Does Da Vinci Like M2T Videos?

[George Dean]

Terence, my 2 cents…..

When I have used intermediate files in place of the original source media for a best quality project, I have to wonder why I would ever need the originals? There are some positive answers that will depend on the future and a big maybe, but for practical purposes, if the originals were not good enough for my project and I was forced to use intermediates, most likely if I needed that source for a re-do or another project I would want to use the intermediates. So, if I want redundant storage it will be multiple copies of those intermediates.

I’m sure there is probably a obscure reason to keep the originals, but for me and my workflow I fail to identify any.

Best Regards……George

[Marc Wielage]

I would keep the originals for the simple reason of “protection against disaster.” If calamity struck and multiple drives failed, it’s nice to have the ability to go back to the “original” originals and redo the transcodes. But once the project is done, you could most likely wipe the MT2T files and just keep the transcodes. Drives are cheap.

[Terence Christopher]

Ole Dean and Marc
Thanks for your advice and experience. The problem is having too many discs etc. It is only recently that big discs have been cheap enough and my present problem stems from having files scattered across discs that are too small and unwieldy to be useful. I am now deleting multiple reduntant disks and centralising the back up as well as switching to the mxf. format. Hopefully my work flow will become rational. Thanks for all of your great help it has given me the ability to do this. Sorry to ask one more question. can you recommend a good utility that allows me to see the metadata of these videos? It would be really nice to have that abstracted into a data base linked to them. Can you do that with DaVinci?
Terence

[Terence Christopher]

Hi Ole I have come up with a new problem that you need to know about. I have been running out of file space which seemed impossible however an engineer at QNAP suggested it might be the file size.. Which it was. I found that a 10 gigabyte file became 84 gigabytes after transcoding.. I was transcoding another set of clips and the transcoding seized up so I was able to see in the same clip the size of the clip before and after transcoding and there was a huge difference.
As both clips were playable I was able to see what was going on. It appears that the transcoding programme was going in loops transcoding a small subset of the clip repeatedly producing a chaotic looping of the image.
I don’t know what prompted this. I have contacted Sagi Gal who has been very helpful and am waiting for his response. However I suspect I will have to re transcode all of my files and I might have to ask you for another tip about which program to use
Terence

[Terence Christopher]

Hi Ole Sagi has replied and the problem might have been my bit rate setting. However the programme has also crashed and I will have to reinstall it and retest it. So It might have all been my fault and inexperience.
Terence

[Ole Kristiansen]

Hi Terence !

If you have the courage – then try to install FFmpeg and batch convert your m2t recordings with FFmpeg to .mov – this way the recordings will have almost the same size after the conversion! See here how to do – remember to change: (* .MTS) to (* .M2T) in the batch file!

Best,
Ole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUxB-qdncxc

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[Terence Christopher]

HI Ole that sounds encouraging. However I need know something about the ffmpeg format versus the DNxHD 180 and The ProRes 422. Format. Sagi suggested that one should have at least this bit rate to maintain the quality.
The DNxHD 36 format is apparently only useful as a proxy file and A higher resolution format is needed by DaVinci to obtain the best resolution Master after editing. I saw that the ProRes conversion by the ER Media Toolkit is in Mov format but is still 5 x bigger than my M2t original though the DNxHD 180 format was 10 bigger than the original. I am running out of drive space on my 30 Tb NAS Are you certain that the ffmpeg conversion will protect me. I think that app might actually be employed by the ER Media Toolkit in its conversion. I am wondering whether I should use the DNxHd 36 as a proxy and hopefully use the M2t as the higher quality reference source (or some other format that you cuold recommend) for the detail. I am facing the removal of 30 TB DNxHD 180 files as they are stalling my drives or purchasing another 20 or 30 TB of drive space. either as USB drives or an extension to my NAS which is only a 6 drive system with 10Tb drives. (I had thought that was overkill)
Terence

[Ole Kristiansen]

FFmpeg and m2t!

With FFmpeg, your m2t recordings will not be larger when changing to .mov – FFmpeg will Rewrap from m2t container to .mov container – without changing the codec!

[Terence Christopher]

Hi Ole I am sorry to still be bugging you. I have been away getting more disc space and clearing out a critical drive. So I have not yet tried the ffmpeg switch to .mov though I did it with one clip and found that if I then did the transcode to DNxHD that it was 5 times bigger rather than 10 times bigger.. So some improvement. However I thought i would try to see what benefit I would be getting from the DNxHD approach and tried to load one of my files into Da Vinci just to try it out. But Da Vinci would not accept it. Here is its format as produced by ER Media Toolkit,
Clip 001_DNxHD-HD1080[Anamorphic}
It plays perfectly well, and my Da Vinci is still working with my old MP4 videos that I edited so I think it is working maybe there is a setting that I have missed?
Terence

[Terence Christopher]

Hi Ole this is a final follow up to all of your very helpful posts. I found that I could use ER Media toolkit to transcode my DNxHD.mx movies to DNxHD.mov This was a lot less work for me . The output was easily compatible with Da Vinci as you predicted. Then after a lot of talking to George who said I should look around to find the best delivery wrapper. I looked at DaVinci which has lots of Mp4 options I decided to go to the Master option with best quality. That has been going well and I am now back in the editing business. A comparison between the DNxHd original and the final master was really satisfactory for my work. So I am planning to save the large DNxHD on an external big HD for archiving and the same for the smaller M2s on a separate USB HD. The master MP4 will be the public version. Thus you and George have guided me through this maze to what I think will be a successful conclusion after a few months of editing. So thanks very much indeed for your patience and great ideas. I am really grateful
Terence