DXV3 vs Photo JPEG vs ???

[DumbNoob]

Have a solid collection of content that mainly consists of H.264 encoded clips. Long clips. Not 15 second loops. Some clips are over an hour. Very useful ambient stuff that I'd like to use in Avenue but... the re-encoding to DXV3 causes a massive file size inflation. Even at normal quality, no alpha a 3.5GB clip blew up to 41GB.

I want to get this out of the way before posing other questions so... Is DXV3 the best codec for clips used within Avenue? Best meaning application performance:quality:file size. I'm open to suggestions, thanks very much.

PS - that clip I mentioned took about an hour to transcode to DXV3 in Adobe Media Encoder. In Compressor? 23 hours.

[drazkers]

1 hour is a huge file. Thats a 90's action movie. Best would be DXV3 normal quality no alpha, as thats the smallest and gives you the best performance.

[DumbNoob]

Thanks for your response, drazkers. Yes, as I mentioned, I have an existing collection of content that needs to be converted for use in Avenue.

Are there any advantages to using Photo JPEG over DXV3? I'm getting slightly smaller file sizes out of those transcodes. Any other codec suggestion? Thanks.

[He2neg]

DXV is recommended
but if you dont want to jump around ( random mode) or other stuff, and just want to play them straight then i would go with h264... becouse of the filesize.

But i´m not the professional guy to talk in this forum about this topic, i guess someone with more knowledge will come inside here shortly.

[drazkers]

What is the resolution of your files and what operating system are you on?

DXV offers a vastly improved playback experience especially on HD content.

If its lots of 800x600 you could get by with photoJPG, which seems to play alot better on mac systems then my PC media servers. The difference in file size over multiple files with photoJPG at 70% could be helpful. But if its HD you'll find that resolume's frame rate is pretty diminished.

DXV3 has two modes, one an enhanced one for content with gradients(which is much bigger) and a regular which is smaller. DXV regular would be the lowest file size with the best performance.

H.264 isn't a great playback format because of how it does keyframes.
For more details on h264 check

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6152&p=23256&hilit ... %27#p23265

[Joris]

In addition to the excellent advise, I would just like to add the following:

Every codec is designed for a specific purpose.

DXV is designed to playback as many pixels as possible. If you want to play 20+ layers of 1080p simultaneously while cutting back and forth, DXV is the only right choice. There is no other codec that even comes close*

If you just want to play a single layer of video linearly from start to end, H264 can do just fine. H264 is designed for delivery and linear playback of a single video stream. Performance will be slightly worse than for instance Quicktime Player or other system players because we handle playback slightly different, but on a modern CPU, you should be able to maintain decent frame rates.

The only thing is you have to keep an eye on how many clips you load, because non-DXV clips eat up memory. If you don't go over 40 1080p files, you should be good.

In the current codec field, PhotoJpeg is horribly outdated, and I don't really see it as a valid alternative to anything anymore. The quality is terrible for its file size, and its playback is silly slow. For a good quality/filesize/performance ratio, ProRes is kicking its ass front, left and center.

* settle down, Hap fanboys

[DumbNoob]

All excellent advice, thank you!

Mac, 10.9 for now. Avoiding Yosemite as long as I possibly can. 2013 rMBP, SSD, 2.7Ghz i7, 16GB, 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 650M

I didn't consider H.264 as a playback codec for Avenue though it'd be convenient since most of my collection is H.264 That being said, if DXV3 is what plays most reliably, DXV3 it shall be.
Side note - Avenue doesn't even list my h.264 encoded media in the file browser as importable media.

Content is mainly 1080. Some 720 (will use scale to comp size option for these clips). Most is 29.97 but some 25 stuff is in there. Which begs the question... In a support document on this website, there is a recommendation to transcode that footage from 25 to 29.97 Why?

The purpose, as you can probably guess, is to comp some layers simultaneously and add effects as needed. Doubt that I'll be using more than 3 layers at once. But now you've got my attention with the ProRes comment. In terms of performance alone, DXV3 vs. ProRes (proxy)? I can totally live with ProRes proxy if those clips will perform as good or better than DXV3. This will also allow those clips to play nicely in other apps besides Avenue.

Oh, and I'll be putting a live camera in as a source too. 1080@30p

Thanks!

[drazkers]

ProRes will not perform as well as DXV with 1080p. Resolume uses your graphics card to decompresseach frame of a video and Resolume's specifically focused on that codec. With your laptop having a SSD I would always suggest DXV3 with high and regular quality depending on your content.

You should be either using 25 or 30FPS depending on the country that you are in. If you are North america stick with 30. If you are in Europe use 25, this is to be an even divisible of the frequency of your projector. Which allows for smoother playback because frames are not dropped.

[Joris]

I agree with Drazkers. My advise on H264 and ProRes was based on the assumption you'd be doing linear playback of a single clip.

The moment you start mixing multiple layers, DXV is the way to go.

[DumbNoob]

Great advice, thanks to all!

OK, so I'm sticking with DXV3 all the way.
Framerate issue - I'm in North America. I have mainly 30fps content and sometimes 24fps content. And sometimes 25fps content! The 24fps I don't want to mess with if I don't need to. The 25fps content though... should I be converting to 30fps? It would be playing alongside 30fps content, being mixed together. Your advice?

The alpha questions will be next and probably in a new thread. Thanks!