Martin Schitter wrote:Ed Nixon wrote:lossless h.264 encoding is hardly supported by any non ffmpeg based software. it's a really obscure feature, which is not used much often in real world. although it's perfectly standard compliant, it isn't readable by most h.264 codecs. scalable video coding (SVC) would be a similar feature specified in the standard, which will not work in most applications.
Lossless h264 is in the standard, just highly unused and so various implementations lack support, that is true! x264 implements that standard and ffmpeg (which is a swiss army knife, a collection of a bunch of codecs in a "semi" standardized interface from a programming interface) as well as a few other "interfaces" (wrappers) around x264 (like libav) also support Lossless as they all use x264.
The licensing on x264 is weird, it is free as long as your have a product that is free (which the free version of Resolve technically is). *IF* a paid version of Resolve doesn't "add" x264 support (directly or indirectly via say ffmpeg) and the free version includes same integration (support) of same x264 library (again, directly or indirectly) then resolve should be fine with using it. But I am not a lawyer.
Instead it appears resolve (on Linux and on Windows) uses the nvidia libraries to decode h264 and pass any licensing (if that exists) on to them. It appears to be "included" in OSX in the "free" version.
On a side note, I reinstalled (added some boot options) the Resolve CentOS7 1708 ISO from BM and got it installed last night before going to bed and then installed the latest nVidia drivers. the 1080 ti has issues with older drivers (both nouveau and nVidia) and got it running.
I can confirm, the free version of Resolve on Linux does NOT import H264 (as also confirmed in a PM from another user here). The Studio version (paid) will import H264 on Linux with nVidia graphics card as it uses the nVidia hardware to perform that.
The moderator also confirms that nVidia's drivers do NOT support the Predictive Lossless (rare and most people don't implement) mode of H264. I would like to post a "near" lossless file and have somebody test it -- will get around to asking later.
BUT in any case, my installation on the same hardware with Ubuntu 16.04 (updated to MUCH newer kernel 4.x series) and CentOS 7.3 (build 1708) from BM with tweaking and the free version behave the same.
Gonna place an order for Intensity Pro 4K (like the analog capture, but probably will almost never use) over the various DeckLink cards and Studio and call that good -- unless somebody knows of issues with that hardware under Linux?!
--Doug (dx9s)