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What DNxHD setting for my Canon 5D footage conversion?
I plan on converting my 5D mark III h264 footage to DNxHD, because I read it will be easier for my NLE to work with (and some other advantages)and will be virtually lossless. I plan on converting it with Resolve, but i see a couple of options to choice from, and i just want to make sure i get the right option so i dont covert it to something that is overkill and will just kost me a lot of extra diskspace.
I know my h264 footage is 8 bit 4:2:0 and aobut 26mbps right..
So do would the DNxHD 36 8bit setting be enough (i assume that the 36 is the bitrate).. or is it best to choose a higher setting? if so which one..?And as a follow up.. I also shoot RAW with my 5D, and I might convert my DNG sequences to DNxHD as well.. What setting would i choose in this case?
im in Europe by the way.. I usually shoot in 25fps..
Thank you guys!
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3 Replies
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I can’t remember off hand the 25 dnx codecs but I shoot 23.98 all the time.
I used to do 5d at dnx 36 (all though most people would saw 36 is an offline resolution I say bumping vhs to digibeta just isn’t going to make it look better) now I tend to favor xdcam codec through the avid.
Raw I would do at DNX 175 or the 25 equivalent
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Ok so 36 or its equivalent for 5D and 175 or equivalent for RAW…That makes sense..
Thank you!
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This is not necessarily true. You have to think deeper about what is going on with each of these formats. A temporal compression codec like H.264 in 5D files means that you can achieve a bit higher quality recording using lower bit rates. It is not always encoding a full frame for every shot frame, cheating with temporal compression. This is similar to how high quality is achieved on Blu-ray using only 30-40 Mbps (VBR). In the world of intraframe compression codecs like ProRes or DNxHD, these are encoding a full picture for every frame. They are not temporally cheating, so you need a higher bit rate to accomplish the same trickery that H.264 accomplishes with less. So I usually do the math like this: any H.264 bits x 4 ≈ equivalent quality bits in ProRes/DNxHD. So your 20-30 Mbps H.264 from your 5D should really be transcoded to around 80-120 Mbps ProRes/DNxHD to retain max quality. That is equivalent to DNxHD 115/120 or ProRes LT/422. This is just my experience but I have definitely noticed some loss if going to ProRes Proxy or DNxHD 36/45. Both of these have “more bits” than the H.264, but they’re not necessarily the same type of bits.
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