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Is 100mbps h264 better or worse than 100mbps Prores?
Hypothetically, if both options were available, like a gh4 recording to external media. My assumption is that the h264 will be better, since the Prores must attribute data to the extra 2 chroma channels.(422 va 420)
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5 Replies
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There are more to codecs than just bitrate. Also I’m wondering why you think h264 is “better” when it has less color information from the chroma subsampling?
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according to https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper.pdf
Prores 422 LT is the closest approx for 102mpbs vs 100mpbs. You would think h.264 would have more visible macroblocking due to codec technology as prores uses wavelet encoding. but this is for HD only. Prores 4:2:2 LT would have to have a bitrate of at least 350mb/sec to compare with 4k h.264 at only a 100mpbs and is the reason why h.264 is used for cheap storage.
modern cameras can record 4k into h.264 which can actually be higher quality even if they are 4:2:0 due to actual pixels being sampled. this is why a gh4 4:2:0 will chroma key better than a bmpcc HD 4:2:2 because resolution trumps all chroma subsampling encoding and where the 8.33 bits/pixel idea came from, down sampling during resizing gives better quality.
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[Chris Wright] “You would think h.264 would have more visible macroblocking due to codec technology as prores uses wavelet encoding”
ProRes does not use wavelet encoding.
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your right! it seems only cineform,jpeg2000,redcode are wavelet after all. good catch! prores and dhxhd are DCT. I find that fascinating that cineform hasn’t taken over as it is supposed to be superior to DCT for quality.
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