Shooting, Editing, and Producing in H.264 or H.265 Codec?

Joined
Apr 6, 2019
Messages
43
Reaction score
20
Location
Jax Beach, FL
I produce mostly web marketing videos shooting in 4K with a P4P and Air 2S in H.264. I then most often edit and produce the final cut using H.264 reduced to 1920x1080, and only sometimes producing at full 4K. I'm considering doing some trials with the H.265 codec to try to save storage space as it's alleged to do. A few answers to questions from those of you with experience would be helpful please:

1. If I intend to edit and produce in H.265, is it necessary to also shoot in H.265? My experiments rending footage in H.265 from footage shot in H.264 did not result in a significant file size reduction vs. rendering in H.264. Are they cross-compatible - do you have to render using the same codec?
2. What have some of you found to be pros and cons between the two codecs in your uses while shooting, editing, and producing? Picture quality, smoothness, file size, etc.?

Thanks in advance.
 
  • Like
Reactions: OzoneTech
I have tried shooting in .265 because I had heard it preserves more detail etc. however, I found (for whatever reason) I kept getting errors when importing into Adobe Premiere Pro. Kept getting some frame error messages. My 2 computers are new and have all the latest updates etc. even on my new MacBook Pro with M1 Pro it gets errors.

So for me, it was back to .264 and done. I don’t have time to be messing around with clients video and worrrying about getting errors.

BTW I use P4P+ v2
 
I produce mostly web marketing videos shooting in 4K with a P4P and Air 2S in H.264. I then most often edit and produce the final cut using H.264 reduced to 1920x1080, and only sometimes producing at full 4K. I'm considering doing some trials with the H.265 codec to try to save storage space as it's alleged to do. A few answers to questions from those of you with experience would be helpful please:

1. If I intend to edit and produce in H.265, is it necessary to also shoot in H.265? My experiments rending footage in H.265 from footage shot in H.264 did not result in a significant file size reduction vs. rendering in H.264. Are they cross-compatible - do you have to render using the same codec?
2. What have some of you found to be pros and cons between the two codecs in your uses while shooting, editing, and producing? Picture quality, smoothness, file size, etc.?

Thanks in advance.
Wavepilot -- since you are flying an Air2s, you will likely get more feedback if you post on the sister site mavicpilots.com.

There is much more user activity on that site.

Wish I could assist on your base question(s), unfortunately I have not tested differences between the 2 codecs.

Good luck!
 
I had a problem some time ago with .265 on my P4P. Have not tried again in a couple years but here is what I had happen very regularly (almost every flight IIRC):

When the file size limit was reached in the drone and a new file was created on the SD card, the beginning of the new file would have a freeze of about 30 or so frames (if memory serves). It drove me bonkers. Then I switched back to .264 and problem was totally gone. Newer versions of firmware may or may not have fixed this.

I too found little difference in file size.
 
It's been a while since I looked at this, but I seem to recall that my video shot at H.265 (P4P - 4K 30 fps) was the same size as video shot at H.264, with no difference in quality that I could discern. Go figure?
Seeing as you're aiming to get smaller file sizes, I'd run that test yourself (i.e. shooting in both codecs & seeing if there's a size difference) before worrying about the rest.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,358
Members
104,936
Latest member
hirehackers