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What cameras do video not in h.264 or h.265 format?

Started 7 months ago | Questions thread
low_iso Regular Member • Posts: 272
Re: What cameras do video not in h.264 or h.265 format?

It's important to understand what a proxy file does for you.  The bottleneck in many editing operations is getting a video encoded in a particular codec/res/bit-rate decoded into showable frames on the fly.  The software must be aware of the capabilities of the GPU, which should be able to deal with the codes and bitrates involved.  Turning any of that over to the CPU is a recipe for non-smooth video.

Sometimes its the codec, but most times its the combination of codec, resolution, and bitrate that all blends together to great a huge river of data that has to be crunched into viewable video.  You could reduce any one of those parameters and make a noticable difference, but that's not actually something any of us want to do.  Using fully uncompressed video will just make the river wider and deeper, not to mention creating a storage headache.

The work-around are proxy files, essentially a low-res/low bitrate file that is easy to manage and work with, but are just a place holder for the real big full res file.  When the project is done, or at least renedered out to a final file, the real files come back into play, along with the rendered transitions and effects.  Proxys let you work quickly and smoothly, then take the heavy lifting and put it later in the workflow after you've quit for the night and gone to bed.  The exact proxy process depends, of course, on the specific NLE, but that's the general idea.

As mentioned, many cameras can generate proxy files during shooting, but any NLE can generate proxy files during the ingest process.  Again it takes a little time, but then you can work with smooth video.

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