FFMPEG Prores Encoder?

[Guiboche]

The Oct 31st release apparently has a apple prores encoder! This sounds like great news!

But what commandline would I use to convert a file to prores. Can't find anything in the docs.

Thanks!

[bat999]

The Oct 31st release apparently has a apple prores encoder! ...

Yup, it's in there.

ffmpeg -codecs | grep -i Apple
ffmpeg version N-34354-g0b3e9d5
....
 DEV D  prores          Apple ProRes

[poisondeathray]

-vcodec prores

seems to work

e.g.

ffmpeg -i input.mov -vcodec prores -acodec copy output.mov

I tested on some 10-bit 422 v210 inputs, and it seems ok

[Guiboche]

Awesome! It works wonderfully

Is it possible to choose which version of prores? HQ, LT, PROXY, etc?

[poisondeathray]

Is it possible to choose which version of prores? HQ, LT, PROXY, etc?

Doesn't look like it . At least not yet

Prores must have been one of the most requested things the last 4-5 years for ffmpeg

[Guiboche]

Is it possible to choose which version of prores? HQ, LT, PROXY, etc?

Doesn't look like it . At least not yet

Prores must have been one of the most requested things the last 4-5 years for ffmpeg

Your telling me!

Having the ability to encode prores on a pc is a tiny milestone

Thank you both for your help.

I will wait and watch when/if the other codec versions become available.

[poisondeathray]

Yes that's huge

It looks like the current one might be the LT version ... Filesizes seem very small compared to DNxHD... have to do some more tests

But even decoding prores is a recent ffmpeg development, less than a few weeks

[Guiboche]

Now that you mention it, it does look like the LT only version. SD should be around 50mb/sec, but I'm getting 30mb/sec (LT rates).

I'm not sure if this doc is even related, but I found it on FFMPEG.org. It lists all the prores versions, but I don't know if I can choose which to use.

http://ffmpeg.org/doxygen/trunk/proresenc_8c.html

[poisondeathray]

Hmm. Maybe I take that back. I tested some other clips, and some of them are larger than 175Mb/s for a 1080p23.976 clip. Might be content related, but from past experience, I find that prores and the equivalent dnxhd version have similar bitrates

The fourcc from the current ffmpeg prores exports is "apcn" which correlates with prores "standard"

There is prores 4444 variant as well, but I don't think it's supported by ffmpeg yet (for decoding either)


ffmpeg's dnxhd encode is 8bit version, but it looks like the prores encode is the true 10-bit. Have to do some more tests to confirm this

[poisondeathray]

Hmmmm. Not sure what to make of it.

The prores export seems to cause more banding - this suggests the 10bit data truncated somewhere from a 10bit source when looking at gradients



EDIT: might be a windows QT prores decoder issue

v210 => ffmpeg prores => look using quicktime = banding

but v210 => ffmpeg prores => ffmpeg v210 , there is no extra banding when examined through quicktime , and amplified difference masks only show the normal compression losses

[Guiboche]

Hmmmm. Not sure what to make of it.

The prores export seems to cause more banding - this suggests the 10bit data truncated somewhere from a 10bit source when looking at gradients



EDIT: might be a windows QT prores decoder issue

v210 => ffmpeg prores => look using quicktime = banding

but v210 => ffmpeg prores => ffmpeg v210 , there is no extra banding when examined through quicktime , and amplified difference masks only show the normal compression losses

The Windows QT decoder has a notorious history of never displaying the correct colours anyhow. Haha.

To confirm this is indeed the NORMAL prores version (not, HQ or any others).

I was able to convert a clip ON A PC to Apple Prores then successfully import it into Final Cut Pro with no problems. YAY!

Big deal indeed!

[poisondeathray]

The different "flavours" (not 4444) are available with -profile

Profile values are 0,1,2,3- where 3 is HQ mode. (0 is proxy).

eg. -vcodec prores -profile 2 - this will produce normal mode.

Note that bitrates are higher than for Apple one (about 30%), but also quality is better. Speed is not that great, because it's not multithreaded yet- but I assume it will be.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1538476#post1538476

If you scroll down in the main thread, apparently some multithreading is implemented now, if you have a recent compile

[El Heggunte]

Too bad there exists no VfW interface for the damn codec ( ¿yet? )

[sdnsdf]

I had to encode some video for the Tribeca film festival. The requirements are:

Quicktime ProRes 422 HQ (.mov) 1920x1080, 23.98psf, 25p, 50i, 59.94i Audio: 24 bit, 48Hz, Little Endian, Dual Channel (LtRt)

I achieved this (I think) in Windows 7 with FFMPEG and the following string:

ffmpeg -i INPUT.mov -vcodec prores -profile:v 3 -acodec pcm_s24le OUTPUT.mov

FFMPEG is quite a remarkable piece of software.

[carlkadie]

We needed to render my son's Sony Vegas-edited film to ProRes 422 format for festivals. We figured out a workflow that takes the film straight from the editor. It should work for Windows Adobe Premiere, too. Here is a YouTube tutorial showing the rendering step. There are also full written instructions.



Instructions: http://slugco.com/meta/ProResOnWindows/

- Carl

[LensLude]

The YouTube video tutorial above helped a lot, thanks! I'm using Sony Vegas 11 Pro as well so that really did the trick!

I'm just wondering what's the correct switch for ProRes422 HQ profile, because once I put the "-profile 3" on the command line, I get a warning message in yellow color:

"Please use -profile:a or -profile:v, -profile is ambiguous"

My target is to end up with a .mov file that'll contain ProRes422 HQ profile 1080P video @ 25FPS and an uncompressed 16-bit/48kHz stereo audio track.

The string I use in ffmpeg is:

ffmpeg -i inpufile.avs -r 25.000 -vcodec prores -profile 3 -acodec copy outputfile.mov

As for now, the main issue I'm experiencing is that I seem to be unable to have FrameServer/ffmpeg render the output file's audio at a 48kHz sample rate.

The "-acodec copy" switch is to have uncompressed PCM stereo audio in the output file, matching the original project audio settings. However, what worries me is that the audio isn't being rendered nor recognized by ffmpeg as being 48 kHz, even though I've set the main sample rate from project properties within Vegas to 48kHz. I'm wondering if this is a bug/flaw in FrameServer itself, since the "Render As"-menu in Sony Vegas shows FrameServer's audio output at 44.1kHz sample rate although the project is with a 48kHz sample rate.

Also, ffmpeg recognizes the audio stream coming from Frameserver as 44.1kHz instead of 48kHz so it's not just the Vegas render menu that seems to show an incorrect project sample rate. Would be nice to know if someone has a workaround to this one. My only guess is that there's a bug in FS that causes the output sample rate to get stuck in 44.1kHz.

It's possible to force ffmpeg to change the output sample rate to 48kHz by adding -ar 48000 switch into the command line, but I don't think that's a good idea since ffmpeg recognizes the input stream as 44.1kHz - this would probably just lead to audio sync problems.

If anyone has any hints or suggestions to this issue, I'd highly appreciate all help I can get!

[poisondeathray]

I'm just wondering what's the correct switch for ProRes422 HQ profile, because once I put the "-profile 3" on the command line, I get a warning message in yellow color:

"Please use -profile:a or -profile:v, -profile is ambiguous"

In some ffmpeg builds, the syntax might be slightly different.

It might be -profile hq

For example, ffmbc uses this syntax for prores
http://code.google.com/p/ffmbc/wiki/ProResEncoding



For the audio sampling rate, I'll have a quick look and report back

[poisondeathray]

As for now, the main issue I'm experiencing is that I seem to be unable to have FrameServer/ffmpeg render the output file's audio at a 48kHz sample rate.

The "-acodec copy" switch is to have uncompressed PCM stereo audio in the output file, matching the original project audio settings. However, what worries me is that the audio isn't being rendered nor recognized by ffmpeg as being 48 kHz, even though I've set the main sample rate from project properties within Vegas to 48kHz. I'm wondering if this is a bug/flaw in FrameServer itself, since the "Render As"-menu in Sony Vegas shows FrameServer's audio output at 44.1kHz sample rate although the project is with a 48kHz sample rate.

Also, ffmpeg recognizes the audio stream coming from Frameserver as 44.1kHz instead of 48kHz so it's not just the Vegas render menu that seems to show an incorrect project sample rate. Would be nice to know if someone has a workaround to this one. My only guess is that there's a bug in FS that causes the output sample rate to get stuck in 44.1kHz.

It's possible to force ffmpeg to change the output sample rate to 48kHz by adding -ar 48000 switch into the command line, but I don't think that's a good idea since ffmpeg recognizes the input stream as 44.1kHz - this would probably just lead to audio sync problems.

If anyone has any hints or suggestions to this issue, I'd highly appreciate all help I can get!

It's working for me, audio is detected as 48Khz in ffmpeg

I know you said you did this already, but make sure in vegas' project properties, audio tab, that it is set to 48Khz and don't forget to push apply and ok

Another way you can check is open the dummy avi with avisynth using AVISource() and use info() to verify that it is indeed 48Khz

[LensLude]

It's working for me, audio is detected as 48Khz in ffmpeg

I know you said you did this already, but make sure in vegas' project properties, audio tab, that it is set to 48Khz and don't forget to push apply and ok

Another way you can check is open the dummy avi with avisynth using AVISource() and use info() to verify that it is indeed 48Khz

Yeah, I indeed made sure that audio is set to 48khz and applied the changes, but still no luck. If I may ask, what version of Vegas are you using? Is it the 32 or the 64-bit version? How about ffmpeg, what build/version do you use? Thanks for the help.

[poisondeathray]

I did that test on 32bit build of vegas 9

ffmpeg from zeranoe
http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/

If it's a bug with that build of vegas or frameserver, you can export a lossless intermediate from vegas (e.g. lagarith with uncompressed audio) , then use ffmpeg