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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Blu Ray- MPEG2 or h.264???

Paul Lee

Paul Lee

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What are people preferring? We're coming straight from a Premiere sequence of r3d's.
 
For what reason Manuel? Thanks!
 
We've been using high bitrate MPEG2 from self contained 1080p prores quicktimes, using Adobe Media Encoder, then authoring in Encore. Seems that the MPEG2's encode faster on our systems.

But test it. take a 1 min chunk of video, and run both formats and see which you like better. I'm a real stickler for testing encodes before jumping in on a long encode only to find out it didn't give me what I needed.
 
Good wisdom there Matt. I cannot 'see' the difference between the two, but the h.264 takes longer to encode and feels like it's taxing the system in Encore a lot more. Hmm...
 
I have done a lot of Blu-Ray authoring, and to me, H.264 is vastly superior based on what Manuel stated above.
 
Thanks all, I think I'll give h264 a run.
 
MPEG2 is old technology. h264 is far superior and is the standard for bluray and web video. The only case I have found where mpeg2 is a better choice is for playback on old computers without hardware accelerated decoding (pentium 4 era and older), or for authoring DVDs of course.

MPEG2 (aka MPEG-2 part 2) released 1996. Though it is a minor variation of MPEG1 released 1993.
h264 (aka MPEG-4 part 10) released 2003.
 
All standard Blu-Ray players have to support mpeg2, h.264/AVC and VC-1 as video codecs. You're not out in the rain with either in you choose to go with mpeg2 because it's faster on your system. h.264 is usually the choice since it allows more content on the disc. Looking at manufacturing stats http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Stats.php?OrderBy=Title&ReleaseDate=2012 (summary at the bottom) it looks as though the vast majority of commercial blu-rays are now using h.264/AVC exclusively.
 
Hi,

AVC-1 or H.264 is more efficient but takes much longer to encode...

--> High quality final Bluray: use two pass HQ H.264 codec
--> Daily footage preview 4x realtime encoding: use MPEG-2 single pass with maximum bitrate

MPEG-2 old technology?

We use high bitrate MPEG-2 footage (80 MBit/s) a lot for professional harddisk players - it's much faster to encode and is absolutely artefact free... so it's the better format if you have tight deadlines...

best Regards

Danko
 
Danko Dolch said:
MPEG-2 old technology?

We use high bitrate MPEG-2 footage (80 MBit/s) a lot for professional harddisk players - it's much faster to encode and is absolutely artefact free... so it's the better format if you have tight deadlines...
Click to expand...

Yes, as documented MPEG2 is "Old", but as Danko shows, not necessarily out dated. Either MPEG2 or h264 can provide visually perfect imagery. The variables listed are encoding time for you, storage space for you (DVD/bluray or web server), transfer time for your viewers (web), or decoding power for your viewers (computer power/graphics acceleration). Usually I deliver MPEG2 on DVD and h264 for Bluray or web.

Cory
 
Cool. I'll bump again and ask if anyone out there has used the Matrox accelerators?
 
Hey Paul... I've been using the CompressHD for quite a while now. I'm even selling it at the moment (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?82901-FS-Matrox-Compress-HD-H-264-Encoder-Card)! Only due to the fact that I've purchased an MXO2 LE Max, which does the same thing...

To your question... it basically cut my encode times for H.264 files in half, even from 4K source. Doesn't mean it will necessarily cut everyone's render speed in half, because obviously everyone's computer setup is different... but my tests should be a good indicator that it will greatly speed up your renders. You can see some of my render speed test results from this thread: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...x-CompressHD-Card-Results&p=940287#post940287

If you have any specific questions, let me know and I'll do my best to answer them!

Greg
 
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