Adobe Premiere converts YUV to RGB when using a lossless codec

[Hypersonic1]

Why is there still no solution to this problem? I don't want to have to use AviSynth or VirtualDub. I am forced to save as an uncompressed AVI file to prevent this conversion.

[poisondeathray]

Actually most uncompressed YUV AVI get converted to RGB as well . Only certain fourcc's get YUV treatment

eg. UYVY for 8bit422 and v210 for 10bit422 .

CC2017 actually supports lossless AVC decoding when encoded with x264 now for certain pixel types. It's decoded as YUV correctly

But even before that, "very, very, near lossless" with something like CRF1 or QP1 was supported . That's more than good enough for 99.99999% of cases. PSNR is like ~90-100db . Consider prores4444XQ is typically ~55-60db only . That's a log scale too.

[Hypersonic1]

No it doesn't because I have done an export with it. Where do you see that uncompressed UYVY gets converted to RGB?

Also, I don't really see an option to export as H.264 422 lossless. I don't think the bit rate slider goes far enough, and I wouldn't know how far to drag it anyway.

[poisondeathray]

No it doesn't because I have done an export with it. Where do you see that uncompressed UYVY gets converted to RGB?

UYVY does NOT get converted to RGB. That's one of the ones I listed that worked. There are dozens of other uncompressed AVI formats that DO get converted to RGB. The majority do get converted to RGB.

Also, I don't really see an option to export as H.264 422 lossless. I don't think the bit rate slider goes far enough, and I wouldn't know how far to drag it anyway.

only x264 supports AVC lossless , not mainconcept AVC encoder that PP uses

But you might be able to do it with the voukoder plugin for Adobe that uses libav . I haven't tested if there are other conversions going on

But importing x264 with CRF0 or QP0 is treated as YUV in PP2017

[poisondeathray]

Were you looking at exporting from PP only ? Or do you care how it handles re-import ?

voukoder does do lossless x264 , but only in 4:2:0 right now. On the issue tracker #9 says qp 0 doesn't work, but it does for 4:2:0 when I tested it. It's beta right now. I suggested a command line box for extra options, but the current build doesn't have one, the author said he would implement it eventually. But FFV1 (lossless) does work in 422/MKV container, but it won't re-import back into PP . You'd have to use something like avisynth or ffmpeg to use it

x264 8bit 420/422/444 lossless works when reimporting, but you can't export with PP directly (and the x264vfw plugin doesn't support 422 lossless, you have to use x264CLI or ffmpeg libx264) . You might be able to with x264pro plugin for PP but I don't use it .

(When I say "worked" I mean YUV preserved e.g. if you had super brights/darks, they would be preserved, not clipped by an RGB conversion)

[poisondeathray]

Looking more closely, there are problems with the FFV1 export (the format itself works when used in other applications, but it appears some other conversions were done in the pipeline behind the scenes for the PP export. So although it's still YUV, it's not mathematically lossless when used with PP through voukoder) . Same with x264 lossless. It's treated as YUV for import (superdarks/whites don't get clipped), but there are slight differences detected. It's not mathematically lossless when used in PP (even when exporting UYVY, so it's a decoding issue) .

So if you need true mathematically lossless in/out YUV, looks like PP users are still stuck with UYVY for 8bit422 and v210 for 10bit422

[Hypersonic1]

So if you need true mathematically lossless in/out YUV, looks like PP users are still stuck with UYVY for 8bit422 and v210 for 10bit422

So in that case, I will stick with UYVY in Premiere, and just use a general-purpose compression scheme to reduce the file size. Thanks for letting me know.