ProRes 422 vs H.264?

[Joe Marler]

There would rarely be a reason to send ProRes files to a mobile device. They are very large and the small screen size makes it hard to see any difference.

One possible reason is if the source material was 10-bit or higher. H264 is generally 8-bit, so you’d be losing bit depth which might theoretically appear as banding on gradient scenes such as blue sky. But there’s a better solution than ProRes for that.

HEVC supports 10-bit encoding but currently FCPX does not use hardware acceleration for 10-bit HEVC encoding on any Mac, even the new Mac Pro. Exporting 10-bit HEVC from FCPX or Compressor is super slow. It is faster on Handbrake and Premiere and the latest Resolve update is lightning fast (on the same Mac hardware and MacOS version) so it’s not a hardware or OS problem. You could export ProRes from FCPX then transcode to 10-bit HEVC with Handbrake or Resolve. The resultant file would be about 1/2 the size of H264 and quality quite good, although that varies with the specific HEVC encoding parameters.

If using the FCPX export preset Master File>Computer>H264, the bit rate is relatively high and quality is very good for H264. There is little quality difference between the “Faster Encode” and “Better Quality” settings, so it’s often better to use Faster Encode.

[Philip Nidler]

Thank you so much for your info! Makes more sense now! 🙂

[Eric Santiago]

Just to add, ProRes is an editable format and h264 is a deliverable option.
Bit much for mobile phones to handle the ProRes codec at any flavor.