how to archive video file from camera?

[hwsinn]

I just came back from 1 week plus of travelling and i have recorded alot of videos using my LX100. I recorded using the MP4, FHD, 50FPS, 28Mbps profile.

While i do not mind recording in such high bitrate (as you only have 1 chance to capture), i would like to have a more effective way to store these videos.

Based on my understand (which may be wrong), ~28Mbps, AVC format, is on the high side for storage, in terms of size.

What would be the best way to reduce size, while retaining close-to-source quality?

TIA

 

[EJB]

I don't.

It's like I capture stills in RAW and worry about storage and still want highest quality.

I just backup everything in RAW and back up the back up in another HDD for failsafe.

 

[Lippyt]

I just came back from 1 week plus of travelling and i have recorded alot of videos using my LX100. I recorded using the MP4, FHD, 50FPS, 28Mbps profile.

While i do not mind recording in such high bitrate (as you only have 1 chance to capture), i would like to have a more effective way to store these videos.

Based on my understand (which may be wrong), ~28Mbps, AVC format, is on the high side for storage, in terms of size.

What would be the best way to reduce size, while retaining close-to-source quality?

TIA

TBH 28Mbps for a 1080p 50fps video is pretty thin as things go. Some consumer video cameras record up to 200Mbps for 1080p24 footage. As 28Mbps is the best and only bitrate your camera can output for 1080p50, just use it as the archival format. It works out to roughly 210 MBytes per minute which isn't a lot, even if you use an SSD.

The MP4 setting on your LX100 uses H264, which is pretty much the gold standard for compression. Using a lower bitrate will only throw out more data, which means more visual artefacts like macro blocking, smearing and possibly ghosting.

So the easiest and least expensive solution is to buy more storage.

If you want to try something new, you could try to convert it to H265 and halve the bitrate, but most televisions and smartphones cannot play this format. Additionally, H265 is not compatible with most video editing software. I do not recommend this as despite H265 claiming to be a more efficient compression standard, lowering your bitrate or any conversion will result in lossy compression.

 

[hwsinn]

I believe that H.264 and AAC are both relatively efficient codecs and those are very high bitrates. But higher bitrates = bigger file size so i thought i could make full use of these efficient codecs to reach a sweet spot.

I just need advice on what is the best or technically correct way to do so and what are the tools to achieve it

 

[hwsinn]

TBH 28Mbps for a 1080p 50fps video is pretty thin as things go. As this is the best and only bitrate your camera can output for 1080p50, just use it as the archival format. It works out to roughly 210 MBytes per minute which isn't a lot, even if you use an SSD.

The MP4 setting on your LX100 uses H264, which is pretty much the gold standard for compression. Using a lower bitrate will only throw out more data, which means more visual artefacts like macro blocking, smearing and possibly ghosting.

So the easiest and least expensive solution is to buy more storage.

If you want to try something new, you could try to convert it to H265 and halve the bitrate, but most televisions and smartphones cannot play this format. Additionally, H265 is not compatible with most video editing software. I do not recommend this as despite H265 claiming to be a more efficient compression standard, lowering your bitrate or any conversion will result in lossy compression.

Hi Lippyt,

Thanks for the analysis. I am looking to half the bitrate to ~12Mbps. Will it have much problem?

My past experience is that, once i re-encode, even from H.264 to H.264, the the properties of the videos change a little, for example the video gets darker etc.

I am just trying to explore more options as I believe H.264 can handle lower bitrates than this and retaining the quality.

EDIT: Btw, the next lower profile would be 1080P, 25Fps, 20Mbps

 

[Lippyt]

Hi Lippyt,

Thanks for the analysis. I am looking to half the bitrate to ~12Mbps. Will it have much problem?

My past experience is that, once i re-encode, even from H.264 to H.264, the the properties of the videos change a little, for example the video gets darker etc.

I am just trying to explore more options as I believe H.264 can handle lower bitrates than this and retaining the quality.

EDIT: Btw, the next lower profile would be 1080P, 25Fps, 20Mbps

You could lower it to 12Mbps if you are pursuing youtube quality. Any H264 converter or encoder will do the job fine. If there are options to select variable bitrate and double pass encoding, do select them as you would want the most optimized quality possible. Darkening should not result as there was no change in color bit depth nor gamma values, it may be best to experiment with a few different software before you decide to convert your whole library.

Recording at 25fps may be a better option. You would get higher quality frames (as bits per frame increases) and a more traditional filmic look to your video. Most people recording in 50fps intend to use the extra frames to slow the video down in post to create a slow motion video. A space savings of 30% is not bad considering that no additional compression step is required.

 

[hwsinn]

You could lower it to 12Mbps if you are pursuing youtube quality. Any H264 converter or encoder will do the job fine. If there are options to select variable bitrate and double pass encoding, do select them as you would want the most optimized quality possible. Darkening should not result as there was no change in color bit depth nor gamma values, it may be best to experiment with a few different software before you decide to convert your whole library.

Recording at 25fps may be a better option. You would get higher quality frames (as bits per frame increases) and a more traditional filmic look to your video. Most people recording in 50fps intend to use the extra frames to slow the video down in post to create a slow motion video. A space savings of 30% is not bad considering that no additional compression step is required.

Do you have any software to recommend?
So far those that i have used (Tmpeg, Handbrake), changes the picture quality too much.

I will use the 20Mbps, 25fps profile next time round.

I thought recording in 50fps would make motion picture "smoother" as it has twice the amount of frames per second. Sometime there are fast moving scenes so i thought capturing wise, i will select a slightly higher profile and re-encode during archival. Is this mindset or practise not good?

 

[Lippyt]

Do you have any software to recommend?
So far those that i have used (Tmpeg, Handbrake), changes the picture quality too much.

I will use the 20Mbps, 25fps profile next time round.

I thought recording in 50fps would make motion picture "smoother" as it has twice the amount of frames per second. Sometime there are fast moving scenes so i thought capturing wise, i will select a slightly higher profile and re-encode during archival. Is this mindset or practise not good?

I put all of my encoding/converting through adobe media encoder which is part of my editing suite. Sorry I can't recommend any, they should produce similar results, but some may be more optimized for multithreaded or GPU use.

Yes, recording in 50fps would make your pans and tilts smoother, it will also reduce motion blur if you have a corresponding increase in shutter speed. So if that's your intention, its not a wrong practice.