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Filed under: compression •Distribution •Editing •Post Production •Software •

Digital Rebellion’s Footage Calculator adds more codecs

A while I back I posted a round-up of various footage calculators around the Internet. The one from Digital Rebellion had the most supported codecs but was lacking some new ones like ProRes Proxy and ProRes 4444. Well Digital Rebellion has updated the Footage Calculator with ... well, pretty much all of them.

This latest update to the Digital Rebellion Footage Calculator added support for all of the new Apple ProRes codecs. That was a given. But they also added more TIFF sequence formats as well as REDCODE codces at 2K, 4K and bit rates of 28 and 36. Also of interest is the inclusion of some Cineform codecs as well. As is explained on the site, variable bitrate codecs (like Cineform) “adjust the data rate based on the source footage so the file sizes listed are a result of the maximum or target data rates. Actual data sizes will be 5-10% lower for VBR codecs.” Even so the inclusion of the Cineform codec can at least give you an idea of what kind of storage you may need.

Another handy feature is the link to this calculation link that does just that, links to the calculation that you have made. This link goes to the crazy 999 hour calculation I used in the image above. I use this feature quite a bit when a client asks for advice on what size hard drive to buy for a particular shoot. And if course there’s the mobile version as well (but it works in a desktop browser too) so set your iPhone links accordingly.

One question I asked the utilities creator Jon Chappell was what the included H.264 codec meant in relation to the Canon 5D and 7D cameras. H.264 files could vary in size depending on bit rate. He said that he would research that question so expect another update at some point in the future. I think the camera’s bit rates are relatively constant so it should be possible to add a heading for 5D, 7D, 1D, pretty much any of these video DSLRs.

Below I’ve included a couple of loooooong images with all of the currently supported codecs. Can you think of any that is missing that you might need? If so then comment below and I bet that the wizards of Digital Rebellion will add them too.

**UPDATE** Just as this was going to print Jon added the Canon 5D and 7D support for their particular H.264 bit rates:

How’s that for service?

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Canon 5D and 7D support has now been added.

Posted by Jon Chappell  on  11/10  at  06:48 PM

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Thanks Jon. I think those Canon flavors of H.264 will be helpful to many!

Posted by Scott Simmons  on  11/10  at  06:56 PM

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The calculator is a great resource, but there’s still plenty of room for updates and additional codecs.

Obviously there has to be a limit somewhere, so I won’t list every codec in the world that’s missing, but in terms of Pro-Editing, some of the formats you’re likely to come across, that aren’t in the calculator, include:

1. DNxHD 185 : For 25fps (or 50i) content, the max bitrate is 185Mbps. See the table on Page 7 of the Avid DNxHD whitepaper - http://www.avid.com/resources/whitepapers/DNxHD.pdf Also probably worth including DNxHD 10-bit, which is commonly created when capturing direct from HDCamSR tape.

2. XDCAM HD422: Captured directly by the Sony PDW-700. In fact, include all of the XDCam codecs if you’re working with Sony cameras.

3. IMX 50 (IMX D10): Sure, another Sony codec, but a very common format in the SD world.

4. MPEG2 50i: I personally happen to manage an archive of around 30,000 assets in vanilla MPEG2, all I-Frame, at 50Mbps SD content. It’s a pretty common format for archives created from Digi Beta tape assets. Off the top of my head, an hour in MPEG2 50i is about 22GB, and you can safely get around 45 hours on a 1TB portable drive.

5. AVC-Intra (AVC-I 50 and AVC-I 100): Captured by the Panasonic P2 camera.

Posted by phillc  on  11/11  at  04:44 AM

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I’m not sure about the accuray of this calc. I just tried DVCProHD 720p24n 23.98, and got the same readout (35.16gb for 1 hour) as I did with 1080p24n 23.98.

Stephen Gagne
Westwood Creek Productions

Posted by  on  11/11  at  03:15 PM

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Well spootted, that was a bug. It’s been removed.

Posted by Jon Chappell  on  11/11  at  03:35 PM

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How about the Convergent-Design XDCAM HD422 variants of various data rates.

8-bit - LongGOP
(all in mbps)

35
50
100
140
180

8 bit - I-frame

220
280

Posted by lightprism  on  11/19  at  06:32 AM

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