So I did my testing, and the results were actually pretty cool.
Before anything else, the frame I captured is probably a pretty hard one for any codec. There’s a lot of detail with big contrast, both characters are moving with motion blurs all around them, and the camera itself is also moving around all that detail. Good for checking all this stuff out.
First I’ll post a sequence of screen shots of 2k videos (scaled from the 720p originals), scaled to 1080p (my fullscreen).
Afterwards I’ll post the same 2k videos, but with the 720p setting on the youtube player, and not scaled at all.
All pictures will contain the codec and the settings for the render, as well as the file size. I think those are kinda relevant to figure quality vs size (for uploads and what not).
As a note I would like to state that both Photo JPEG and MPEG4 compression won the render time by a safe margin. Those really work quick. Anyways, the screen shots:
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1080p Scaled from 2k video screen shots
Uncompressed, RGB 8bit, 16.8Gb
H.264, 40MBps, 140MB
H.264, 60MBps, 206MB
H.264, 80MBps, 268MB
H.264, 100MBps, 332MB
H.264, 160MBps, 515MB
H.264, 200MBps, 625MB
H.264, 240MBps, 711MB
H.264, 320MBps, 790MB
MPEG4, Best Quality, 412MB
Photo JPEG, 90% Quality, 510MB
Photo JPEG, 95% Quality, 801MB
Photo JPEG, 100% Quality, 1.19GB
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Unscaled 720p player setting on 2k video
Uncompressed, RGB 8bit, 16.8Gb
H.264, 40MBps, 140MB
H.264, 60MBps, 206MB
H.264, 80MBps, 268MB
H.264, 100MBps, 332MB
H.264, 160MBps, 515MB
H.264, 200MBps, 625MB
H.264, 240MBps, 711MB
H.264, 320MBps, 790MB
MPEG4, Best Quality, 412MB
Photo JPEG, 90% Quality, 510MB
Photo JPEG, 95% Quality, 801MB
Photo JPEG, 100% Quality, 1.19GB
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Unscaled 720p player setting on 2k video
Uncompressed, RGB 8bit, 16.8Gb
https://youtu.be/995d7L8pWR0
H.264, 40MBps, 140MB
https://youtu.be/H69HQ17jOTU
H.264, 60MBps, 206MB
https://youtu.be/TtRKTWtLSWU
H.264, 80MBps, 268MB
https://youtu.be/5prq2G-t7m0
H.264, 100MBps, 332MB
https://youtu.be/GiS2Q-4EKaI
H.264, 160MBps, 515MB
https://youtu.be/Grbs6OYVBgM
H.264, 200MBps, 625MB
https://youtu.be/U4wOQEcHHO4
H.264, 240MBps, 711MB
https://youtu.be/XJFwNNRdQRs
H.264, 320MBps, 790MB
https://youtu.be/fmh_D3IV03w
MPEG4, Best Quality, 412MB
https://youtu.be/mPTKfgDkrYM
Photo JPEG, 90% Quality, 510MB
https://youtu.be/Bnne2bVFidM
Photo JPEG, 95% Quality, 801MB
https://youtu.be/s2BFG_J6YJo
Photo JPEG, 100% Quality, 1.19GB
https://youtu.be/4bwlqANIV0Y
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So… conclusions.
As it is quite obvious the uncompressed version is the absolute best. Only thing better would be to record uncompressed at that resolution. If I had a powerful tower dedicated just to record… I might actually do that. But not really because only those 27 seconds of recording came out as 16.8GB… insanity. Still… it is good to have this version here just for the sake of the highest standard.
But very close to that level of quality you have JPEG 100% quality (I’ll call JPEG100).
Most of the differences are barely noticeable, a little bit of blurring on the tree at the left, right to the rock. Other stuff is even harder to detect like on the clouds, and some color changes on the sky. If you really want close to the best possible quality, but don’t want to deal with the huge file sizes, this is definitely the way to go. On this exact test the JPEG100 version was about 7% of the size of the uncompressed file.
Now for H.264. To my honest opinion, everything from 160MBps upward looks pretty damn fine.
If you are not too picky about the quality, but you still don’t want to have absolute crap… That works pretty well. Even 80MBps is pretty OK, and @disestablished did some very good tests at that exact quality.
But the difference with the 320MBps version are there, it is something you notice, specially on the actual video running. If you are aiming for best possible quality, and you have to use H.264, This would be the thing. And to be honest, setting the render to 320MBps, but in the end the original video size never goes beyond 290MBps. But that might be just on my case
But personally, I really don’t like the H.264 codec to upload. To stream and store… more than fine. But to upload to Youtube to get re-compressed? I can’t say it is the best choice out there.
However, if you compare file sizes and screen shots, for about the same size as H.264@320MBps, you have JPEG95. But the quality of JPEG95 is actually much sharper in detail. You can see details much better, and there is a general sharpness that it is noticeable in video.
However, the same does not happen between JPEG90 and H.264@160MBps. In fact there, you have a slightly better quality with H.264@160MBps. Not by much, but you can still notice it.
And that takes me to MPEG4 compared with the previous 2. The file is slightly smaller, and I bet that will be a big difference in bigger recordings. But the quality just simply doesn’t par with either JPEG90 nor H.264@160MBps.
But one big disappointment is when you set the Youtube player to 720p.
Honestly… the quality sucks D=. I took the screen shots, but it isn’t even worth watching.
So to conclude, I’ll personally use the Photo JPEG codec, either 100% or 95%.
Tending more to the 95% because the difference is very little but the file size is quite different.
With the editor that I have, and with what I have available to me, those do get me the best quality out of it. Which is pretty much what I want for the purpose of archiving these videos.
Render time is very small, and the file size is not absurd if you take into consideration that what you are looking for is quality on the final upload. Obviously, upload times are a pain, but you just leave it there for a few hours and you are done with.