Encoding Cheatsheet

This is a cheatsheet for encoding best practices for VFX/Animation production. For each section there are more detailed sections on why these settings are picked, and notes on what parameters you may want to change.

This document is based on results from ffmpeg 4.4, we have not tested with 5.0 yet, but do plan to.

H264 Encoding from an image sequence for Web Review

If you are encoding from an image sequence (e.g. imagefile.0000.png imagefile.0001.png …) to h264 using ffmpeg, we recommend:

ffmpeg -r 24 -start_number 1 -i inputfile.%04d.png \
        -vf "scale=in_color_matrix=bt709:out_color_matrix=bt709" \
        -frames:v 100 -c:v libx264 -preset slower -pix_fmt yuv420p \
        -color_range tv -colorspace bt709 -color_primaries bt709 -color_trc iec61966-2-1 \
        outputfile.mp4

-vf “scale=in_color_matrix=bt709:out_color_matrix=bt709” means use the sw-scale filter, setting:

The combination of this and in_color_matrix will mean the color encoding will match the source media. If you are only adding one set of flags, this is the one, otherwise it will default to an output colorspace of bt601, which is a standard definition spec from the last century, and not suitable for sRGB or HD displays.

Separately, if you are converting from exr’s in other colorspaces, please use OCIO to do the color space conversions. oiiotool is an excellent open-source tool for this.

For more details see:

• H264 Encoding
• YUV Conversion
• Browser color issues

ProRes 422 encoding with ffmpeg.

Unlike h264 and DnXHD, Prores is a reverse-engineered codec. However, in many cases ffmpeg can produce adequate results. There are a number of codecs, we recommend the prores_ks one.

ffmpeg -r 24 -start_number 1 -i inputfile.%04d.png -vframes 100 \
    -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 3 -qscale:v 9 \
    -vf scale=in_color_matrix=bt709:out_color_matrix=bt709 -pix_fmt yuv422p10le outputfile.mov

For more details see:

• Prores
• YUV Conversion

ProRes 4444 encoding with ffmpeg.

As above, but using 4444 (i.e. a color value for each pixel + an alpha)

ffmpeg -r 24 -start_number 1 -i inputfile.%04d.png -vframes 100 \
   -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 4444 -qscale:v 9 \
   -vf scale=in_color_matrix=bt709:out_color_matrix=bt709 -pix_fmt yuv444p10le outputfile.mov

For more details see:

• Prores
• YUV Conversion

TV vs. Full range.

All the video formats typically do not use the full numeric range but instead the R’, B’, G’ and Y’ (luminance) channel have a nominal range of [16..235] and the CB and CR channels have a nominal range of [16..240] with 128 as the neutral value. This frequently results in quantisation artifacts for 8-bit encoding (the standard for web playback).

TODO Get Quantization examples.

You can force the encoding to be full range using the libswscale library by using

-vf "scale=in_range=full:in_color_matrix=bt709:out_range=full:out_color_matrix=bt709"

Specifying out_range=full forces the output range, but you also need to set the NCLX tag:

-color_range 2

A full example encode would look like:

ffmpeg -y -loop 1 -i ../sourceimages/radialgrad.png -sws_flags spline+accurate_rnd+full_chroma_int \
    -vf "scale=in_range=full:in_color_matrix=bt709:out_range=full:out_color_matrix=bt709" \
    -c:v libx264 -t 5 -pix_fmt yuv420p -qscale:v 1 \
    -color_range pc -colorspace bt709 -color_primaries bt709 -color_trc iec61966-2-1 ./greyramp-fulltv/radialgrad-full.mp4

We have seen the full range encoding work across all browsers, and a number of players including RV.

TODO: Do additional testing across all players.

For more details see:

• Comparing full-range vs. tv range
• Encoding Guide

Encoding as RGB.

You do not have to encode into YCrCb, h264 does support RGB encoding, which may be preferable in some situations.

Using the encoder:

-c:v libx264rgb

Will skip the conversion completely. Sadly this has no support in web browsers, but is supported by some players (e.g. RV). It is also limited to 8-bit.

TODO Check about 10-bit encoding.

For more details see:

• Comparing full-range vs. tv range
• Encoding Guide