The Art of Compression and Encoding

[Craig Parkes]

Even within Final Cut and Compressor You can also improve results using compression markers on scene changes, especially with fades etc where long GOP compression exposes macro blacking as i-frames fall outside the deepest black segment.

It's really very much about how much time you spend trying to encode things in a particular environment, and how flexible your encoder is.

[Rob Ruffo]

There is also the fact that one size does not fit all, and one set of settings can't possibly be optimal for every scene in a show. That's why scene by scene programmed compression is what's done for DVD and BluRay releases. And that compression is controlled by a compressionist, a person whose sole job is to determine proper optimal compression settings on a per scene basis based on the total "bit budget," or the required final file size. That's one reason why studio level DVD's have always looked a lot better than those produced by individuals using single compression settings, regardless of the compression engine. When there are fewer compromises, there are better results.

Fully agree. There are also better results when employing a highly knowledgeable and experienced professional -and downsides when you try to do everything yourself as a "one man band".

[Mike Lary]

I don't know if x264 has functionality to splice together compressed segments, but the high-end tools all do, at least for the H.264/VC-1 codecs.

Hi Erich,

Can you tell us what software was being used to splice together compressed segments, or the names of any that you know?

@ Steve: this is a great thread. Thanks for starting it!

[Subhadip Sen]

I posted this in another thread, and thought it might fit our theme of easy ways to encode directly off NLEs. Here's how to get compressed 4K H.264 files straight out of Premiere Pro -

If you want a quick 4K viewable file out of Premiere Pro then H.264 is an option too. Choose H.264, go for the HDTV 1080p preset. First thing you do then is choose Level as 5.1. That unlocks 4096x2304 at upto 27fps. If you are shooting 30p, 4096x2048 is possible. Level 5.2 gets you 4K at 60fps, but CS5.x doesn't support that natively. ~80-120 Mbps is excellent quality. Of course, the best compressed 4K is using DebugMode Frameserver to X264. I am amazed how good 4K X264 files look at ~16 Mbps.

A warning about 4K H.264 files - some players like VLC or Quicktime choke up as they are not optimized for Level 5+. The key is DXVA accelerated players - I have tried it on a $350 AMD E-350 netbook and it plays just fine! Also works with VDPAU for Linux distros. Haven't found a reliable solution for Mac OS X though. I don't like VLC, at all, but here's hoping inbound VLC 2.0 clears up L5+ support. I know VLC 2.0 uses DXVA on Windows, hopefully there's some optimizations for the OS X version too.

[Les Dittert]

x264: I like this codec. Using it as a 10 bit archival backup of several million frames of every take of more than one season of a very popular TV series. Almost indistinguishable from our telecines. Using command line version. Gets about 6 fps on an i7 .

[Subhadip Sen]

There's an X264 lossless mode which scales up to 4K, 4:4:4 and 10-bit. It is pretty amazing - it gets you lossless images at a lower bitrate than ProRes 4444 (which is lossy, of course). That said, CRF12 images are almost indistinguishable for most scenes at a fraction the bitrate as lossless.

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I did some h264 encoding tests recently, and the MainConcept encoding with Sorenson Squeeze blew my Compressor encodes out of the water. I suppose the multiple passes help quite a bit. Takes probably 4x as long as with Compressor though.

[Manuel López Pérez]

X264 is H.264. It is the best way to encode H.264.

I do not doubt that x264 is a great encoder, but does not support audio, so I do not find useful.

[adam r]

Is uploading prores422hq still the best quality option for youtube as per Jake Blackstone's suggestion in the encoding thread from January?

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...ta-Rates/page2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynrGtPmgJ90

[Alexander Mejia]

Is uploading prores422hq still the best quality option for youtube as per Jake Blackstone's suggestion in the encoding thread from January?

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...ta-Rates/page2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynrGtPmgJ90

If you want to do a test to see what Youtube will do to your footage, you can re-encode the file you're about to upload to h.264 at around 4Megabits per second. That is what youtube will do to your video.

The less compressed of an image you feed into it, the better it will be. Youtube/Vimeo et. all will always be a third generation copy of your source material:

Source (1st generation) --> Intermediate uploaded to youtube(2nd generation) --> Final result (3rd generation)

The key is to make sure the 2nd generation file is as visually close to the source as possible. ProRes is a very solid way to deliver this, but files could exceed the upload limitation size of the site you're going to.

A very high bit-rate h.264 file will also be comparable to ProRes. Make sure you put it in a .mp4 container for maximum compatibility.


Stay away from delivering anything inside of a .mov container! At some point you will run into Quicktime Gamma shift. I try to avoid delivering .mov files to anything other than a total apple workflow if at all possible.