What is the best codec ?
First of all, be sure to click on the "Optimize" button, and follow the recommendations.
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Recommendations between Millumin V1 and V2/V3/V4 are different.
Why ? Because when Millumin V1 came out, the hardwares/softwares were very different. In recent years, hardware-accelerated decoding have been widely spread in computers, and Millumin V2/V3/V4 is ready for them. That is why the recommended codecs are different.
General Recommendations
If you got many big files, be sure to use a fast drive (SSD recommended).
To encode your files easily, please use this nice application :
AVF Batch Converter
The recommendations below are for video codec. There is no special recommended codec for audio : PCM, ACC, AC3, .. are all good.
Recommendations for Millumin V2/V3/V4
Here are 3 codec families that we recommend :
ProRes
This is the family we recommend by default. It offers good performance and quality, but file size can be big. Specifically on Apple M1 Pro/Max/Ultra and M2 machines, decoding is hardware accelerated so it is very efficient (simple Apple M1 machines does not have this feature).
Use ProRes-422, or ProRes-4444 if your content requires an alpha-channel.
HAP
This codec family offers the best performances, but it is only compatible with video softwares that explicitly supports it. File size is also the biggest.
If you have very high resolution (4K or more), it is often the best choice.
Use HAP or HAP Q (higher quality) if the content does not require an alpha-channel. Otherwise, use HAP Alpha or HAP Alpha Q.
HAP was commissioned by
Vidvox and created by
Tom Butterworth. Huge thanks to them.
H.264/265
This codec has been first made for the web, so file size is very compact. On the other side, it requires more resources to be decoded, but thank to hardware acceleration, it is not that important. It is compatible with all other video softwares, despite not very convenient for video-editing.
If you have several layers with big files (2K or 4K), H.264/265 is not a good choice. Also note that it does not support an alpha-channel.
Here is a summary :
- Performances (Intel machines) : HAP > ProRes > H.264/265
- Performances (Apple M1 machines) : HAP > ProRes > H.264/265
- Performances (Apple Silicon machines) : ProRes ~ HAP > H.264/265
- Size : HAP > ProRes > H.264/265
- Quality : ProRes > HAP > H.264/265
Of course, Millumin supports other codecs such as Photo-JPEG, DV or MPEG-2. The "Optimize" button may recommend you to convert them to ProRes or HAP.
If the codec is not supported by Millumin directly, it will try to convert the movie to ProRes. However on macOS Catalina and higher, this conversion is not possible any more, so please use one of this 3 recommended codecs as a best practice.
Recommendations for Millumin V1
Photo-JPEG codec is the best in most cases. Choose 80-90% quality.
If you got an alpha channel, please use
Apple ProRes-4444 codec (or Animation if you run Millumin V1 in 32-bits mode).
You can also try the
HAP codec that features very nice performances :
- it is working great in 32-bits mode
- in 64-bits mode,
experimental support is available for OSX Yosemite and higher
- HAP is not recommended in 64-bits on macOS 10.8 or 10.9 (HAP is 32-bits only there)
Unless you know what you are doing, you should not use H.264/265 codec : it is good for web, not for real time rendering (it uses a lot of resources, unless hardware-acceleration, see recommendations for Millumin V2/V3/V4).
Millumin Help
