Best format for exporting from Resolve?

[bronan]

So I have a Prores clip in Resolve I've done some work on, now its time to export. My goal is to get it encoded to 264, but the built in one doesnt leave much room for customizing. What's my best option for export for encoding with Simple x264 with the preferred settings? I was looking at the Uncompressed Quicktime formats but there's quite a few options and I wasn't sure what to pick.

[deleted user]

You could export as DNxHR 4444 for great quality, or in RGB mode of the Lagarith lossless codec (you'd have to install that one first possibly). Benefit of DNxHR is, it supports 10/12 bit, benefit of Lagarith is it's actually lossless, whereas DNxHR (like ProRes) is merely really high quality lossy. With some types of material, Lagarith can even compress better than ProRes at times, though it's rather rare (very noise free stuff typically).

If your final encode is gonna be 8bit x264, you may as well export in Lagarith. If you want higher bit depth, I'd go with DNxHR.

If you want both lossless and high bit depth, you could try one of the Blackmagic codecs, but I think they don't actually compress at all, they are just lossless high bit codecs and they also seem to be a bit weird in how they handle TV levels, which led to me getting weird colors once. As for lossless codecs that actually compress, most of them seem to handle only 8 bit and the only one I found that can do higher bit depths was some solution that cost too much money to try and possibly doesn't even work.

Lastly, if you have enough space and want high bit depth + lossless and maximum compatibility, you can do a TIFF sequence with 16 bit and some form of compression (TIFF offers several, like LZW and ZIP).

[spoRv]

Out of curiosity, may Resolve import Lagarith encoded files? And, if so, how?

[bronan]

Thanks! I installed the Lagarith codec but I'm not seeing it in my export list (have restarted and everything). I'm assuming it should show up under the AVI format?

[Stamper]

I'm trying my hand at Resolve too, let's say I have an HDR source file at rec2020 and I converted to rec709.

I want a rec709 export, do I encode using DNxHR 4444 or Lagarith or just plain Prores444?

[deleted user]

Yep, in AVI Format. But I guess it's possible that Resolve, for some reason, doesn't support it. I don't really work with Resolve much, but I haven't encountered a codec not being recognized for AVI in any software yet. Are you possibly only looking at the presets? If so, maybe you need to make a new preset with the new codec.

Rec709 is a color matrix for YUV, needed to correctly convert YUV values back to RGB for display on a monitor/TV. If you export as RGB Lagarith, it should simply convert the values to the correct RGB values. Then for the encode you could simply convert it back to YUV with the matrix set to Rec709 and get an identical result. DNxHD, I believe, is always YUV, so you wouldn't have to worry about it at all as long as Resolve handles it correctly. ProRes 444 is the same, but I wasn't aware you could export it from Resolve. If you can, that's a good alternative too.

[bronan]

I'm in the custom export page, chose AVI as container but unfortunately no Lagarith in the Codec dropdown. I'm giving the DNxHR 444 a go, interested to see how it looks.

[deleted user]

You aren't even lying. I just checked in Resolve and I can't select Lagarith either. Quite baffling, I did absolutely not expect this. First software ever that can't detect AVI Codecs.

With that said, if you have spare space, you could export lossless AVI and then use VirtualDub to losslessly convert to Lagarith and delete the uncompressed file.

You could also try HuffYUV, but honestly I don't have any high hopes for Resolve's AVI capabilities at this point. Looks like they use some proprietary stuff.

Edit: I also just realized yet another terribly weird thing about DaVinci's AVI export. It doesn't even have normal uncompressed 8-bit AVIs. It only has 2 YUV variants and one RGB variant and the RGB variant is 10-bit! How utterly strange. But at least that's the go-to option if you want guaranteed lossless and high bit depth then - 10-bit RGB uncompressed.

[bronan]

Yea, the in AND out formats are pretty limited haha. I was trying to import 264 in a mov container before, which worked but I got really strange results on export with extra frames in the output. Soo, yea going from 264 and back might take up to 3 re-encodes? (264 to Prores to import, do edits, then export dnxhr, then encode to 264)

[deleted user]

Premiere is pretty bitchy about h264 as well and will only process it properly in mp4 from my experience. Different containers will be read (even mkv in some newer versions) but have duplicate frames, frame skips etc., not reliable at all. h264 in mp4 is very reliable in Premiere tho, I wonder how Resolve handles it.

If you wanna try, install ffmpeg and run:

Code:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.whatever -an -vcodec copy output.mp4

Replace "inputfile.whatever" with your file that has the h264 in it, for example "myvideo.mov"