Best Video Codec? (Options in post)

[Aereldor]

Greetings.

I've been using Sony Movie Studio 13 Platinum, and was unsure of what codec I should use for the best quality, and what the tradeoff is in terms of rendering time. All of my projects are rendered at 1920x1080, 24p without exception. I'm aware that some of these codecs are audio-exclusive, and that others are obsolete, such as QuickTime 7. 

 

The highest bitrate I can find is 'XDCAM EX', which has 'HQ 1920x1080-24p, 35 Mbps VBR'. I've also found that 'Sony XAVC S' is the only codec that has a pre-configured 4k option. 'MainConcept AVC/AAC' also appears to have a 'Blu-ray 1920x1080-24p, 25 Mbps video stream'. MainConcept MPEG-2' has the same option available.

What do you think is the best codec in terms of video quality, filesize efficiency, and compression artefacts? Which are better in terms of compatibility? (I only upload to YouTube and Facebook). If it's any help, I'm running a Core i3-4160 with 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM and a 2GB GTX 960.

Regards,

Aereldor.

[mariushm]

Whatever you upload to Youtube,Youtube will recompress into its own version so there's no point in encoding with the super highest quality settings because Youtube will introduce a quality loss.

Best option would be to use as much bitrate as you can afford and raise the quality settings as much as you're willing to wait (with higher bitrate you get about the same quality as lower bitrate+high quality settings)

XAVC S  is a custom version of AVC (h264),which can encode at higher bitrates than what regular AVC was designed for (while AVC you see bitrates of up to 60 mbps, with xavc s you can see 100-120 mbps ), Anyway, for 1080p, XAVC S won't give you more quality compared to regular AVC.

 

Not sure if Youtube supports xdcam.  My advice would be to stick with regular AVC , and out of all those I think the most stable is MainConcept AVC.

[Cereal5]

well those aren't the actual encoding codecs. Quicktime is a blanket term because quicktime supports multiple different codecs, including things like H.261/2/3/4, MPEG-4 pt 2, and AVI.

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

MPEG probably. No MP4 options?

Many of them do export to MP4, notably the 35 Mbps XDCAM EX codec. 

[mariushm]

PS.  'Blu-ray 1920x1080-24p, 25 Mbps video stream'   is a template, designed to help you produce an encoded stream to be compatible with blu ray discs.

 

The videos on blu ray discs have to follow a stricter format, a subset of AVC (h264).. well, it's AVC but with some codec options restricted to smaller values so that when decoding video, a bluray player won't need huge amounts of memory to decode each frame.

So you don't get more quality if you choose such a template, but you also don't lose much quality if your bitrate is going to be high.

 

You can start from that template and loosen it up , raise the bitrate, lower some settings that use a lot of cpu power to render the video if you want it encoded faster..

[Aereldor]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

PS.  'Blu-ray 1920x1080-24p, 25 Mbps video stream'   is a template, designed to help you produce an encoded stream to be compatible with blu ray discs.

 

The videos on blu ray discs have to follow a stricter format, a subset of AVC (h264).. well, it's AVC but with some codec options restricted to smaller values so that when decoding video, a bluray player won't need huge amounts of memory to decode each frame.

So you don't get more quality if you choose such a template, but you also don't lose much quality if your bitrate is going to be high.

 

You can start from that template and loosen it up , raise the bitrate, lower some settings that use a lot of cpu power to render the video if you want it encoded faster..

I can't get the bitrate any higher than 24 Mbps with most codecs, with the exceptions being the MainConcept templates which go up to 240 Mbps (and I can't open the files), and the XDCAM EX template, which is locked at 35 MBPS. It also performs the best as far as rendering time goes. I'm not quite sure what codec it's using.

[mariushm]

XDCAM EX  uses MPEG-2 codec (the same used on DVDs ) to compress 1080p content at up to 35 mbps (variable bitrate). That's why it's faster, because AVC spends more time and analyzes the frames more thorougly to keep more quality in the frames.

[Aereldor]

45 minutes ago, mariushm said:

XDCAM EX  uses MPEG-2 codec (the same used on DVDs ) to compress 1080p content at up to 35 mbps (variable bitrate). That's why it's faster, because AVC spends more time and analyzes the frames more thorougly to keep more quality in the frames.

Oh. Alright. Is it a noticeable increase on quality for, say, YouTube videos? Here's a comparison I created of the same video exported in both formats. Also, I can't play the AVC video because of the format it's exported in.

 

NAME	FILE EXTENSION	BITRATE	RENDER TIME	FILESIZE
XDCAM EX	MP4	35 Mbps	14s	12.3 MB
Sony AVC/MVC	AVC	24 Mbps	18s	11.6 MB

 

 

[mariushm]

MPEG-2 as a codec is simpler than AVC, it spends less time analyzing each video frame in order to figure out what human eyes would concentrate on, which areas of the frame should be kept in more detail, where more quality should be retained.

AVC is much smarter, can analyze the frames in more detail, can keep more quality.

 

35 mbps of bitrate is a lot for 1080p content, so most encoded content will look good.

Depending on content though, a second of video could be compressed by AVC in 24-30 mbps and have more quality when watched by human eyes compared with the same second in 35 mbps of MPEG-2 content.

Especially in high motion sequences, you may find out that MPEG-2 won't produce good enough videos.

 

Not sure how to explain it to you as you seem to have absolutely no idea how video codecs work... and honestly i'm not even sure I should bother spending time to explain it to you.

 

Anyway, my advice would be to stick with Main Concept AVC and 24 mbps or more. Like I said, youtube will recompress anything you throw at it anyway.

 

 

[Aereldor]

8 hours ago, mariushm said:

MPEG-2 as a codec is simpler than AVC, it spends less time analyzing each video frame in order to figure out what human eyes would concentrate on, which areas of the frame should be kept in more detail, where more quality should be retained.

AVC is much smarter, can analyze the frames in more detail, can keep more quality.

 

35 mbps of bitrate is a lot for 1080p content, so most encoded content will look good.

Depending on content though, a second of video could be compressed by AVC in 24-30 mbps and have more quality when watched by human eyes compared with the same second in 35 mbps of MPEG-2 content.

Especially in high motion sequences, you may find out that MPEG-2 won't produce good enough videos.

 

Not sure how to explain it to you as you seem to have absolutely no idea how video codecs work... and honestly i'm not even sure I should bother spending time to explain it to you.

 

Anyway, my advice would be to stick with Main Concept AVC and 24 mbps or more. Like I said, youtube will recompress anything you throw at it anyway.

 

 

I can't seem to open .AVC files the MainConcept template generates. However, the Sony AVC/MVC template appears to output MP4 files.

[kirashi]

I would use the Sony AVC/MVC codec, output as MP4, and tweak settings to what works best for you.

Generally, YouTube videos at 1080p should have ~12Mbps, and at 720p should have ~8Mbps.

You can output more if you want, but when you upload it YouTube is just going to recompress it anyway so...

[mariushm]

The .AVC files are probably RAW h264 streams, which are basically not packed in a container like MP4 or MKV.

They will probably play in Media Player Classic Home Cinema , if not directly , by renaming the extension to .264

 

You can mux the raw stream Main Concept generates with an audio track  (run export / render a second time and choose an audio only format like AC3/AAC/FLAC) using a muxer like MKVToolnix or mp4box ( My MP4Box GUI) / mp4muxer (google them)

 

Still, the mainconcept templates should have some option in there to encode audio as well (maybe you didn't check something in the template options), in which case you'd have a choice to choose MP4 as container for the video and audio streams.

[Aereldor]

3 hours ago, mariushm said:

The .AVC files are probably RAW h264 streams, which are basically not packed in a container like MP4 or MKV.

They will probably play in Media Player Classic Home Cinema , if not directly , by renaming the extension to .264

 

You can mux the raw stream Main Concept generates with an audio track  (run export / render a second time and choose an audio only format like AC3/AAC/FLAC) using a muxer like MKVToolnix or mp4box ( My MP4Box GUI) / mp4muxer (google them)

 

Still, the mainconcept templates should have some option in there to encode audio as well (maybe you didn't check something in the template options), in which case you'd have a choice to choose MP4 as container for the video and audio streams.

How does one merge a separate video and audio file without having to combine them in the editor and rendering the video over again?

Also, would you recommend using the 24 Mbps codec instead? Will I achieve substantially more quality by exporting via MainConcept AVC at a higher bitrate and then naming the extension?

Also, does YouTube even support .AVC video files?

EDIT: renaming the file extension to .264 didn't change anything. I still can't open it.

[mariushm]

How does one merge a separate video and audio file without having to combine them in the editor and rendering the video over again?

 

I said it several times in this thread already.  PAY MORE ATTENTION WHEN READING MESSAGES.

 

MKV and MP4 (and others) are file formats, containers - they hold video and audio tracks and subtitle tracks and other metadata. You can use MUX-ers to combine video and audio tracks and export the contents into such a container.

For MKV, I recommended MKVToolnix : https://mkvtoolnix.download/

On Windows, you can download it from here: https://www.fosshub.com/MKVToolNix.html

 

Did you even bother to download and check that application out?

 

You start the application, you drag the video track and the audio track and you click the button "start muxing" and you get a MKV file.

 

Like I said. AVC files are probably simply raw h264 streams. They have to be muxed with audio track and put into a container (mkv or mp4 or any other container that Youtube accepts). No, youtube probably won't accept a raw stream, has to be put into a proper container first.

 

Yes, I would recommend Mainconcept over mpeg-2 and i would recommend mainconcept over other AVC encoders in the suite because it seems more stable to me.

i would recommend checking out the options for that mainconcept codec, maybe create a custom template, and choose to put the data into a container like MP4 if it's easier for you. The suite should offer you the choice of using a container, not just to save a  raw h264 stream to disk.

I don't have the suite (or Sony Vegas) installed right now on this computers so I can't really tell you step by step where to click and I'm not even sure I'd want to do that.