x264 to decoding faster, the compression advantage becomes lower. It's a trade off like everything in video compression

Another thing I like about x264, is it's minimum quality level. People don't talk about this often. But for me, I'd rather have a certain minimum level of quality , than some high average, or some sections that are very high. Here is an old comparison (you can tell by era of the graphics LOL) , 1080p24 8bit source, but notice the drop in quality near the end section which was difficult to compress / high content complexity. IIRC x264 was constrained VBR with fastdecode. I've done many of these tests and this is representative of these codecs behaviours.

https://i.postimg.cc/vmgtgK25/PSNR-Y-1080.png

Some naysayers in the Mac camp said "oh it's "hacked" ffmpeg prores, not certified." But I did many tests with certifed prores too, and guess what - ffmpeg prores always scores higher. Not a single test shows certified prores produces higher quality when accounting for bitrate differences.

It should be mentioned in the past, Resolve had serious issues with the ffmpeg prores flavour. Things like black and corrupted frames, seemingly random. And not just Resolve either, but Resolve was especially picky. The ffmbc prores variant had far fewer issues. And certified prores no issues at all - rock stable.
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