Changes between Version 15 and Version 16 of Encode/VFX

Timestamp:

Apr 12, 2026, 5:29:10 PM (5 weeks ago)

Author:

WyattBlue

Comment:

--

Encode/VFX

@@ -62 +62 @@
 
 === H.264
-H264 is the newest codec and it seems to be the plumbing that powers all of the videos on the internet. It's extremely efficient at compression - the resulting movie clips are easily 1/10th the size of the same clip made with prores, but it lacks in one critical area. Because of its heavy use of temporal compression, H264 encoded clips are very difficult to scrub frame-by-frame, especially going backwards. It needs to decode frames based on other nearby frames and this is not an easy task. It is very likely that H264 will not be able to be used in reviews that require frame-by-frame scrubbing, but it is an excellent and space-efficient codec for any playback only related workflows. And of course for mobile devices. 
+It's extremely efficient at compression - the resulting movie clips are easily 1/10th the size of the same clip made with prores, but it lacks in one critical area. Because of its heavy use of temporal compression, H264 encoded clips are very difficult to scrub frame-by-frame, especially going backwards. It needs to decode frames based on other nearby frames and this is not an easy task. It is very likely that H264 will not be able to be used in reviews that require frame-by-frame scrubbing, but it is an excellent and space-efficient codec for any playback only related workflows. And of course for mobile devices. 
 
 H.264 support in ffmpeg is done through VLC's libx264 which is most likely the best H.264 encoder out there. If compiling ffmpeg/libx264 manually, please see one of the [[CompilationGuide|FFmpeg Compilation Guides]]. Reasonably detailed instructions on the plethora of H.264 options can be found in the existing [[x264EncodingGuide|FFmpeg and x264 Encoding Guide]]. We will detail some of the missing information in this guide.