Premiere Pro & Uncompressed AVI - Which version to use??

[gs684]

Hi everyone:

I'm working in Premiere Pro with SD video (640x480) and would like to export a master to uncompressed AVI.

In Premiere there are the following options to export:
- Format "AVI" - which then has a list of Codec options to choose from (including NONE).
- or Format "AVI (Uncompressed)" - which then makes me choose between codecs V210 and UYVY.

Can someone please elaborate on the difference for me and which one is better?
Also, would it make any sense or be better to use DNxHR for this even though this is not HD?

Thank you

[poisondeathray]

UYVY is 8bit 4:2:2
v210 is 10bit 4:2:2

10bit has higher precision (0 to 1023 values) than 8bit (0 to 255 values) , and thus uncompressed data rates are also higher (larger filesizes)

The choice would partially depend on what your source material was, (if you started with 10bit, you probably don't want to use 8bit), what types of content (e.g. if RGB content, then 8bit YUV will lose precision) and/or what you did in the project

[gs684]

My sources are all DVD rips, which are YUV 8 bit and 4:2:0.

[poisondeathray]

Most people don't care, both are uncompressed and will "look" practically the same to most people.


What sorts of things did you do in the project ? Just cutting, or some filtering ? , and what types of other assets, just DVD, or others like images, graphics , CG ?

If you used some RGB color correction filters, you'd might want to use 10bit if you needed perfect color accuracy . If you stayed in YUV , using YUV filters only in PP , using DVD asset only - 8bit is probably ok

4:2:2 is upsampled chroma from a DVD source, and the method that PP uses is actually not a lossless upsample (not reversible losslessly back to 4:2:0, if the goal was the same as the DVD - there are ways around this, but most people don't care) .

[gs684]

I want to keep it the same as original (YUV, 4:2:2, 8-bit). But I'm having trouble understanding which format and settings to choose to accomplish that.

[poisondeathray]

I want to keep it the same as original (YUV, 4:2:2, 8-bit). But I'm having trouble understanding which format and settings to choose to accomplish that.

The original DVD would be 8bit 4:2:0, not 4:2:2

PP does not support 8bit 4:2:0 uncompressed export directly , but you can use lossless 4:2:0 compression using voukoder plugin for PP and libx264, then use something like vdub or ffmpeg to decompress it to uncompressed if you still want to 8bit 4:2:0 uncompressed usually comes as IYUV or i420 fourcc . Or just leave it losslessly compressed - it should take about 1/2 the storage space. Or you could use something like utvideo (lossless for exports, but not for YUV IMports into PP because PP converts most lossless YUV codecs to RGB )

I wouldn't do that unless you're certain you didn't incur RGB conversion anywhere in the project. There can be tricky up/downsampling problems with interlace and chroma artifacts as well. If the DVD was telecined progressive content, you should inverse telecine before importing into the premiere project.

[gs684]

You're right - it's 4:2:0 - that was my typo.
My edits are mostly just cutting and slicing. No RGB to worry about.
Lossless compression is fine with me - in fact I guess that's even better. I just need a good format to export a master copy to for archiving and future re-encoding as may become needed.
What format and codecs would you recommend? Considering this is all SD, I'm not bothering with all those modern codecs such as DNx, etc. But I'm not familiar with old-school SD-based lossless encoding other than uncompressed AVI.

[poisondeathray]

lagarith, ut video, x264 in lossless mode, ffv1 . The 1st two are I-frame only, The latter two have optional temporal compression modes to reduce the filesize farther.

ffv1 can have error correction and hash checking with slicecrc, but compatibility is lower for some programs except open source ones . But it's on the recommended list from the Library of Congress for archival purposes

lagarith is not open source, it might matter to some people

For "old school" 8bit 4:2:0 , I'd use lagarith for higher compression, ut video for larger filesizes, but higher decoding speed. These are the easiest to use and most compatible, even with old school programs. Huffyuv doesn't get mentioned here because the original huffyuv does not support 4:2:0; but variants like ffvhuff do support 4:2:0

[gs684]

Any pros/cons to using DNxHR for SD material?

[poisondeathray]

Any pros/cons to using DNxHR for SD material?

The main one is it's not lossless. It's in the category of "near lossless", similar to Prores, cineform . It depends on what your goals are. You were going with uncompressed before, so DNxHR is a step down

Also beware if you use a "lossless" YUV codec, and use PP or AME to encode it to something else, there is an RGB step in between. You have to use other tools such as open source encoders.