The Art of Compression and Encoding

[Alexander Mejia]

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

You can still deliver a seperate PCM .wav or .aiff. Any Encoder gui that uses x264 will have a seperate package for handling some sort of audio.

[adam r]

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.

So Render h.264 , mp4 , 4 megabits/s straight out of PProCS6 ... Also do you have any high quality examples on youtube? ... thanks for the tip as I have a lot to learn.

[adam r]

So Render h.264 , mp4 , 4 megabits/s straight out of PProCS6 ... Also do you have any high quality examples on youtube? ... thanks for the tip as I have a lot to learn.

Found your examples of h264
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1pNN...layer_embedded

... and Jakes example of h264 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htCyvK3bW1k

but it I have the bandwidthe etc then the prores422hq still looks much better, but this means continuing to rely on mac

[Mike P.]

Is there a good alternative to prores? I know cineform is supposed to be as good (if not better), but it also costs money I'd rather not have to spend... so is there something similar that's already included in CS5.5 or CS6?

[Manuel López Pérez]

Is there a good alternative to prores? I know cineform is supposed to be as good (if not better), but it also costs money I'd rather not have to spend... so is there something similar that's already included in CS5.5 or CS6?

Cineform is now free with GoPro Cineform Studio.

[Mark Pavy]

+1 for Cineform.

Well worth the cost.

[Alexander Mejia]

So Render h.264 , mp4 , 4 megabits/s straight out of PProCS6 ... Also do you have any high quality examples on youtube? ... thanks for the tip as I have a lot to learn.

Its not about rendering straight out. It would be like this:

Render Intermediate out of Premiere Pro. --> Re-render that file into a 4mbps h.264 = Simulation of how Youtube will crush your video.

For my professional clients I will hand them a YUV 4:2:0 h.264 in a .mp4 contianer to send to Youtube since I feel that I can do a 4:2:0 conversion better then they do. When you send a ProRes422, Youtube uses their RGB 4:2:2 --> YUV 4:2:0 resampling algorithm which I do not like.

Here is a video I sent from a Red one to youtube for a client: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhukZ1d5Zwc Source file was a 20 mbps 1920x1080 h.264 in a .mp4 container.