Codec Quest: Perfect cross-platform, cross agency render codec?

That's awesome. Congrats!

I understand, too ... I have no way of knowing whether any of the improvements, adjustments, or higher data rate codecs have any effect whatsoever on my sales, better or worse.

OK, and here's another twist, and it starts with a distinction ... it was said that P5 downsamples to h.264 anyway ... BUT ...this is only in the case that they do the downrez from 4K to HD ... right? Otherwise what would be the point of specifying the codec in the clip info section?

And that brings another thing I was thinking to mind: Might a buyer, especially one who, for reasons of smaller file size, budget, project specifications, prefers HD rather than 4K, perhaps, in some cases, prefer the option to purchase the file in question in PJPEG or ProRes, as the 4K was uploaded (obviously excepting situations where the file was uploaded as h.264) in which case I should NOT delete the several "duplicates" I have online but untagged unsubmitted, as I tagged the 4K versions first .... might as well go ahead and submit the HD versions (in ProRes or PJPEG as my mood would have been at the time).

Could I have complicated that question any more? Anyway, I do render HD versions of most of my 4K clips, so I can actually watch them (checking for motion problems, and for the sheer joy of being able to watch them without stuttering, and those get sent along with the 4K stuff when I send a drive in....

So since they are already in my Uploads page, might as well tag and submit them, right?

I haven't tried rendering 4K h.264 and playing that ... if it works smoothly maybe I have no need to duplicate clips, BUT, as gcrook mentioned having a 10-bt master to re-render from in the future is a good thing ... especially since I am starting to delete original footage, especially stuff from the FS700 7Q+ RAW pipeline, which is simply to overwhelming to keep, better to have master quality renders (as long as they are not botched)

From what I understand when a client buys a clip they are given the option to download it in any one of a number of codecs. That being said, I don't know what codec they are transcoding from (the original it was uploaded in or from their H.264 version. In the end, at least with Pond 5 so much is dependent on how they handle their workflow. I would assume many of the other agencies are similar.

It would be really great to have that data - if the clients more often than not would buy h.264, then we should know, and they could get the clip as we uploaded it, right? Thus saving another transcode? (Assuming same resolution)

As far as h.264, I may well be "doing it wrong" but I don't like it. Here's my settings, based on teh Media Encoder preset "h.264 Match Source - High Bitrate: I did one using the preset and was aghast at what happened. So I dived into the settings and checked render at Max Depth and Use Maximum Render quality - it's still VBR, 1 pass ... is there a way to change that? Anyway, the resultant render was bad too - it totally mushed all the detail (this is a hard clip - it's a desert sagebrush aerial forward flight, so there's lots of motion and detail)

So I dont' like that ... will now try the Media Encoder with Cineform and MXF stuff ....

Gene..did you change the bitrate??i set mine to 120mbs for uhd...
h264 doesn't look worse that pjepg to me,sometimes it has less artifacts or banding...i know it's a compressed codec but many agencies trascode to h264 4k footage so i guess codec is not so relevant in most cases..to say more 4k price is falling so i'm quite reluctant to spend 4 hours to upload a single 1.5gb 4k file....

I had it set for "highest" ... not seeing the place to change the number.

So far Cineform wins for looks. YUV 4:2:2, Encoding quality High, all I frame. But .... just as big as ProRes, does not play at all in media players. Visually almost lossless.

ProRes (from footage studio) is OK, but not great. Detail shifts and added red

PJPEG retains the most detail except for Cineform, even noise blocks and pixels are in the same place, but color shift is problem still (more green, contrast loss)

All experiments with h.264 yielded mushy artifacts in details ... could not see banding, but gradients in grey clouds just lost detail, so no way to check.

Exhausted, confused, and frustrated. Giving up for now. ...

... if straight from camera and just with in-out trims, 4K in h.264 looks very good, almost perfect in some cases (if exposure is right)... if you have underexposed footage and take some hard post processing after, it will look worse of course... Just left enough room for pp to buyer and all will be OK... not OK and it is pointless to give them MJPG, ProRes or something else transcoded from h.264...!?!

Apple ProRes422HQ is widely accepted in the industry. Best bet would be to build a hackintosh and render it natively on the mac platform if you don't have a mac already. Since a couple of years I use only cameras that outputs 422HQ or higher quality. Broadcasters will also buy H264 and lower quality too, but only if there is no other option.

H264 & H265 is a joke when it comes to post processing. There are some workarounds on how to get the most out of it but it's time consuming and of course it really wasn't meant for PP only for delivery. If you ever worked with a better codec in post production trust me you don't want to go back to H264 - never!

Even if camera shoots crappy 8-bit 4:2:0 offering it as a universally accepted codec such as prores helps things in post tremendously because footage purchased as stock is ingested in a workflow.It's not like selling pizzas it's more like selling dough (im deeply sorry for the shitty analogy lol) .
Plus it's more professional to offer video in an established codec,regardless of where it originated.
For the cynical, imagine it's like the wrapping of a product.The better it is the more chance it has to appeal.

P.S Daniel,hakintosh is apparently the best solution if someone wants to go that route but there are some very good windows prores encoders out there like cinemartin's cinec,which is propably the top encoder and not only for prores.And very expensive.I might go with the gold version at some point.

The cinemartin's cinec does not work within premiere or AE, or am I missing something?