Blackmagic Forum

I am not clear why the choices for proxy generator are so antithetical to a smooth and small workflow.
The 264 and 265 formats are not great for all for most GPU's and therefore are not ideal proxy formats, and slow down many systems, even if you have Apple silicon with dedicated hardware decoding, ProRes proxy or DNX LB are still smoother I think and cause less work for the cpu and gpu. And then the ONE ProRes choice is 422 instead of 422 LT or Proxy, I don't get it. This is contrary to every professional workflow used for large projects. We always avoid long gop formats for editing if we can.
This makes no sense to me at all. Can someone elucidate why these are the only choices for me?

jason carey wrote:I am not clear why the choices for proxy generator are so antithetical to a smooth and small workflow.
The 264 and 265 formats are not great for all for most GPU's and therefore are not ideal proxy formats, and slow down many systems, even if you have Apple silicon with dedicated hardware decoding, ProRes proxy or DNX LB are still smoother I think and cause less work for the cpu and gpu. And then the ONE ProRes choice is 422 instead of 422 LT or Proxy, I don't get it. This is contrary to every professional workflow used for large projects. We always avoid long gop formats for editing if we can.
This makes no sense to me at all. Can someone elucidate why these are the only choices for me?

I understand you
especially about ProRes Choices... DNxHR LB would be a great addition
but I feel that, hardware that have 5 years old max, manage very well long GOP H264 H265.
By "manage" I mean : Playback & Editing
The main issue could be a too big resolution. but that why proxy are.
May be you can elaborate more about your workflow
I hope you know that you can use Resolve to batch transcode to any codec .....

Technically H264/5 can be intraframe codecs if you set every frame as a reference frame. Yes you can transcode all material to all sorts of codecs with resolve but one major advantage is the generation of proxys in the backgroud -while- editing already, just like in Premiere. This is a huge time saver. From what I've gathered the H.264 files the proxy generator creates, are exactly as described, intraframe coded. I'm currently editing with it on my lenovo laptop without a GPU in power save mode and I can scrub through the footage like a mad man.

jade film wrote:Technically H264/5 can be intraframe codecs if you set every frame as a reference frame.

yesss

jade film wrote: Yes you can transcode all material to all sorts of codecs with resolve but one major advantage is the generation of proxys in the backgroud -while- editing already, just like in Premiere. This is a huge time saver.

Agree

jade film wrote:From what I've gathered the H.264 files the proxy generator creates, are exactly as described, intraframe coded. I'm currently editing with it on my lenovo laptop without a GPU in power save mode and I can scrub through the footage like a mad man.

On my computer ... H264/H265 is GOP (I use shutter encoder info/GOP structure)
What do you mean by "as described" ?

jade film wrote:I'm currently editing with it on my lenovo laptop without a GPU in power save mode and I can scrub through the footage like a mad man.

Same for me

Proxy codecs should be Cineform, DNx and ProRes.

Containers should be .avi or .mxf.

Still waiting on DNXHR LB and the allowance to change the proxy sizes... If it's staying in H264/5 allowing burnt in metadata would make sense.

+1 for DNxLB codec in the Proxy Generator. I am having big crash problems whilst scrubbing through h264 proxies using a Quadro M4000 GPU. Am looking at upgrading but the proxies I have encoded to DNxLB within Resolve work way better.

JaysonX wrote:Still waiting on DNXHR LB and the allowance to change the proxy sizes... If it's staying in H264/5 allowing burnt in metadata would make sense.

Yeah, I think the various DNxHR formats should be an option, as well as the various ProRes formats (particularly LT, which is what we use for proxies on occasion).

+1 on this.

H264/H265 is not really good for proxies, I don't have the ProRes option (windows?).
"Optimised media" cannot be run in background and also is cumbersome when using multicam as I need to create the optimised media for the original clips.

what version of dr are you guys running?

I'm on Studio 18.6.2 and i see the following options.

• H.264
• H.265
• DNxHR 444
• DNxHR HQX
• DNxHR HQ
• DNxHR SQ
• DNxHR LB

I think we are talking about the standalone proxy app - those options are indeed available under the settings in DR - though I'm not sure what they do and yes, I've read the relevant manual section.

The upside of the proxy generator is that
1. it does create proxies automatically
2. it does it in the background