Which H.264 Profile should I use?

[KyleMadrid]

Hi all,

I just have another quick question, and hopefully the answer is pretty simple.

In general, which profile is best for encoding to HD 1080p? The resolution I am using is 1920x1080.

I was going to use High@L4.1 because that's what I use for all my 720p encodes, but VidCoder only let's me choose between 4.2, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.2 when encoding to 1080p...

[jagabo]

Probably because you're talking about 1080p50 -- which is too much for High@L4.1. It won't play on a Blu-ray player, for example.

[KyleMadrid]

so should I go for High@L5.2?

[johns0]

Only go for 4.1 if you are going to play on your blu-ray player as jagabo already said.No reason at all to choose 5.1 or 5.2 even if it's gonna be played on your computer unless its needed.

[KyleMadrid]

I can't do 4.1 because Vidcoder won't let me select it. 4.2 and up is what it gives me to choose from.

[jagabo]

Since you're encoding at 1080p50 you'll have to use 4.2 or higher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels

I don't know about VidCoder in particular, but beware that some encoders only set the Profile@Level flag in the header. The setting may not effect how the video is actually encoded.

[KyleMadrid]

OK, I see, thanks guys.

[deadrats]

without threadjacking this topic, if i may suggest another option...don't encode anything at the moment, wait a few months until divx introduces their h265 profile:

http://blog.divx.com/tag/h-265/

h264 is the next evolutionary change to the mpeg-4 spec and it promises to be to avc what h264 was to mpeg-2, not to mention from everything i have read the h265 spec calls for gpu acceleration built in (i.e. the encoders will be built from the get go with gpu acceleration in mind).

personally i have stopped all my transcoding projects until there is a h265 encoder available, i see no point in encoding to h264 when by all accounts based on early testing even beta builds of the h265 reference encoder beat x264 in most tests.