Old 09-18-2022, 03:58 AM   #1
Jezston
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Default Video formats for frame accurate work

(crossposted from the Q&A subforum)

I feel like this must be a question asked countless time, but I can't seem to find any answers on this forum that aren't like over 5 years old. Googling in fact takes me to the old archive forums. So here I am.

What actually frame accurate video formats does Reaper support?

I can't seem to get Prores of DNxHD files to import, and currently having to go super old school with MJPEG files lol. There must be something better, right?

I got a response in the other forum that DNxHD files should work, but any mxf files I have generated from Adobe Media Encoder just wont import into reaper.
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Old 09-18-2022, 08:32 PM   #2
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any properly encoded mpeg-4 file should be frame accurate
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Old 09-19-2022, 01:53 AM   #3
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any properly encoded mpeg-4 file should be frame accurate
Uh forgive me if I have a misunderstanding from what I've learned over the last couple of decades, but MP4 files have compression across frames, e.g. frames are not per frame accurate, there is fuzziness between them.
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Old 09-19-2022, 04:22 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by Jezston View Post
Uh forgive me if I have a misunderstanding from what I've learned over the last couple of decades, but MP4 files have compression across frames, e.g. frames are not per frame accurate, there is fuzziness between them.
I admit this has never been a problem for me and I am conjecturing here. Assuming your video source has no interframe interpolation, the fuzziness may be caused not by the format itself but by sources that are not aligned perfectly at frame boundaries in the project and or slight differences in frame rates (compared to the project's settings). Also there are lossless formats available for rendering.

Last edited by papagirafe; 09-19-2022 at 06:37 AM. Reason: typos
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Old 09-26-2022, 09:12 AM   #5
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Originally Posted by papagirafe View Post
fuzziness may be caused not by the format itself but by sources that are not aligned perfectly at frame boundaries in the project and or slight differences in frame rates (compared to the project's settings). Also there are lossless formats available for rendering.
How do I know if something is aligned perfectly at frame boundaries? Im not sure I even know what that means tbh.

Also, would rendering in lossless remove any fuzziness from the source frame rate/project setting differences.
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Old 09-26-2022, 06:10 PM   #6
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How do I know if something is aligned perfectly at frame boundaries? Im not sure I even know what that means tbh.

Also, would rendering in lossless remove any fuzziness from the source frame rate/project setting differences.
If you right click on the ruler you can change the units to absolute frames or similar and enable the magnet. Align your sources accordingly. Also XRaym has done two action scripts to move the cursor frame by frame.

A source that already has interframe interpolation (motion blur) must be difficult to fix but that is way beyond my expertise unfortunately.
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Old 10-02-2022, 09:44 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jezston View Post
Uh forgive me if I have a misunderstanding from what I've learned over the last couple of decades, but MP4 files have compression across frames, e.g. frames are not per frame accurate, there is fuzziness between them.
They do have compression across frames, but each frame can be reconstructed in its entirety and you can still seek to arbitrary frames (though admittedly it does take more CPU time to do so, as it has to seek to the previous I-frame and go forward from there).
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Old 10-03-2022, 04:44 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by papagirafe View Post
If you right click on the ruler you can change the units to absolute frames or similar and enable the magnet. Align your sources accordingly. Also XRaym has done two action scripts to move the cursor frame by frame.

A source that already has interframe interpolation (motion blur) must be difficult to fix but that is way beyond my expertise unfortunately.
Much appreciated! I shall read up further too.
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Old 10-06-2022, 05:17 AM   #9
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They do have compression across frames, but each frame can be reconstructed in its entirety and you can still seek to arbitrary frames (though admittedly it does take more CPU time to do so, as it has to seek to the previous I-frame and go forward from there).
That explains a lot, thanks - scrubbing with mpeg files is very slow and annoying, and that would explain why.

I have, however, come closer to a solution!

I was a bit dumb - I thought DNxHD files could only be mxf, but it turns out in Adobe Media Encoder I can select Quicktime as the file format, and then WITHIN THAT choose DNxHD. These files open fine in Reaper HOWEVER I am having some weird performance issues with them and need to investigate further - for example in Nuendo these scrub about like butter but in Reaper it struggles a bit, which kind of ruins the benefit. I guess due to Reaper not natively supporting quicktime?
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Old 10-07-2022, 06:48 AM   #10
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Prores is an option as well. I sometimes produce them with the free TEncoder(Windows iirc).

It seems unlikely though that scrubbing performance will approach that of a dedicated video editor such as Resolve or Final Cut Pro X. It's pretty good though. I work with Prores Proxy files for post production.
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Old 10-09-2022, 08:49 PM   #11
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I can't seem to get Prores of DNxHD files to import
Both Prores and DNxHD work for me. I think DNxHD requires an Avid codec installed but Prores shouldn't need anything extra.
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