Encoding formats for MASTERS

ericsport wrote on 11/18/2025, 11:32 AM

I have been for the past 10 years encoding raw .mts video into MPEG-2 masters. I just asked chatgpt if that was the best format for lossless masters and it said NO. it recommended MAGIX INTERMEDIATE 4:2:2 10-bit template

I don't have that option in my encoder settings. is chatgpt right? it said don't use MPEG-2, there is loss. some of my raw files are from my second camera and they are in the mp4 format fyi

 

As far as rendering a master, is it not better to render in h264 as opposed to h265 as h264 seems to be more compatible with most devices, and has a better playback experience

THANKS IN ADVANCE

Vegas Pro 23

Win 11 with 32gb ram

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 11/18/2025, 11:59 AM

@ericsport 

Please state intended use for your "lossless masters".

Do you intend to play for others in a theater, send to another editor for further work, revisit the edit yourself in a decade or two, upload to Vimeo/Youtube/Instagram etc.?

john_dennis wrote on 11/18/2025, 12:05 PM

Mathematical lossless options in Vegas Pro are Uncompressed and/or MagicYUV in an AVI wrapper. Apple Pro Res can survive generations of re-edits with minimal degradation.

ericsport wrote on 11/18/2025, 2:39 PM

@ericsport 

Please state intended use for your "lossless masters".

Do you intend to play for others in a theater, send to another editor for further work, revisit the edit yourself in a decade or two, upload to Vimeo/Youtube/Instagram etc.?

revisit for further edits, use it as a master to encode shorter version etc. not intending for it to play or stream as is.

the other odd thing is that since i have been using the mpeg-2 encoder and winding up with .m2t files, up until vegas 23 it used to show NOTHING TO ENCODE for most of the video when i was re-editing M2t files, which means it was not re-compressing, it was direct stream or something like that. now it basically re-encodes everything with mpeg-2