Good morning everyone,
I heard "intra-frame" codecs were good. I want to avoid unstable playback in Vegas. My source files have different formats, fps, resolution etc... But my project is always 720p and 29fps. Do you know what is the best intra-frame codec in terms of cpu usage ?
handbrake doesn't encode to any intra-frame codecs. Maybe you try x264 with a lower than usual CQ number, something that produces a quality intermediate, but not create files too ridiculously large. If your computer struggles to edit h.264 at the resolutions you're importing there's always mpeg-4 with much larger files.
But you want transcoder that delivers intra-frame video? Maybe someone more has answer for you.
Good morning everyone,
I heard "intra-frame" codecs were good. I want to avoid unstable playback in Vegas. My source files have different formats, fps, resolution etc... But my project is always 720p and 29fps. Do you know what is the best intra-frame codec in terms of cpu usage ?
XAVC-I works well with Vegas.
if your source is XAVCs, sony catalyst browse will batch convert fast and easy into XAVCI.
Or just use Vegas if all else fails.
"handbrake doesn't encode to any intra-frame codecs. Maybe you try x264 with a lower than usual CQ number, something that produces a quality intermediate, but not create files too ridiculously large."
What's wrong with creating large files ? I'm just making 3 to 5 minutes (video intensive) music clips for my songs and I have storage. I wouldn't mind if a file folder for one finished song was let say 20 Gb, even more.
I'm just looking for a batch solution such as handbrake, and for the most cpu friendly codec to convert my source files to.
Handbrake has two encoder choices -- x264 and x265.
Of the two, x264 is easier on the CPU, and results in larger files.
Thanks Musicvid, but I'm looking for the best, not just something better. How about that intra-frame thing? It does alleviate the cpu workload right? I read somewhere that with intra-frame the cpu had a lot less calculations to make because it didn't have to look at the previous and next frame to decompress and re-compress. Btw is there anything without compression? Or maybe something like a video equivalent of the wav audio format ?
I don't mind using any program (huge or small, free or expensive) that could batch convert my source files to the best format for my cpu workload, even if it means piracy. I want to be able to use Vegas with a smoother playback. I don't think I mind about file size, I don't even really mind about final rendering time, because my videos are quite short anyway.
And btw I have a lot of ram. That won't be a bottleneck.
Judelaw,
Sorry we were not clear. Intraframe is not a playback format. Handbrake doesn't make it. What is "best" means what balance of attributes you are looking for.
In this arena it's Size, Quality, Speed. Pick Two.
I don't understand.
(Intra-frame, not inter-frame.)
I know Intra-frame isn't a playback format, but some compressed formats are Intra-frame, am I right ?
Hi Judelaw,
Here are two links from Derek Moran (a.k.a. Dr. Zen), owner/creator of MovieStudioZen website (https://www.moviestudiozen.com/) and YouTube channel, discussing this very thing:
Cineform: 
DNxHD/HR: 
Remember, watch the video(s) completely, and he also has written links for the entire video along with any needed download links. Pay special attention to the DNxHD/HR, as one is basically for 1080 video and below (hence "HD), while the "HR" flavor is geared for 4k and higher. Again, RTM is a must here!!!!!
Oh, and thanks to Derek for these two great vids, per his usual "Doctor-ness"!
Thank you chief24! I'm going to look at it.
My first question to judelaw is "What have you tried?" Do you have a project that you could use to replace different video wrappers and codecs?
I created a project with four XAVC-S 3840x2160-29.97p streams being read from an NVMe disk and experienced the following preview performance:
I rendered the XAVC-S files to XAVC-I in Vegas Pro and replaced the original files in the project. The preview performance change is shown in this graphic:
The render time cost me ~27 minutes to improve preview performance by that factor. It's a value judgment whether it was worth it. The same process could be followed for other conversion processes.
judelaw wrote on 9/7/2018, 6:20 PM
(Intra-frame, not inter-frame.)
Corrected. This really needs not to be of concern.
After doing my tests (I actually do them and come to my own conclusions), because you're project pixel dimensions are relatively low (720p) you could use uncompressed Sony YUV in an avi wrapper by creating a custom template. The conversion is very quick. The preview uses very little CPU. You would need to sustain a fairly high disk I/O rate. You won't have to install an external codec.
The bit rate is a "modest" 440 Mbps.
There is no 1280x720-29.97p template for XAVC-I and one can't be customized, but you could convert all your source to 1920x1080-29.97p XAVC-I with good results. The conversion process will take ~ 4 times longer than uncompressed Sony YUV but the I/O rate would be about 114 Mbps per stream and the storage requirements would be about one fourth. Preview on my system was at full frame rate with no filters, but CPU usage was significantly higher than Sony YUV.
My god, I rendered a 720p 25fps mp4 file to a 720p 30fps Dnxhd 75 8bit file with Vegas 13, the size is multiplicated by 60! Even if I choose low quality. A 10 minutes 100mb file becomes a 6gb one. Plus I don't even have a working batch solution yet witch means I have to convert one file and wait, convert one file and wait, etc, I can't do that with for instance 10 files, it would take ages. I don't mind if it takes a long time but then I want do convert them all at once. What I could do is put all my source files one after the other on one unique Vegas track and splitting it later, within the track itself, or into numerous tracks when working on the project itself. That would get rid of the need for a batching solution. But anyways, the output size is too big : Imagine I have let say 10 files that contain altogether 100 minutes of footage (witch is usually the case, it can be even more), It means I would have to work on a 60gb file... Would that be a good thing ?. It would be ok if a 10 minute file was for instance 1 Gb, but not 6GB.
80% of the time, the source files in my projects come from youtube, sometimes from other internet sources (I don't shoot any footage by myself, I don't have a camera. So the source file formats are determined by this website that helps me download youtube videos : https://www.telechargerunevideo.com/fr/ Here you go for instance : https://nsa39.casimages.com/img/2018/10/02/181002085008996146.jpg
- But my project is always 720p and 29fps.
- Do you know what is the best intra-frame codec in terms of cpu usage?
- I want to avoid unstable playback in Vegas.
After doing my tests (I actually do them and come to my own conclusions), because you're project pixel dimensions are relatively low (720p) you could use uncompressed Sony YUV in an avi wrapper by creating a custom template. The conversion is very quick. The preview uses very little CPU. You would need to sustain a fairly high disk I/O rate. You won't have to install an external codec.
The bit rate is a "modest" 440 Mbps.
There is no 1280x720-29.97p template for XAVC-I and one can't be customized, but you could convert all your source to 1920x1080-29.97p XAVC-I with good results. The conversion process will take ~ 4 times longer than uncompressed Sony YUV but the I/O rate would be about 114 Mbps per stream and the storage requirements would be about one fourth. Preview on my system was at full frame rate with no filters, but CPU usage was significantly higher than Sony YUV.
if I understand well, you get a 5or 6 gb file for a 2 minutes 720p video, that is even bigger than what I tried...