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

john_dennis wrote on 11/19/2025, 9:11 AM

Not an exhaustive search for “No Recompression Required”.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/re-use-video-without-re-rendering--105527/#ca652748

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/avi-to-avi-in-vegas-pro-without-any-quality-loss-smart-rendering--117419/#ca732014

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 11/19/2025, 11:19 AM

@ericsport A widely used standard format for archival video storage is lossless FFV1 encoding in an MXF wrapper. I think it's popular partly because it's the standard of the US National Archives. But it is not supported by Vegas for reading or rendering. The Magix intermediate render format regurgitated by ChatGBT was replaced by Apple Prores 422 in recent versions of Vegas and is not an archival format because it's not lossless and adds content not even in the original. I think it's popular because it's easy to decode and its output is enhanced compared to the original.

In addition to FFV1, lossless HEVC is a functional alternative that makes the most compact archives. It's weaknesses are that decoding is hardware intensive and it's proprietary, which adds cost to the archiving process. Vegas does not have direct lossless-hevc rendering capability, even with plugins, but can read it fine. But like FFV1, it can be produced and read with free ffmpeg.

The best lossless format almost perfect for archiving, which is directly supported by Vegas, is via the 3rd party MagicYUV plugin. Now that MagicYUV decoding is supported by widely available open-source ffmpeg, it meets a critical requirement of assured play-ability in the distant future.