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24 Janvier 2021
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When it comes to selecting the best video format for post-production like editing and rendering, Apple's ProRes and Avid's DNxHD Codec are excellent choices since the compression is minimal so the quality remains very high, especially if you're editing the files in something like Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, etc. In another article, we've shared a good ProRes converter for Windows, and in this article we will introduce two best transcoders that can help you encode videos to uncompressed Avid's DNxHD codec without any hassle. Keep on reading for details.
DNxHD, short for Digital Nonlinear Extensible High Definition, is a lossy high-definition video post-production codec developed by Avid for multi-generation compositing with reduced storage and bandwidth requirements. It is an implementation of SMPTE VC-3 standard.
What's good is that Avid's DNxHD codec doesn't compress the video as much. It trades storage space and bitrate for quality and ease of processing. It typically need ten times as much storage. That's a lot, but hard drives are tending towards being free, so it hardly matters these days.

In fact, both ProRes and DNxHD (sometimes called 'intermediate' or 'production' codecs) sit in a kind of 'sweet spot' between the humongous data rates of uncompressed video, and the egregious processing demands of Long Gop video. It's worth stressing that the main reason for ProRes and DNxHD's increased quality is that they are not long-GOP codecs
Once you've converted, your edits will fly. These codecs are so efficient that you can play multiple streams with a fraction of the effort you need for a single stream of H.264 - based video. As an example, on my Macbook Air, playing any HD Long-Gop clip will cause the fan to come on at full power within seconds, but with ProRes or DNxHD, I can play a clip - in much higher quality - with no sign of the fan.
The catch is that not all transcoders can encode to DNxHD or other 'professional' codecs. And the choices are further narrowed down because you need a transcoder that is coming with its own codecs rather than just relying on those built into the operating system. Currently, there are two good transcoders that be used as an Avid DNxHD converter. One is EaseFab Video Converter, another option is MPEG Streamclip.
Below I will introduce the top 2 DNxHD transcoders in details. Also I will show you how to encode your video files to Avid DNxHD codec with them step by step.
The world of paid video transcoding apps is quite a mess. Some are very good, but some are downright dodgy. If you don't want to be held back by slow and complicated processing and you're looking for the best option to transcode any video to Avid DNxHD codec or other professional codecs, EaseFab Video Converter for Mac will be your best choice. The expert DNxHD converter program is available for macOS Catalina or lower and it has a Windows version compatible with Windows 10 and lower.
The program is very easy to use and it comes with two optimized DNxHD codec presets. With it, you can convert almost any video files including but not limited to MP4, MTS, MXF, H.265/HEVC, MKV, MOV, VOB etc. to DNxHD codec in 3 simple cliks. The result DNxHD codec ensures the maximum editing quality and efficiency when working with Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve and more. Besides DNxHD, you can also encode to professional codecs like ProRes, Apple Intermediate Codec for for fast and fluid workflow.
Apart from being a universal converter that supports more than 400+ file formats at the time of this writing, EaseFab is extremely lightweight and can render the files 30 times faster than other post-production tools. With the ability to apply effects, add watermarks, and include subtitles to the videos, EaseFab Video Converter can be considered a one-stop-shop for all your media-related tasks to come up with industry-standard outputs on Windows and Mac.
The step-by-step guide is almost the same on Mac and Windows. Here we will take EaseFab Video Converter for Mac as example to show you how to transcode video to DNxHD codec on Mac.
Step 1. Add source video files
Click Add Video button or drag and drop to add video files from your Mac to the program. You can add many files and convert them at one time.
Step 2. Select DNxHD as output
The Profile tray locates in the buttom of the window. From Editing Software you can select DNxHD 1080p or DNxHD 720p as the output file. Both of the profiles can generate files with best image quality and better editing performance for smooth editing in Avid MC, DaVinci Resolve, etc.
Tips: If you are critical about the output quality, you can adjust the parameters about the videos. As is true of video, audio settings is also important in adding a premium to the video quality. Just click Setting by the side of Profile and you are ready to tweak. In principle, the larger input values, the better output quality, but the corresponding larger file size.
Step 3. Start the conversion
As soon as all the above settings are completed, you can press Convert button to start conversion. After conversion is done, simply click Open button to find generated DNxHD codec encoded videos which are ready for post-production like editing and rendering without any trouble.
MPEG Streamclip, as the name of this software, says that this software is able to convert your videos in various formats. MPEG, VOB, PS, M2P, MOD, VRO, DAT, MOV, DV, and some other audio-video formats are supported by this software. It can play these all audio-video format files in the software interface itself. This software also supports encoding videos to Avid DNxHD codec. There are several ways to do this, but before you start, make sure you have downloaded and installed both MPEG Streamclip and the Avid DNxHD Codecs.
Open MPEG StreamClip and either drag the video you want to transcode onto the empty window or use the Open Files option in the File menu.
Choose Export to QuickTime from the file menu…
Select the AVID DNxHD Codec from the Compression drop down menu…
Thanks to Sounddroid for pointing out this crucial step which I missed that would explain my huge file size. Click on the Options button and choose the most appropriate setting for you. You are choosing from 1080 or 720, the frame rate, and level of compression. Sounddroid suggests…
People in post will generally want to use 1080p / 24 / 36Mbit / 8-bit, or 1080p / 23.98 / 36Mbit / 8-bit, depending on the project settings.
That would make sense for film work but for TV post you are likely to want either 25/50 for PAL or 23.976/59.94 for NTSC countries.
Then check the rest of the settings. I tend to leave the Frame Size on the (unscaled) setting so the movie isn't resized. The other thing I also do is to deselect Interlaced Scaling and select Deinterlace Video especially as I am displaying the video on an LCD screen. I have got so fed up with seeing interlacing artifacts that I end to doing it every time now to be safe.
Once you are happy with the settings, click on the Make Movie button and determine where on your system you want to save the transcoded video and hit Save.
Now wait for MPEG Streamclip to transcode the video and then you are ready to import the Avid DNxHD version into Pro Tools in the normal way. Job done.
As the software applies the QuickTime technology, it's by default that you can upload and play any QuickTime supported file formats as well. However, that might not always be the case. Your MPEG Streamclip might not work and prompt up messages such as 'won't read or open files' or 'unrecognized file format'. And lots of MPEG Streamclip users have recently discovered it couldn't get the files converted, and the malfunction occurred after they all upgraded to the system Mac OS X 10.15 macOS Catalina or macOS Mojave. For these cases, a great MPEG Streamclip alternative (e.g. EaseFab Video Converter recommended in this article) is an excellent choice for you.
When you download video files from the Internet, there is always a chance they won't play properly or won't play at all. It may happen because the file wasn't uploaded correctly by its owner or your Internet connection is not good enough and the file was downloaded with the gaps. One more reason might be the lack of necessary codecs to play this particular file on your PC.
A video codec is a software or sometimes a piece of hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In other words, a codec processes raw digital video and stores it in a stream of bytes. It converts uncompressed video to a compressed format to take up less space on your computer and vice versa. A video codec is usually identified by ‘fourcc', a four character code. For example, MPEG, DivX, HEVC, etc.
In fact, there is a huge list of codecs that you can find online. Of course, a majority of videos are encoded with the help of most popular codecs mentioned above and can be played with almost any multimedia player. However, there are rare codecs from special video cameras that can be viewed with VLC or a similar player with a proper codec library.
A video codec isn't the same as a video format or container. A container is a bundle of files. Inside it, you can find data that has been compressed by using a particular codec. For example, an AVI file can contain video compressed by XviD, or DivX, or MPEG-2 codecs. Usually, a container comprises a video and audio codecs, plus it can also contain other files like subtitles and chapters. Popular video formats or containers are AVI, MP4, WMV, MKV, MOV, FLV, etc.
SEE ALSO: How to Reduce Video File Size
SEE ALSO: 5 Easiest Ways to Add Captions to Video Free and Fast
All the codecs may be divided into the following types:
Now let's examine the most popular video codecs.
Among the most recognized codecs, there are those based on MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) standards. MPEG-1 codec provides high-quality video and MP3 sound that can be played on all modern music devices.MPEG-2 is the only video compression standard for DVD and some Blu-ray discs. While the MPEG-1 codec allows for only progressive scanning, MPEG-2 also supports interlacing. MPEG-4 handles both progressive and interlaced video, and it provides better compression techniques and smaller output video size than MPEG-2.
SEE ALSO:Free DVD Burnerby Freemake: Best Software for Home Users
One more well-known codec worth mentioning is H.264. It's the most popular choice for HD video. It can use both lossy and lossless compression depending on the settings that you choose (frame rate, frame size, and file size). H.264 is up to 2 times more efficient as basic MPEG-4 compression, which leads to smaller file sizes and seamless playback on more devices. It's clear wht H.264 is so widely used: from web videos to Blu-ray movies.
SEE ALSO: How to Convert MTS Videos from Blu-ray to MP4
DivX is a commercial codec, while XviD is its open source alternative. The DivX codec can compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality. Most of the DivX videos use AVI file extension and DivX or Div extensions.
High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265, is a new video compression standard, which was developed with the goal of providing twice the compression efficiency of the previous standard, H.264. It's particularly useful for streaming 4K video and Blu-ray. However, this video codec has been only gaining popularity and is not yet supported by all the media software.
Codec | Developer | Formats | Compression method | |
H.264 | ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group | MP4, MKV, 3GP, FLV | Lossless / Lossy | Intel AVX, Open CL, CUDA, DXVA |
HEVC | Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding | MKV | Lossy | Intel AVX, Open CL, CUDA, AMD |
XviD | open-source | AVI, MKV | Lossy | Unknown |
DivX | DivX, LLC | AVI | Lossy | Intel Quick Sync Video |
| MPEG1 | Moving Pictures Experts Group | Video CD, MPG | Lossy | Intel AVX |
| MPEG2 | Moving Pictures Experts Group | DVD (VOB), Blu-ray (TS), MPG | Lossless | DXVA, Intel AVX |
| MPEG4 | Moving Pictures Experts Group | MP4, AVI, MKV | Lossy | Intel AVX |
Let's learn how you can identify what codec is used in your video and choose a right codec finder. The best option to determine a codec in your video is install free software that will do the job for you. Here are what you should do to identify a codec:
Here is the list of useful codec identifying tools:
MediaInfo is one of the most popular tools to show you complete information about your multimedia file. The software will guide you to a site where you can download the necessary codecs. Sometimes it even shows what media player can reproduce video files of a kind. For example, the software suggests using QuickTime to play MP4 files. Of course, it's not the only option available. But if you don't have time to search for a better tool, this quick solution is right what you need.
GSpot is a choice of advanced users. It provides a huge amount of information about a file. As soon as you analyze the file with GSpot, it will show you what codecs you need and whether you've already had them on your PC. If not, you'll have to copy the codec name and google for it manually.
Unfortunately, the software looks abandoned and doesn't give you the info about the latest codecs. However, in case you have a large collection of old video files, you might find it helpful.
SuperEasy Codec Check can be used both by beginners and professional users. It supports over 67 media files formats. The software analyzes files really fast and gives only the main details without making you go deep into tech information. After adding your file, you just get the recommendations for missing codecs.
VideoInspector, as it's clear from its name, inspects the media data of your video file. It can help you find the required codecs for MKV, AVI, MPEG, and QuickTime files. Please note that it doesn't support a popular MP4 format, WMV, and FLV. The great thing is that VideoInspector not only shows you the information about your media file, but also tells you if the file is corrupted or not. In case the necessary codec is missing on your PC, the software will show you a red cross and provide a link to a website where you can get it for free.
SEE ALSO: How to Convert MKV to MP4 in 3 Clicks Only
Nowadays there is a good number of media players like VLC that can handle an astonishing number of video and audio file with various codecs. However, some codecs might need additional software for their playback. In case you don't want to overload your operating system with dozens of media players, you can also install a special codec pack that usually contain all the main audio and video codecs and help your default player reproduce films and music.
K-Lite Codec Pack is a well-known free codec compilation software. It's easy to install and use. The tool contains an impressive codec library which gets regular updates. You can choose among four versions of this product.
Recently K-Lite Codec Pack has added full decoding support for the new HEVC (H.265) video codec.
X Codec Pack (formerly XP Codec Pack) is a great alternative to K-Lite in case you don't want to use it for any reason. Like the previous software, X Codec Pack contains all codecs that you might need to play popular and rare videos files. There are two drawbacks here. First of all, the tool is that it doesn't get regular updates. Thus, you might need to wait for some time for new codecs to be added. The 2nd issue is that a full codec pack may interfere with your media player and cause problems in its performance.
If you downloaded a video with a codec that can't be played on your TV, you can easily convert it to a more popular one with Freemake.
Follow a simple guide below:
When the video is converted, try to play it on your TV or any other device. If everything is OK, convert more videos in the same way.
Now you know how to distinguish, install and work with videos codecs. If this post was helpful, please share it with your mates to let them enjoy any type of video on their PCs for free.
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