• Adobe Premiere Pro

  Questions regarding DNxHD exports

  Posted by Ivan Myles on April 8, 2013 at 2:39 am

  I am evaluating DNxHD as a potential intermediate and delivery codec for CS6 Premiere/AE/AME exports in a Windows environment. Here are a few questions after reading the Avid white paper and generating some test files using codec revisions 2.3.7 and 2.3.8:

  Are there any potential issues rendering 720p footage at 24.0 fps using the 720p/23.976 DNxHD setting? Test files were OK.

  What are your thoughts regarding DNxHD 4:2:2 as a high quality delivery codec? I currently use high profile, unconstrained, all-I-frame H.264 for playback from local disk to connected LCD monitors for presentations, trade shows, etc. DNxHD 4:2:2 has less luma/chroma shifting, but I’m not sure it’s worth the loss of ubiquity that H.264 provides. I also use low compression VC-1 as an alternative.

  I am having trouble with the 4:4:4 codec (see below). Tried both the 709 and RGB color levels with the DNxHD 4:4:4 1080p/24fps/10-bit setting, but the color and horizontal scale aren’t working properly. By comparison, 4:2:2 output looks good.

  Test file to be exported:

  

  DNxHD 4:4:4 export settings (both 709 and RGB color levels were used):

  

  Rendered DNxHD 4:4:4 file using 709 color level:

  

  Rendered DNxHD 4:4:4 file using RBG color level:

  

  DNxHD 4:2:2 export settings:

  

  Rendered DNxHD 1080p/24fps/4:2:2/175/10-bit file using RGB color level:

  

  Thanks for looking. I appreciate the response.

  Ivan Myles replied 13 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Ryan Holmes

  April 8, 2013 at 3:34 am

  DNxHD is a great mezzanine (or intermediate) codec. DNxHD and ProRes are very similar in that respect. Since you’re on a Windows box, I would also opt for DNxHD.

  I wouldn’t deliver DNxHD files to most (any?) clients. They likely won’t have a way to play them back appropriately (and you don’t want clients trying to download and install codecs…..nightmare scenario!). Plus the computer requirements can go up quite a bit if you hand them a DNxHD 220, 220x, or 444 file…unless you’re bringing your gear out and will play it from your equipment.

  If I’m handing someone a file to take with them on the road I always give them a h.264 mp4 file. It plays in virtually anything and provided you’ve encoded it at a sufficient bit rate/resolution tends to look relatively accurate. DNxHD is a great codec, but it’s a bit heavy for an end user.

  Just my $.02

  Ryan Holmes
  http://www.ryanholmes.me
  @CutColorPost
• 

  Ivan Myles

  April 8, 2013 at 6:15 am

  Thanks for the feedback, Ryan.

  [Ivan M. Semeniuk] “I am having trouble with the 4:4:4 codec”

  I was able to get the DNxHD 4:4:4 codec to work by changing the Premiere Pro export bit-depth setting from 48-bit to 24-bit. Doesn’t that clamp the output to 8-bits, though, even with a 10-bit codec?

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