Communigate Pro AE-List@media-motion.tv Message 52581

In response to Brian Higgins... there is no DPI for video, only pixels

Concerning H.264, no matter what the compression settings or the container the format is compressed. No way round it. In almost every case h.264 is NOT suitable for a digital intermediate but suitable for a delivery format.

The format may be up to 14 bit color and may have very minimal compression artifacts but the format is still highly compressed except for the Hi444PP format definitely not lossless. If a client is asking for lossless h.264 then you must make sure they specify everything. Just jumping into the AME and grabbing the highest bit rate you can won't do the job. Also you must consider that the more exotic the compression scheme the fewer devices and softwares are availble to decompress it for playback or production.

Wikipedia has a nice run down of the format and many white papers are available on line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

IMHO h.264 is NOT generally suitable for a digital intermediate in a production pipeline but that does not mean people are not using it and using it incorrectly. There are certainly more opportunities to use h.264 incorrectly than correctly as a production format.

In the end you need to supply what the client asks for, but if the client is asking for something that does not exist or does not fit their intended use, it is you duty as a vendor to explain to them the limitations and offer a solution that will meet their needs. If you do that your E&O insurance provider will be happy with you and you rates won't go up because you will not keep getting sued for failure to deliver. Even if client specifies a delivery product does not meet all of their stated needs, if you supply that product to them and it does not meet intended use you are liable for damages.... It's that way in highway and bridge construction and it's that way in video production. You are hired as an expert and you are expected to know.

On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 1:05 PM, Adam Mercado <adam@influxx.com> wrote:

That's good to know teddy. I had a situation similar a couple of weeks ago trying to convert an mkv from the client into something useful. Spent a similar amount of time trying to find a solution. Hacked a workaround but this would have been useful.

Cheers

Sent from the ubiquitous Apple communication device I like to call Boris. Hence the brevity and poor spelling.

On Jan 19, 2014, at 11:08 AM, Teddy Gage <teddygage@gmail.com> wrote:

Sort of off-topic: the other day I needed to convert an AVC/h264 file in an .avi wrapper that was output from an old screen capture software for a series of tutorials. It needed to be editable, and easily iDevice compatible. I can tell you I tried every F-ing thing I could think of involving AVIsynth, FFmpeg, VLC, QT 7 Pro, VirtualDub/Mod, FCP, Premiere Pro and nothing would convert it. It only played through VLC.

We are talking 10 hour-long .avis, at 5 GB each. Then I found this AiSeeSoft Total Video Converter software, sucked it up and paid $40 and it's the best switchblade conversion tool I have ever used. It will ingest anything and batch output any format, with about 90 presets of devices and codecs. I think it even does Prores on PC, it definitely will output 10 bit DNxHD with alpha support, and it uses CUDA / OpenCL. I converted 2 hours of AVC into .mp4 in about 20 minutes at a 4:1 compression. For example it will even demux .mkv matroska files. Definitely worth a look if anyone runs into these issues.

On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Jonathan <sureal@charter.net> wrote:

Great solution, Teddy.

I gotta admit it can be confusing sometimes, even for someone like myself who entertains the idea that I know a fair amount about this stuff. A long time ago I had a conversation with a Panasonic engineer who was talking about 720 and thinking, oh yeah, I do 720, meaning, 720 X 540 (or 486). Of course he was talking about 1280 X 720 but HD had barely scratched the outer reaches of my consciousness back then. This was in the 90s sometime.

Jonathan

On Jan 19, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Teddy Gage wrote:

I had a client ask for a "quicktime, an .mp4, and an .h264"

So I relabled the same file with three different extensions

On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 1:18 PM, Jonathan <sureal@charter.net> wrote:

They seem to think they can get an uncompressed file from H264, yes.

On Jan 19, 2014, at 10:15 AM, Tim Thiessen wrote:

So they want an uncompressed compressed file?

iPhone

On Jan 19, 2014, at 10:07 AM, Jonathan <sureal@charter.net> wrote:

I'm searching for a clarity . . .

A client is asking for "H264 with the highest settings, 8bit uncompressed." H264 is, by definition compressed, correct? And though there are in theory, versions of H264 that are 10 bit, the garden variety H264 (created in, for example, Quicktime) is 8 bit. So the only part of this request that makes sense is "highest settings," right?

Any insights greatly appreciated.

Jonathan

JONATHAN PENZNER
VIDEO EDITING • MOTION GRAPHICS • DESIGN

| STUDIO 626 345-0285 |

| CELL 818 321-2890 |

sundancerealtime@me.com

--
_____________________________

VFX & Motion Graphic Artist
teddygage dot com

--
Rick Gerard