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NX1 H.265 Videos - Goodbye video converters, hello PowerDirector 13!

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racin06

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I'm done with converting H.265 videos to H.264. I recorded a 2:30 min. 4K video last evening which was 1.7 GB in size. However, after converting the video to H.264 1080P using RockyMountain Movie Converter, the size ballooned up to 8.2 GB! My plan was to edit the converted H.264 video in Adobe Premiere Elements 12...but 8.2 GB...seriously?! PowerDirector 13 to the rescue! I imported the same original 4K video into PD13, edited the video to my liking and saved to H.264 1080. What was the size of the rendered 1080P video? Only 375MB! OK, I'm now off the soapbox.
 
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jwang88 said:
Is there a Mac version for this software?
Click to expand...
Windows only. Though you should be able to run it in Parallels or Boot Camp, but then you'll also need a copy of Windows.
 
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racin06 said:
I'm done with converting H.265 videos to H.264. I recorded a 2:30 min. 4K video last evening which was 1.7 GB in size. However, after converting the video to H.264 1080P using RockyMountain Movie Converter, the size ballooned up to 8.2 GB! My plan was to edit the converted H.264 video in Adobe Premiere Elements 12...but 8.2 GB...seriously?! PowerDirector 13 to the rescue! I imported the same original 4K video into PD13, edited the video to my liking and saved to H.264 1080. What was the size of the rendered 1080P video? Only 375MB! OK, I'm now off the soapbox.
Click to expand...
I am the author of RockyMountain Movie Converter.

1.7GB 4K is converted to H.264 FHD in RockyMountain Movie converter and it ended up 8.2 GB? What did you set as "Quality" option?

If I remember right, RM converter converts NX1 4K to H.264 FHD about 1 to 2 times of size from its original size when default quality option, "10".

In according to FFMPEG manual, Quality "20" of H.264 encode means human eyes cannot reconize difference between original and encoded one. I set the quality "10" for H.264 as default and it is already very, very high quality.

I guess you might set RM converter quality option better than "10". It is very close to lossless option. For sure, the size will be humongous.

If the output size does matter to you, you can control the output size with "Quality" option in RockyMountain Movie converter. Why don't you set quality as "20"? It is already very good quality. Want to smaller output size? Try worst quality option "51". It willl end up with just few MB of out put size.

I haven't used PowerDirector 13, so I have no idea what was the conversion quality and speed option.

If you want to have good quality output? then the output file size will be bigger. If you want smaller output file size? then sacrifice the quality. There is no magic as long as you stay in the same codec.
 
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IMO, if a videographer sees the need to record in "pro" mode at capture (for professional grade editing and PP needs), it only makes sense he would want to maintain this quality through any necessary subsequent transcoding. That said, I can't see someone recording in "normal" mode then wanting to (or being allowed to) transcode into something higher quality such as "high" or "pro". If the data is not there in it's original capture file, it's never going to be there with increased "quality" come transcode time

--
Robert K
 
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ihkim said:
racin06 said:
I'm done with converting H.265 videos to H.264. I recorded a 2:30 min. 4K video last evening which was 1.7 GB in size. However, after converting the video to H.264 1080P using RockyMountain Movie Converter, the size ballooned up to 8.2 GB! My plan was to edit the converted H.264 video in Adobe Premiere Elements 12...but 8.2 GB...seriously?! PowerDirector 13 to the rescue! I imported the same original 4K video into PD13, edited the video to my liking and saved to H.264 1080. What was the size of the rendered 1080P video? Only 375MB! OK, I'm now off the soapbox.
Click to expand...
I am the author of RockyMountain Movie Converter.

1.7GB 4K is converted to H.264 FHD in RockyMountain Movie converter and it ended up 8.2 GB? What did you set as "Quality" option?

If I remember right, RM converter converts NX1 4K to H.264 FHD about 1 to 2 times of size from its original size when default quality option, "10".

In according to FFMPEG manual, Quality "20" of H.264 encode means human eyes cannot reconize difference between original and encoded one. I set the quality "10" for H.264 as default and it is already very, very high quality.

I guess you might set RM converter quality option better than "10". It is very close to lossless option. For sure, the size will be humongous.

If the output size does matter to you, you can control the output size with "Quality" option in RockyMountain Movie converter. Why don't you set quality as "20"? It is already very good quality. Want to smaller output size? Try worst quality option "51". It willl end up with just few MB of out put size.

I haven't used PowerDirector 13, so I have no idea what was the conversion quality and speed option.

If you want to have good quality output? then the output file size will be bigger. If you want smaller output file size? then sacrifice the quality. There is no magic as long as you stay in the same codec.
Click to expand...
There is no "conversion" to make the H265 files editable in Power Director 13 - it reads and edits H265 natively. That is the point. So there is only one conversion - from H265 clips to final rendered video, just like in any editor using H264 files. It is not a two-step, resolution-degrading process.

Pre-conversion, like with RM, either reduces quality or results in very large files, as you say. In any case it doubles the number of files, so at a minimum it more than doubles the amount of space needed. The process also takes time.

The loss of time, disk space and video quality is simply unnecessary using a program that edits H265 natively, like Power Director 13. Hopefully there will be more native-H265 editing choices, so that program like RM (which are very welcome now) will become unnecessary for all.
 
Does pd13 save back as h.265 as well? Or it converts to h.264 only? Thx.
 
STexan said:
IMO, if a videographer sees the need to record in "pro" mode at capture (for professional grade editing and PP needs), it only makes sense he would want to maintain this quality through any necessary subsequent transcoding. That said, I can't see someone recording in "normal" mode then wanting to (or being allowed to) transcode into something higher quality such as "high" or "pro". If the data is not there in it's original capture file, it's never going to be there with increased "quality" come transcode time
Click to expand...
 
Some of us with Macs and other combinations of hardware and software have to convert to h.264 if we hope to work with the files in a meaningful way, at least for now.
 
Markr041 said:
There is no "conversion" to make the H265 files editable in Power Director 13 - it reads and edits H265 natively. That is the point. So there is only one conversion - from H265 clips to final rendered video, just like in any editor using H264 files. It is not a two-step, resolution-degrading process.

Pre-conversion, like with RM, either reduces quality or results in very large files, as you say. In any case it doubles the number of files, so at a minimum it more than doubles the amount of space needed. The process also takes time.

The loss of time, disk space and video quality is simply unnecessary using a program that edits H265 natively, like Power Director 13. Hopefully there will be more native-H265 editing choices, so that program like RM (which are very welcome now) will become unnecessary for all.
Click to expand...
I see. I misunderstood the meaning of PD 13 conversion.

Thank you for your explanation.

ILHYOUNG.
 
tecnoworld said:
Does pd13 save back as h.265 as well? Or it converts to h.264 only? Thx.
Click to expand...
It can render h.265 as well. rendering times for h.265 output are very long.
 
STexan said:
IMO, if a videographer sees the need to record in "pro" mode at capture (for professional grade editing and PP needs), it only makes sense he would want to maintain this quality through any necessary subsequent transcoding. That said, I can't see someone recording in "normal" mode then wanting to (or being allowed to) transcode into something higher quality such as "high" or "pro". If the data is not there in it's original capture file, it's never going to be there with increased "quality" come transcode time
Click to expand...
 
This is another problem, many video editor producers are not doing everything they can to utilize any/all available hardware to deal with h.265 decoding. It may be there, but it goes wasted and un-utilized.

Encoding/transcoding is a whole other topic of discussion and it truly takes a special-built "super-computer" to encode to h.265 quickly and efficiently and effectively. Some newer GPU's have chips built to handle h.265 (HEVC) decoding, but they are mostly useless for helping to encode or transcode.

My point is, even if you had a new high-end GPU and/or CPU designed to decode h.265 and could "easily" view a native h.265 clip straight out of an NX1, that's about all you can do with it (view it), editing and saving to h.265 is too time consuming for many [today].

The fact a $1,500 camera can do this in real-time [with 4k resolution no less] is truly astonishing when you think about it, which begs the question, why can't new motherboards have the same video processing chip the NX1 has, and the video editors be written to use it?

--
Robert K
 
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jwang88 said:
Is there a Mac version for this software?
Click to expand...
For mac there is EditReady you can transcode to any type of file you want from small h264 to ProRes 422.... I keep the nice small originals of my 4k NX1 footage for archival and storage but create ProRes to work in FCPX... it is big but once I render a project I can delete it (I have the original small stuff) so its not a big deal

For me its the same as importing anything into FCPX... either Final Cut makes ProRes copies or EditReady... same deal really
 
STexan said:
This is another problem, many video editor producers are not doing everything they can to utilize any/all available hardware to deal with h.265 decoding. It may be there, but it goes wasted and un-utilized.

Encoding/transcoding is a whole other topic of discussion and it truly takes a special-built "super-computer" to encode to h.265 quickly and efficiently and effectively. Some newer GPU's have chips built to handle h.265 (HEVC) decoding, but they are mostly useless for helping to encode or transcode.

My point is, even if you had a new high-end GPU and/or CPU designed to decode h.265 and could "easily" view a native h.265 clip straight out of an NX1, that's about all you can do with it (view it), editing and saving to h.265 is too time consuming for many [today].

The fact a $1,500 camera can do this in real-time [with 4k resolution no less] is truly astonishing when you think about it, which begs the question, why can't new motherboards have the same video processing chip the NX1 has, and the video editors be written to use it?
Click to expand...
 
This makes one wonder how powerful the nx1 is. I hope that in few weeks/months we'll have some powerful decoding/encoding solution enbedded in cheap gpu.
 
tecnoworld said:
This makes one wonder how powerful the nx1 is. I hope that in few weeks/months we'll have some powerful decoding/encoding solution enbedded in cheap gpu.
Click to expand...
Intel chips already have the capability to decode H265, fourth and fifth generation. This means that $299 laptops can decode H265 effortlessly with the right player. The bottleneck is software that makes use of the hardware capability. I know of none.

Loading…

techreport.com
 
They don't hw encode, though!
 
My understanding is these newer Intel CPU's only have an architecture that enables them to decode h.265 easier and faster, but they DO NOT have a dedicated h.265 transcoding chip onboard which is what is truly needed for anyone who is seriously ready to make the leap from h.264 to h.265

--
Robert K
 
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STexan said:
My understanding is these newer Intel CPU's only have an architecture that enables them to decode h.265 easier and faster, but they DO NOT have a dedicated h.265 transcoding chip onboard which is what is truly needed for anyone who is seriously ready to make the leap from h.264 to h.265
Click to expand...
 
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