h264/265 vs DNxHR LQ proxies in Studio

Hey there!

which of this two formats would grant smoother editing?

there are other fact to consider? (only using proxies to editing smoother)

Thank You!
Best

It all depends on your hardware. If your computer has the hardware to decode H.264/265, both will be smooth. If not, it’s DNxHD/HR.

It all depends on your hardware. If your computer has the hardware to decode H.264/265, both will be smooth. If not, it’s DNxHD/HR.

thank you Uli! with this point of view DNx will always grant an advantage ... smaller or bigger

It’s a shame that the Proxy Generator for PC doesn’t offer it. On the Mac it has ProRes.

It all depends on your hardware. If your computer has the hardware to decode H.264/265, both will be smooth. If not, it’s DNxHD/HR.

Puget has a table showing all the options for Hardware Acceleration

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/artic ... udio-2122/

As a good Rule of Thumb, formats like DNx, Cineform and ProRes will always give you the best performance.

I know the "Blackmagick Proxy Generator" that comes with Davinci Resolve is really meant for creating small proxies for sending it to other people. Some of us want an external proxy generator that generates dnxhr proxies to improve timeline editing performance instead (specially scrubbing) that can be ran standalone.

For example, I have a NAS where I keep all my video clips, but I also have a local optane scratch disk on my editing workstation where I store my proxies.

The blackmagic proxy generator (Windows) currently only outputs LONG GOP codecs (H264, or H265) which isn't really ideal for having the smoothest playback / scrubbing (just the nature of the codecs), additionally - it doesn't allow you to generate the proxies in a different drive (like my scratch drive).

I'm thinking about writing my own little proxy generator instead and was wondering what proxy codecs I should make available (i'll put it up on github once I'm done).

Basically, it'll be a front end to FFMPEG and will focus on creating proxies and here are my personal requirements

1. Supports MP4 and MOV input files
2. Selectable Output Directory
3. Selectable Proxy Format

* Half Size / DNXHR SQ / yuv422 / pcm 16bit 2 channel audio
* 1080 / DNX HR SQ / yuv422 / pcm 16bit 2 channel audio


For people who know how to write microsoft powershell scripts, it's fairly easy to automate this stuff (in conjunction with FFMPEG).

For example, here's how to do a half size proxy file (keeps source framerate)

ffmpeg -i INPUTFILE.mp4 -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_sq -vf "scale=iw/2:ih/2,format=yuv422p" -c:a pcm_s16le -b:v 110M "OUTPUT_FILE_FOLDER\INPUTFILE_NAME.mov"

and here's one how to do a 1080p proxy

ffmpeg -i INPUTFILE.mp4 -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_sq -vf "scale=1920:1080,format=yuv422p" -c:a pcm_s16le -b:v 110M "OUTPUT_FILE_FOLDER\INPUTFILE_NAME.mov"

As a good Rule of Thumb, formats like DNx, Cineform and ProRes will always give you the best performance.

thank you Jim