Best X264 Encoder that works with Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 ?

[Michael Totten]

I've been looking at 3 Digital Studios X264 plugin, unfortunately it only works with Windows. Has anyone successfully used this with Parallels or bootcamp?
http://www.x264pro.com/

Edit: Another Company: Works well with mac and uses X264. http://www.telestream.net/episode/overview.htm

Also, are there any other x264 encoders that I should consider?

It'd be great to see a high quality implementation of X264 in RedCineX Export.

thanks,
Michael

 

[Scott Brown]

We have Episode and while it's a decent encoder, I find it slow. I much prefer Adobe's CS6 Media Encoder but this currently does not have X264 as an option.

A good bet is DV Kitchen - we've used this successfully for the past year and it is simple to use and VERY quick!

Good luck in your quest.

Best wishes

Scott

 

[Brian Iannone]

All the H.264 encoders mentioned above, especially x264 and AME's encoder, are lower quality options. I recommend you use MainConcept H.264, which is available as part of Sorenson Squeeze. A multi-pass encode (which is different from their 2-pass, by the way) will provide the highest quality result. Keep in mind though that it will be slower than some of these "lesser" options.

Set the AVC Profile to High, level to 4.1 and performance to 16.

The latest version of Squeeze allows exports out of Premiere to pass-through Squeeze's encoders. Though, you could just export an uncompressed file out of Premiere and drop that in Squeeze for the H.264 encode, also.

 

[Michael Totten]

Thanks for the info gents I'd like to stay in Adobe Media / Premiere so the Squeeze option sounds good.
Do you think sending a 4K ProRes File or Alternatively a 4K R3D file through Squeeze (for X264 delivery at 1920X1080 is overkill)? I suppose I could first transcode to 1080P ProRes or uncompressed and then encode to X264 - but it's just another layer of compression from a down-rezzed lower bit rate file... Is this thinking flawed?

I imagine that the higher resolution and bit depth of the source file the better then final X264 will be... but perhaps I'm getting into diminishing returns territory where doing something like this would take 100 times longer only for a 10% gain? Any thoughts on that?

cheers.

 

[Brian Iannone]

Thanks for the info gents I'd like to stay in Adobe Media / Premiere so the Squeeze option sounds good.
Do you think sending a 4K ProRes File or Alternatively a 4K R3D file through Squeeze (for X264 delivery at 1920X1080 is overkill)? I suppose I could first transcode to 1080P ProRes or uncompressed and then encode to X264 - but it's just another layer of compression from a down-rezzed lower bit rate file... Is this thinking flawed?

I imagine that the higher resolution and bit depth of the source file the better then final X264 will be... but perhaps I'm getting into diminishing returns territory where doing something like this would take 100 times longer only for a 10% gain? Any thoughts on that?

cheers.

You can export a 4K ProRes 422 file out of Premiere and import that into Squeeze. (If you do, use ProRes 422 (HQ). Personally though, I'd go with an uncompressed file.) However, Squeeze doesn't support REDCODE RAW, so you won't be able to just drop an .r3d file in there.

In my opinion, it's not overkill. Though to be fair, I'm someone who doesn't mind waiting a little longer for an encode in order to achieve the highest quality possible result.

And also, "100 times longer" is an extreme exaggeration. Doing what you mentioned above would take 1.3 to 3 times longer, at most, and the difference in quality would be significant.

It looks like you want your end result to be an H.264-encoded file at 1920x1080. Where is this file going to? (The web?)

(for X264 delivery at 1920X1080 is overkill)?

By the way, I wasn't exactly sure what you meant there. H.264 is the actual codec while x264 is an H.264 encoder, just like MainConcept H.264, QuickTime's H.264 encoder and Adobe Media Encoder's H.264 encoder.

 

[Michael Totten]

Brian,

Yeah I've been playing around with the idea of starting with an uncompressed file for the X264 encode, but this is an unusual situation (it's a single 11 minute clip) which translates to 520GB @23.98 4K. I tested a small uncompressed clip last night (less than 30 seconds) and after about ten minutes the progress bar didn't move from 0% (this is with a Quadro 4000 and 48GB RAM with an eSata drive writing the file and another eSata drive reading it) in CS6. It seems like the full 11 minute X264 encode would take days?

This footage is going to play on a 65" monitor via a device called "Bright Sign" (model is HD-120).http://www.brightsign.biz). 65" is a big monitor for 1080p AND being limited to 25mbp/s on the player doesn't help the situation much either... so it seems the compression is vital.

Thanks for clearing up the X264 confusion. For some reason I thought that X264 was an actual codec that was similar to H.264, but it's actually an encoder that spits out H.264.

 

[Brian Iannone]

This footage is going to play on a 65" monitor via a device called "Bright Sign" (model is HD-120).http://www.brightsign.biz). 65" is a big monitor for 1080p AND being limited to 25mbp/s on the player doesn't help the situation much either... so it seems the compression is vital.

It sounds like you're using a specialized H.264 playback system that's limited to reading a data rate of 25 Mbps. Is that correct? If so, can your playback system support AVC High Profile, level 4.1? If not, you're going to have to encode your file to a lower-complexity profile/level, which unfortunately will produce a noticeably lower quality file.

...but it's actually an encoder that spits out H.264.

Exactly.


EDIT:
For some reason, I completely missed the part about the BrightSign HD120. Let me take a look at it's playback specifications...

 

[Les Dittert]

I think the x264 encoder is unmatched in 10 bit quality.
I suppose if you are making a BD or something, there are other options as well.

 

[Scott Brown]

I'm sure that Adobe CS 6 Media Encoder has the Main Concept codec so this may be a better buy than Squeeze. Also, to my eye, the X264 codec is better but it is subjective.

Best wishes

Scott

 

[Brian Iannone]

The BrightSign HD120 must have a playback limit of 25 Mbps on the data rate for reasons other that AVC decoding complexity since that doesn't follow along with any H.264 specification. BrightSign's site states that the HD120 can playback at 1080p60, so it has to be capable of level 4.2 decoding, yet their system can only playback files with a data rate of 25 Mbps. AVC level 4.2 allows for 50 Mbps playback at Baseline, Main and Extended Profiles and 62.5 Mbps at High Profile.

So basically, based on the information they provide on their site, I'm not sure if the HD120 can play an H.264-encoded file at High Profile, level 4.1. If you have access to the system, you can try encoding a file and testing it on there.

Is there any way you can play the video on a computer connected to the 65" display rather than the HD120?

 

[Brian Iannone]

I'm sure that Adobe CS 6 Media Encoder has the Main Concept codec so this may be a better buy than Squeeze. Also, to my eye, the X264 codec is better but it is subjective.

Best wishes

Scott

AME's H.264 exporting is based on the MainConcept encoder, however it doesn't support multi-pass conversions. It's limited to a maximum of two.