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Exporting lossless video (x264 vs h264 and more!)
Hey there,
I just finished editing an extended version of the MST3k Movie and I’m ready to export the final product. I exported some previews with the following settings:
The short previews looked great with these settings, but I want to make sure the actual movie is exported at the highest quality (lossless or as close). The project was made from the original Blu-ray M2TS files, 1920 x 1080.
• It’s my understanding that x264 is better than H264?
• Is there an advantage to using Adobe Media Encoder instead of Premiere?
• I might want to add an alternate audio stream later in an MKV. Should I export the video stream and audio stream separately?Hope this info helps you and thanks in advance!
PL Boucher
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7 Replies
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[Pierre-Luc Boucher] “lossless or as close”
H264 or x264 aren’t even close to lossless. You would probably want to use DNxHD
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Good to know, I wasn’t familliar with this codec. The reason I thought of H264 as the best option was this: when I demux the streams from an MKV made directly from a Blu-ray using tsMuxer, the codec for the video stream usually shows H264.
Was I wrong in my way of thinking? I see DNxHD is made by AVID, so would it be compatible with Premiere?
Thanks for your reply!
PL Boucher
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DNxHD is built into Premiere. Blu rays support H262, H264 and VC-1.
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PL,
A very important question – what is the purpose of this export – what do you want to do with it? That will influence the choice of codec you choose.
Is it for a MASTER copy, from which you can later export various formats, or do you want to post online, or…??
Thanks
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
Hi Jeff,
The purpose of the export is to have a personal copy of my extended cut that’s comparable or indistinguishable in quality to the officially released Blu-ray, since my edit is meant to be an alternative to the real movie. The resulting file has to be easily played and shareable on a variety of devices (computer, TV with USB drive, Plex, etc).
Once exported, it will not be posted online or re-encoded in different formats or burnt to disc. It will be a file that can be readily accessible to play on devices mentioned above.
Hope that makes sense!
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For the compatibility/playback reasons you mention, then .mp4 is the most standard format to use.
Your current settings should produce a very high-quality result. You may want to uncheck “Max Render Quality” – that is only used for scaling, which you are not doing in this case, frame size is constant between Source and Export.
Thanks
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
That’s good enough for me!
Thank you both
PL
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