Final Cut Export Mp4 H.264

[Demetrius Dade]

I understand that H 264 is a format option. This doesn't help me. Nor does exporting in one of the existing options. File sizes are crazy huge. Over 60GB whereas it would be less than 5GB in the desired configuration (one I used to have).

What you're trying to export to is (I believe) a 32-bit QuickTime 7-era format, which has been EOL'd by Apple. So all NLE companies (including Adobe) must eventually comply by eliminating support for such a format. The only supported codecs that are allowed in the QuickTime wrapper require full 64-bit support.

you might try using mpegstreamclip and do a save as to convert an .mp4 to a quicktime with the h264 codec. Used to work. And they is to do a "save as." Goes very quickly. You're just changing the file wrapper... Here's where to get it.

Do not try and download from any other site. I once told a client to get it, and he downloaded what he thought was the program and managed to install a relatively benign virus that mucked with his internet experience.

Unfortunately the only way I've found to export video with multiple stereo audio channels is by exporting as quicktime. I've found that the quicktime video codecs actually increase the size of my files. And Since I'm starting with H.264 and converting to quicktime and then back to H.264 I feel the whole thing would best be suited by never leaving h.264 in the first place.

1.) Is there any way in premiere pro 2020 to export H.264 video with multiple stereo audio channels attached? From searching the forums I see this was an option and was available in earlier versions when H.264 was a codec for quicktime. It seems this functionality was removed.

what about apple prores 422 proxy or dnxLB? they are farely small. another option is use free shutter encoder to encode h.264 or h.265 files with fast decode for editing to make external proxies and then reconnect.

I did test exports of H.264, 422 proxy, and dnxLB for a tiny clip. H.264 definitely seems the way to go. I guess that's why it's the industry standard for so many uses. I'll play around with shutter, but based on first glance I don't think it's going to give me what I want.

shutter encoder is amazing. it can do 10 bit h.265 at 4:2:2 main, multiple audio streams embedding. fast decode, GOP to zero etc. and I talk directly to the creator for free upgrades. its based on ffmpeg so can do anything (even more than handbrake) and gives me unlimited batch encoding for my proxies while not tying up media encoder. actually i think adobe should license his product.

A note on your H264 thoughts. It doesn't benefit you to keep using H264 as an intermediary codec. You can increase the bitrate to reduce the quality loss, but you're adding generations of compression every time you do that. The proper editing codecs that are higher bitrate (and higher file size) will do a better job of retaining quality when moving between applications.

Is there a reason you're not just doing your editing in Premiere to begin with? After Effects is not great for editorial. It's not really meant to play anything in real-time without caching all the frames first.

I bit the bullet and followed your guidance. I cleared several hundred gigs of space on a drive and converted to quicktime. The difference was amazing. Premiere pro responded instantly and I no longer had all the delays and freezing I was experiencing with h264. Looking back now this makes sense as h264 achieves its compression by only handling deltas - so every time I jumped around in my track it was probably having to recalculate the video from the previous key frame, which likely took forever.

5.1 has 6 channels total - L,R,C,LFE,Ls,Rs. If you only needed 3 stereo pairs (6 channels) then you could set up a track system and interpret clip channels so you can get your 3 pairs into your intermediate file. You would then need to re-interpret your intermediate to get back to a stereo pair for your final edit. But I don't think you should go down this route, it is prone to error.

Is your Windows installation Spanish, by any chance? For the record, my current Windows 10 Pro installation is the US English version, but with Spanish keyboard and regional settings (I used to have the regular Spanish version, which showed the same problem).

Exporting with the animation codec, millions of colours + never worked for me either. The file would never open or would say it was corrupt. I always export image sequences for my final renders but sometimes you want to export a quick movie. What I did was install the apple pro res codecs and it works like a charm. Transparent backgrounds, movie, yay!

Going by your post TB Support is not necessarily misunderstanding the issue. The support tech in this case did not understand your description of the problem. That only required clarification to move beyond this obstacle in the quest for a solution. Did you pursue this further with Support?

When they set the video settings in order to export with animation codec, the file is finally encoded in H264.
When they come back to the export window, settings are back to the default value, H264.

This started happening in a computer in the office that was working fine until a week ago. A work around was to modify the write module to export movies and use render network instead of render movie. BUT once I exported those settings were again stuck to the one used the first time (same way the export movie settings are stuck in H.264).

After upgrading my Mac OS and being forced to buy the newest model of Harmony, 17 (which is the only one that works with newest mac OS Catalina) I now can only seem to export H.264 no matter what export movie options I select.

Here's what you do. First click the export button at the top right corner of the program. Should look like a square with an arrow pointing out of it. Select file. Select "Custom" in the Quality options. Unless you wish to change the slider to a higher or lower Mbps, don't, the file will export fine if you leave it at 20. After this simply continue exporting the file. It will save as an H.264.

If you wish to check if it has saved as an H.264 file, right click the file and select "Get Info". In the side bar that pulled up, click the drop down arrow for "More Info" and your file format will be next to "Codecs".

Forgive me for asking, but I really want to see this in action and I can't seem to export to 4K. Is the rendered file 41 megabytes and 1438x808 or just the preview when you hit cmd "I"? I am just confirming that the file produced is the 3840x2180 and its a compilation of clips put together in a project.

I shoot video in H.264. I assume that my footage is forever compressed really small and that exporting to ProRes in FCPX would do nothing but make my file bigger. Is this true? Or am I missing something? Would exporting in ProRes give me better quality than I started with?

Most likely, the H264 files generated by your camera will be constrained baseline profile i.e. I- and P-frames only, and on a modern machine, decoding shouldn't be an issue. I edit H264 (baseline or main profile) all the time on my i7 and occasionally i5 with nVidia CUDA-enabled GPUs.

ProRes is useful when your shoot is in some exotic or heavier-duty codec because of bitrate or compression complexity. Or you need to collaborate with someone using FCP and they prefer to receive ProRes.

The 2 formats have different uses. H.264 is mainly good as a playback format. It's supported widely, compresses very well, and can be decompressed by relatively low-powered devices easily. It's also supported in some video cards making it hardware accelerated on those devices. While it is possible to edit with H.264, it's not ideal as it's a Long-GOP format. GOP here is an acronym for "Group of Pictures". Typically, Long-GOP formats contain 1 keyframe followed by several frames that are differences from the keyframes every so many seconds. So if you want to cut on a frame other than a keyframe, you need to decode the keyframe and all frames from the keyframe up to the frame you want to cut on, making it slower to edit.

ProRes, on the other hand, is intended to ensure the fidelity of the frame through numerous edits. While its compression is good, it focuses more on quality so the amount of compression is less than that of H.264. (In fact, in ProRes 4:4:4(:4) you can have lossless compression with ProRes.) Many devices will not playback ProRes because there's no codec written for them. I think that it's also a higher bit-depth than H.264. (There are higher bit-depth versions of H.264, but I don't know how widely supported they are.) It's also an intra-frame compression scheme, meaning that you don't need any previous frames to decode a given frame. That makes the compression less, but makes it easier to decode any given frame.

So ProRes is better for editing because it preserves fidelity, is faster to decode frames, and offers higher bit depths (or at least offers them more consistently). H.264 is better for playback because it's supported on more devices, and the compression ratio is higher.

You can think of it similarly to audio sample rates. For playback, nothing over 44.1 kHz can make any audible difference to humans (despite what marketing may tell you). But for the purposes of editing, working at 96 kHz can be useful for preserving fidelity through the addition of effects, various mix downs, and mastering.

c80f0f1006