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When I asked this question it was my understanding that H.264 is a sort of best practice when delivering videos for high definition display. As I am delivering most of my video work to stock libraries I had a look at their preferences and I discover they want Photo JPEG or Apple ProRes 422. But when I have a look in Blender I cannot find Photo JPEG and Apple ProRes. Are those codecs not supported ? If not, can you convert H.264 to those codecs (or is this a stupid question)? I would prefer to do the video editing in Blender and not having to go to Adobe Premiere or whatever ...

After reading the comments I understand it is not possible to convert H.264 to the mentioned codecs. Is good open source software (OS X) available to produce either a Photo JPEG or Apple ProRes video based on the image sequence produced in Blender ?

Community
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  • You can't convert an H.264 to Photo JPEG or Apple ProRes. My workflow is to render animations out of Blender as an image sequence and then export as a Photo Jpeg QT in After Effects. I'm sure there is other software you could use hopefully others will chime in with options for you. *Another advantage to rendering as image sequences is that if there is a problem part way through the render you don't have to re-render the whole animation. – Dontwalk Mar 21 '16 at 18:23
  • ok, that makes sense. Thanks. I use Photoshop and Lightroom. Would Adobe Premiere or After Effects be the best choice ? –  Mar 21 '16 at 18:27
  • I'm sorry I do not know. I use After Effects because I am very familiar with it and I preform some color correction and post effects to my Blender animations. Photoshop has come a very long way but I've never used it for animations just still imagery. After Effects "used" to be the Industry standard but Premiere has also come a very long way but I have never used it. – Dontwalk Mar 21 '16 at 18:31
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    I'd suggest render an Image sequence and compile it via ffmpeg into prores or dnxhd, See http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/14712/how-to-encode-apple-prores-on-windows-or-linux – p2or Mar 21 '16 at 18:41
  • @poor: If you are going to use FFmpeg, you might as well use FFV1 as the codec (which Blender supports) since this will make things easier. – Dietrich Epp Mar 21 '16 at 18:44
  • Jan it looks like you can do it in Blender choose Quicktime in the output section of the Render pane. Then you can click on "Codec" for a dropdown menu with a list of options. Stock agencies lean toward JPEG because it keeps the file size manageable but the quality is good enough for their clients needs. – Dontwalk Mar 21 '16 at 18:46
  • @poor stack exchange is really supers :) –  Mar 21 '16 at 18:49
  • I don't think JPEG is a good format at all in any forms. Avoid it. ProRes is very good intermediate format but dying as of late. As an alternative you could use VC-5 which is open-source Cineform or just DNxHD or Cineform itself. But you will have to encode in something different than Blender, blender is not good at encoding video anyway.. – Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny Mar 22 '16 at 10:56
  • @Jerryno What would your suggestions for encoding be (as an alternative for Blender) ? –  Mar 22 '16 at 12:42
  • @JanScherders Under the hood it's an interface for ffmpeg. ProRes isn't supported in Blender, just because of legal issues at the moment. Further reading: https://developer.blender.org/T35615 – p2or Mar 22 '16 at 16:08

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In Blender choose Quicktime in the output section of the Render pane. Then you can click on "Codec" for a dropdown menu with a list of options.

Dontwalk
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For my understanding, PRORES is an H264 compression that saves space but retains the quality, so if you save as H264 best quality, it will work with software that accepts prores. However, prores will be a lower size file with a good quality.

So you can easily save as uncompressed and export to any format you want with VCL, after effects or any other free converters.

PRO RES is the standard for the industry as it retains a good quality for a smaller file size than uncompressed. But ideally you have a back of your files as uncompressed to export in any format you wish.

kim
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