500049 Video Annotation and Reference System : Containers and Codecs This page last changed on Aug 26, 2015 by brian. # Codecs ## Apple ProRes 422 HQ The video lab intends to use Apple ProRes 422 HQ as an archiving codec. According to Apple, the nominal data rate is 220Mbps for 1920x1080 at 29.97fps. (i.e.773 GB/hour or 0.756 TB/hour). A sample from Kikani's DeepPIV video was recorded using 422 HQ at 60fps. Her video was 457.68 GB at 8441.233 seconds long (2h 20m). Her data rate was 55.52 Mbps for 1920x1080 at 60fps (195.19 GB/hour (0.19 TB/hour) ## h264 ### Transcoding to h264/mp4 Prores can be transcoded to h264 using ffmpeg. Here's an example:
    # Using default encodings
    ffmpeg -i SC1ATK52.mov -c:v libx264 -movflags +faststart -c:a copy ~/Desktop/SC1ATK52-h264.mp4
    # Using higher quality (crf=10 preset=slow)
    ffmpeg -i SC1ATK52.mov -crf 10 -preset slow -c:v libx264 -movflags +faststart -c:a copy ~/Desktop/SC1ATK52-h264.mp4
The audio track is just copied over to the new container and the headers are added to the front of the file for web playback (i.e. faststart). Note that the default encoding is ran in my test (source prores on Atlas, target file on my laptop) at about 10fps. That means the transcoding would take `505968 frames / 10 fps / 60 s per m / 60 m per h = 14 hours`, the higher quality one at 3fps (46 hours) ### Examining a File First install ffmpeg. On Mac, you can use homebrew. Here's the command to install it with reasonable codec support:
    brew install ffmpeg --with-faac --with-libvpx --with-openjpeg --with-schroedinger --with-theora --with-x265
You can then use `ffprobe` to examine the contents:
    ffprobe -v quiet -show_streams -show_format -show_error -print_format json h265_test.mp4

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