16/32bpc Lossless Video Codec?

[DJ_Izumi]

I've been getting into computer animation and more elaborate effects with my film productions. While my cameras still shoot 8bpc I've found that using higher color depth before export helps reduce banding on lossless export. I know I can do 16bpc or higher with PNG or other image sequence exports, but I've always been a fan of things like Lagarith since they turn your results into once nice happy file instead of a folder with a bajillion files. Easier to manage, ya know?

I've looked around and havn't found much, so I'd like to know if anyone knows if there are any lossless 16/32bpc type codecs that also support Alpha?

[mirkosp]

Lossless? That's going to be tough on you. Actually even with lossy I can't think of anything. Just uncompressed. Most codecs tend to stop at the 10bpc or 12bpc mark when it comes to support, and h.264 itself goes no further than 14bpc anyway as a standard. Even industry codecs don't really go further than 10 and 12 bpc generally speaking, so realistically your best bet is exporting 16bit uncompressed, though I'm not sure how alpha handling would go, as sadly the only yuv format with alpha support which I'm aware of is ProRes 4444 (which is lossy and up to 12bit). So you'd be forced to go the rgba route (which I take you won't mind tho, considering if not for the fact that you have to deal with a shitload of images, you'd be fine with png). At that point you can just load those files in wherever you need to.
For your final export I suggest avoiding alpha, though, since it is extra filesize you won't need for the final encode. You should then be able to load it into avisynth with an appropriate source filter which will give a stacked 16bit to be used with dithertools, so you can output a dithered 10bit to x264.

[post-it]

the S.264 for final encode is all I found on the ProRes 444 question.
. its loosely based on the COREpng X32 platform for Lossless Codec's [ which was discontinued in 2006 ] and absorbed by Sorenson.
.. The subject was, "to FineSharpen {black} band colored outer lines" as in TV programs like Winx Club & W.I.T.C.H. & Anime."
S.264 is still under development at this time.
Its limitation is also 12 bpc with Alpha Support.

... I'm just wondering IF there actually IS a 16 Bit Codec with Alpha Support!??

T__T .. where's Zero when you need em'

[DJ_Izumi]

Hmm. Sounds like PNG image sequences are the winner, as it supports up to 32bpc + Alpha and it's pretty universally accepted. Keeping entire exports in dedicated folders will be a bit of a pain but oh well.

[post-it]

you might want to search through "coalgirl"s notes at the doom9.net forums.
( the notes on CorePng and other Codec's were the specailties of that forum. )
.. also, These Are The People Who Tested & Fine-Tuned Them ^__^

[Qyot27]

FFV1 has support for 16bpc in 4:4:4 (yuv444p16le). It's probably the best bet here aside from PNG or Uncompressed.

The bigger issue is that you still need to export in some other format, and then compress with FFV1 afterward. The only thing I know of that can be used to encode FFV1 from an NLE is ffdshow's VFW encoder, and that doesn't support the higher bit depths. Unless of course you can frameserve out of the NLE straight to FFmpeg - that'd make it possible, barring the frameserver doing something screwy to the video as it passes through it.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i input.whatever -vcodec ffv1 -pix_fmt yuv444p16le test.avi

And the result is viewable in mplayer2 and mpv, at least.

[Mister Hatt]

x264 can do this as far as I'm aware, you just need to deal with slow encoding and a minor source patch. FFV1 as Qyot said is probably faster and equally capable, as well as easier. I have some 16bit patches for utvideo to merge eventually too, getting 9, 10, 12, or 14 bit out of that is easy as they're all stored 16bit anyway. That said, why do you have 16bit content? Most cameras I work with are 14bit.

I would avoid PNG to be fair (but if you want to, pack it in MOV) on grounds of if you care about the bit depth that much you probably don't want to ruin it with multiple colourspace conversions. Old thread holla etc.