FFmpeg is frequently used by different studios for encoding their media, however the documentation for ffmpeg is often poor, or cryptic so its often harder than it should be to come up with a good starting point. We are aiming to come up with recommendations for different scenarios as well as document what the different flags are doing with the aim to make this easier to get to a good baseline.
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| Name | Target Usage | Source | ffmpeg flags | Description | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p | Proxy playback, for web review, and non-color critical workflows, e.g. animation, modeling, etc. | This should be a lightweight compression, capable of supporting HD with a reasonable bit-rate, hopefully supporting a wide range of web browsers. Final review, e.g. lighting | |||
| libx264 -pix_fmt yuv444p10le | Final review, e.g. lighting | https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/colorspace | -c:v libx264 -preset placebo -qp 0 -x264-params "keyint=15:no-deblock=1" -pix_fmt yuv444p10le -sws_flags spline+accurate_rnd+full_chroma_int -vf "colorspace=bt709:iall=bt601-6-625:fast=1" -color_range 1 -colorspace 1 -color_primaries 1 -color_trc 1 | ||
| libx264rgb | Final review, e.g. lighting | This is a variant of the above, its essentially using x264, but not converting to YCrCb. | |||
| libx265 | -c:v libx264 | ||||
| Prores 4444 | For delivery to editorial | -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 4444 -qscale:v 1 -pix_fmt yuv444p10le -sws_flags spline+accurate_rnd+full_chroma_int -vf "colorspace=bt709:iall=bt601-6-625:fast=1" -color_range 1 -colorspace 1 -color_primaries 1 -color_trc 1 | |||
| -profile:v 4444 is equivalent to -profile:v 4 | |||||
| shotgun_diy_encode | https://support.shotgunsoftware.com/hc/en-us/articles/219030418-Do-it-yourself-DIY-transcoding', | -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -g 30 -vprofile high -bf 0 -crf 2 | |||
DnxHD | For delivery to editorial | ||||
| Prores 422 HQ | For delivery to editorial | Some FFMpeg commands I need to remember for converting footage for video editing. http://bit.ly/vidsnippets · GitHub |
| ||
Note the -profile:v 3 is equivalent to -profile:v hq | |||||
h264
Key flags (see https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264 )
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| Numeric Value | String Values | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | bt709 | Note this is the camera gamma i.e. ~1.95 this is NOT bt1886 |
| 2 | Image characteristics are unknown or are determined by the application. | |
| 4 | gamma22 | |
| 5 | gamma28 | |
| 8 | linear | Linear |
| 9 | log log100 | |
| 13 | iec61966_2_1 | IEC 61966-2-1 or sRGB or sYCC |
| 14 | bt2020_10 bt2020_10bit | Note this is the camera gamma i.e. ~1.95 |
| 15 | bt2020_12 bt2020_12bit | Note this is the camera gamma i.e. ~1.95 |
| 16 | bt2100-1 perceptual quantization (PQ) system. | |
| 18 | bg2100-1 hybrid log-gamma (HLG) system |
NOTE: -color_trc 1 - is not bt1886, but is actually the camera gamma, so has a gamma of ~1.95 rather than the 2.4 that is defined by bt1886. In order to get a gamma 2.4, you will need to use a quicktime hack (see below), but this only works on OSX. However, we suspect that chrome ignores the setting (see the following tests).
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