Choosing the right video codec for your project

Nils Porrmann has earned his reputation as a leading voice in mixed reality productions. As co-founder of the creative firm dandelion+burdock, he has worked on iconic projection mapping projects that have incorporated structures including Buckingham Palace and the Hoover Dam. In 2019 he published 10 bit Workflow Viability + Codec Comparison, an article that still serves as a formative text on identifying the best codec for the job. Five years on, Disguise caught up with Nils to uncover his insights on a fast-moving industry.

Your seminal 2019 article offered an extensive overview of comparing codecs and the factors to consider when selecting one for your workflow. How has content rendering changed over the past five years?

My original piece looked at approaches to finding the best intermediate codecs for use within teams, but the playing field has changed somewhat. Most design teams are now on a PC base, but a lot of creative directors are still on a Mac. So typically we’re now working with more than one codec in a delivery, and catering to end clients who often need something web-based.

Thinking specifically about previews of creative work, we’re still very much operating with the MPEG and MP4 formats. In some cases VP9 and H.265 codecs. In the intermediate, though, it’s still a battle between NotchLC and Apple’s ProRes.

When planning a workflow for a new production, how do these different codecs stack up in terms of strengths and weaknesses?

There are different factors to consider for each production. If encoding speed is your priority, and you’re using Notch, then you’re probably always going to stick with NotchLC, because its encoding is just out of this world fast. But if you’re creating hybrid content that is rendered in Adobe After Effects or in a Mac environment, ProRes is more convenient.

From a compatibility standpoint, ProRes is accessible enough that we are able to handle less codecs in our studio. We can do everything in ProRes, and can encode to ProRes on Macs and PCs without a problem. We can also share it more widely, without users needing to have specific media players. That means less explanations, and fewer touch points in the video review process. That’s a big advantage for ProRes.

NotchLC has recently been released on Apple, and it has proven to work well, when Creative Cloud is playing along nicely. The IINA player helps with reviews.

It’s also worth highlighting that for playback on Windows, ProRes is decoded by the CPU whereas NotchLC is decoded by the GPU.

Do you tend to select a particular format based on the type of production?

Often it comes down to the pressure on the CPU that a production requires. If a codec’s support on the media server is CPU based, that means we’re not going to be getting the same amount of performance out of the server. We don’t want to throttle the performance we’re looking to get on demanding projects. We might be working on something that is 12k wide and 4k high - that’s a normal occurrence nowadays. If we need to operate DMX out of the server, we need to recognise that it’s a very CPU-hungry process. In that situation, ProRes may be detrimental to the overall performance, and NotchLC is going to have a smaller impact on the processing.

It’s about weighing your priorities. I’m sure that a lot of creative producers will be really happy to know that they can push a ProRes file onto the Disguise software for an easy review. You can then go back to your technologists to make a choice about whether you need to transcode. It might create a stop gap at a slightly later point if you decide that for performance reasons it is necessary to transcode before going into the final show.

When would you select ProRes for your content workflow, then?

ProRes might necessitate a final transcode, but it certainly improves the overall workflow up to that decision. It speeds up everything related to the creative process and it can also speed up the process of delivery. If your system is large enough to handle everything without a further transcode, then it’s sped up the entire workflow. In those situations, ProRes comes into its own.

The main benefit I see in ProRes is not the speed, but its universality. I can now review everything with everybody involved, because stakeholders don’t have to worry about whether they are able to access the file for playback.

So ProRes facilitates better team collaboration in the design process?

It’s more that it offers team collaboration across the preparation of a project. In the last couple of years the increase in extended reality projects has led to everything being a real time project. The way we deliver this varies - rendering it out as a traditional video, or using it as an Unreal or Notch environment and rendering in real time. In that regard, the codec isn’t the biggest problem, but the space is, because real time projects tend to become very large.

In these cases, your codec choice becomes tied to how your team works. As soon as you have a design team that is working across PCs and Macs, ProRes becomes the preferential intermediate codec. It has long been a very strong performer. It’s a very easy-to-handle codec, and it’s friendly to a lot of playback devices, so there’s a universality to it. I’d like to say that about DNX HD, too, which we have also used as a codec for intermediate exchange, but it’s just not an option with uncompressed projects. They’re too big for DNX HD.

ProRes has the capacity and the universality. In fact, we’ve seen in the past that a lot of external teams deliver work to us in ProRes for this reason, and if we need to, we can then transcode it into a GPU-based encoding codec for the final project.

What makes you excited about Disguise supporting ProRes?

I’m looking for a workflow that has the least friction. The most exciting thing about ProRes coming to Disguise is the way it will reduce stop gaps in our client review process, and with Mac users. It will make for smoother transactions with creative directors signing off on new developments, and create less friction for us. 

ProRes is now natively supported in our Designer software. Download the latest release here or from your Disguise Cloud account to access it.