Maybe I missed something here. What do people use now instead of Cineform?

JJK

@JJKizak For what purpose exactly?

As an intermediate, I use MagicYUV (RGB flavor) because it's lossless and plays smoothly enough. My 2nd choice lossless codec would be UTVideo Codec.

For Resolve > VEGAS, Grass Valley HQX looks like the "best" option. Not lossless but small file size, responsive, and not very lossy. It could be used for other intermediate-based workflows, not just Resolve > VEGAS.

Other popular lossy intermediate choices: XAVC-Intra, MAGIX Intermediate (= ProRes).

@NickHope - none of those codecs seem to be available in Movie Studio 17. ".mov" has been deprecated, even Sony XAVC-Intra is GONE. There are very few codecs available from Movie Studio 17. Maybe that helps stability, but it sure means it doesn't support much. :/

@LeroiCasey These 3 are 3rd-party codecs that have to be installed separately: MagicYUV, UTVideo Codec, Grass Valley HQX. Then you should find them if you choose Render As > "Video for Windows" > Customize template > Video format.

Can you render "MAGIX Intermediate" in VMS17? I've started using MAGIX Intermediate 444 as my format if I need an intermediate to go from VEGAS to Resolve. I intend to explain why once I've used it enough to be confident that it's the right choice.

"MAGIX Intermediate" does not show up as an option in VMS/VMSP 17.

Magix Intermediate format is not supported in Movie Studio 17.

@NickHope - Thanks! I installed and used those codecs successfully (in Movie Studio Plat 16) - will also test in VMS 17.

For Grass Valley HQX, I noticed the render options are different for Resolve vs Vegas. Vegas gives me "super fine", "fine", "standard" but Resolve does not.

When I rendered from Vegas with "fine" it more closely matched the file size rendered by Resolve for the same clip (Vegas: 208,885 KB vs Resolve: 227,163 KB, source file: 108,576 KB (an 8-bit YUV 4:2:0 AVCHD .MTS clip).

What are good settings in Resolve for Grass Valley HQX? For example, I see a 'Field Rendering' checkbox, Quant Scale (default 4) and Maximum Frame Size (default 40%)... and Advanced Settings, including Data Levels (as @NickHope mentioned).

@LeroiCasey I use these settings in an effort to prioritize maximum quality:

I think the "super fine", "fine", "standard" labels in VEGAS don't really have a meaning in themselves and are just combinations of "Q" and "Max size". I assume those are direct equivalents of "Quant Scale" and "Maximum Frame Size" in Resolve's render settings.

Note that when I increased "Max Size" from 50 to 100 in a test render in VEGAS, it made no difference to the rendered file. i.e. "super fine" was as high quality as I could get.

Also note that if you want the luminance of clip rendered with Grass Valley in Resolve to be correct in VEGAS, you need to set Clip Attributes > Data Levels > Full in Resolve, and then render with Data Levels > Video.

I did a big comparison of codecs for rendering intermediates from 8-bit 4:2:0 footage in VEGAS Pro for use in Resolve. I'm posting it here as it includes Cineform and the results are useful not just for the purposes of transferring to Resolve.

In general it's better to transfer a project containing the original footage, but in some cases that can give serious issues, and in other cases you might want to process the footage before transferring to Resolve. For example I wanted to retime/reverse many events in VEGAS first.

Here are my results, in ascending order by Mean Squared Error:

Many formats had serious or show-stopping problems. Pink is worse. Green is better.

If a file opens with a range of 16-235 in Resolve and "video data levels" in the clip attributes then I couldn't find a way to properly normalize it in Resolve without a destructive filter. So that rules out the Grass Valley codecs for me. I learnt this the hard way by grading a whole project incorrectly and finding the levels all over the place when I brought the clips back to VEGAS.

An issue to be aware of is that the last frame of a MAGIX Intermediate 23.976/29.97/59.94fps ProRes event is not visually quantized on the VEGAS Pro timeline, but the files decode OK in Resolve.

Conclusion:

1. Sony YUV is best if file size and playback smoothness don't matter. Great quality. Fast render. Huge files. Stuttery playback.
2. MAGIX Intermediate 444 (a.k.a. ProRes 444) is best otherwise. I'm using it. The quality is not as good as Sony YUV, but still very good, and "visually lossless".
3. Cineform is OK but not as good as MAGIX Intermediate 444.
4. I still recommend Grass Valley HQX for coming BACK from Resolve to VEGAS. Resolve can't render ProRes on Windows.

@JN- @Kinvermark I guess you may be interested in this.

@NickHope Good stuff. I was just thinking the other day that it would be a good idea to start a new thread dedicated to this type of thing, mainly but not exclusively to render quality of codecs, intermediates of course but not exclusively. I have my tables located in the last, ver. 2, of the HORQ tool thread. I update it there if needed. @GJeffrey posted his results there also.

Your post here in this thread is of course relevant to this thread, as ours is to the wwaag thread, but I think it would be nice to have this type of stuff all in one thread, the easier to update to and refer other users to with a similar interest. @Musicvid also has some intermediates charts that could be added.

If you’re interested in this Nick then maybe create a new thread? Something like “Intermediates and other codec quality comparisons” ?

Wow Nick, thanks for these Resolve-oriented tests. The mention of Sony YUV as a gold standard for quality confirms my results as far back as 2011.

Does Resolve open UT AVI? If not, I also agree with ProRes for intermediates. The tests of mine @JN- mentions were done in MSU QMT, using static charts and includes Sony YUV.

@Musicvid Unfortunately UT AVI won't open in Resolve. I tried 8-bit RGB and YUV420.

@JN- Agreed. I'll put it on my to-do list.

@NickHope After testing, Nvenc lossless is 99.9% lossless (SSIM of 0.9999) . Those files are smaller than Magix intermediate and play very nicely in Vegas and Resolve,

Maybe AMD GPU has a similar option.

I used HOS to generate the files.

Below my updated test results with 1080-25p file

@GJeffrey I don't think I have an AMD equivalent. Does "lossless" appear in the "Mode" dropdown menu in the HOS encoder settings? If I choose h264-vce or hevc-vce as the Encoder, I see cqp, vbr & cbr as the Mode options.

No, it does not appear in the drop down menu. You need to create a custom command line.

Easy with nvidia though.

nvencc64 -i <inAVS>  --codec h264  --lossless -o <outFile>.mp4

@GJeffrey VP also has a built in lossless codec using nvenc, it would be a nice option to consider also. Unfortunately I could never get it to work without zero byte files, corruption, file with audio, no video. I posted on it again with this 452 update. Has anyone else tried it out?

Just realised that your MagixAvc nvenc lossless of .9995 is it?

@JN-

Just realised that your MagixAvc nvenc lossless of .9995 is it?

Yes , That's the built in encoder. It's working here with 1080-25p files with a GTX1070ti, latest studio driver.

@NickHope

Unfortunately, there is no lossless option available with vce or qsv according to the help files in vceencc64 and qsvencc64. Lossless in nvenc is YUV444 only. It could be added to the HOS dropdown menu if there is any interest.

@wwaag That would be welcome indeed. Just to let you know I'm not having much success today with HOS.

On my laptop I get this error message, I reset, click all the buttons but no change.

I don't get this error message on my desktop, I did previously, but instead I get a very odd issue.

When I render out to C:\temp I can watch the folder and see the file created and when the render finishes, the file disappears completely!

So my attempts to use @GJeffrey's lossless option is a non runner for me.

@GJeffrey Thanks for that info. I downloaded your source file and was able to render it out using Magix Nvenc lossless. I have started to try and pin down where the issue is.

I thought it might be the file length, duration, so I doubled your clip, it still worked.

I tried a smaller data rate source file (.mp4) ~ 20 Mbps because my source files for testing are large, so it worked, then another similar DR and it didn't work. I suspect at this stage it may be something in the makeup of the source file that's causing the problem, i.e. data rate, file type .mov or .mp4 etc. I'l test all of the ~ 20 Mbps files first and see how it goes, thanks for the HOS tip.

This might take a while as I'm now having issues with HOS, doesn't work on the laptop and the rendered out file is disappearing on render finish.

@wwaag Just a bit more info on the disappearing file. It doesn't happen when rendering from and to FHD lossless (GJeffreys command line) it renders aok, this only happens when rendering to and from UHD.

I can see the file size building up in size (on drive D:) and as soon as the render time statistics appears, (show stats checked) it disappears, no file.

The "Show Stats" wasn't causing it, I unchecked that option.

I've added in the "Nvenc Lossless using HOS", item 3. This is a FHD items table.