H. 264 is typically used for lossy compression, although it is also possible to create truly lossless-coded regions within lossy-coded pictures or to support rare use cases for which the entire encoding is lossless.
H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10 / AVC)
H.264 is the codec specified in Part 10 of MPEG-4 standard, also known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC). It is one of the most commonly used codecs for recoding, compression, and distribution of the HD video. H.264 is based on the H.263 codec. H264 was developed with the goal of improving the video quality while reducing bitrate compared to the earlier MPEG codecs such as MPEG-2 H.262 and H.263. It is also network friendlier and simpler in profile configuration than the previous codecs.
H.264 facilitates a broad range of applications such as transmission of HDTV progra
H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10 / AVC)
H.264 is the codec specified in Part 10 of MPEG-4 standard, also known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC). It is one of the most commonly used codecs for recoding, compression, and distribution of the HD video. H.264 is based on the H.263 codec. H264 was developed with the goal of improving the video quality while reducing bitrate compared to the earlier MPEG codecs such as MPEG-2 H.262 and H.263. It is also network friendlier and simpler in profile configuration than the previous codecs.
H.264 facilitates a broad range of applications such as transmission of HDTV programs at twice the efficiency of MPEG2, ability to store good quality lengthy videos (approx. 2hrs) on a normal red laser DVD disc etc. It serves as the basis for advancing the personal video recorder (PVR) technology to high definition video and increasing the allowable program storage capacity. The handheld cameras can be designed to record HD video and video programming in mobile devices can be provided with CIF quality.
H.264 has three main types of profiles; baseline, main, and extended profiles. Baseline profile is used for conversational services such as videoconferencing and mobile video. Main profile is used for broadcast methods such as HDTV. Extended is used for video streaming purposes.
H263
• H.263 was developed for low bitrate video while H.264 can encode both low and high quality videos successfully. Both codecs can be used for streaming purposes; however, H.264 has replaced the older H.263 and now H.263 is considered a legacy codec.
At Asana, we collaborate, coordinate, and manage all of our work with Asana. Asana is built for your entire team, so you can stay on track and hit your deadlines—every time.
Good collaboration software helps eliminate communication and information silos by organizing your work in one place. That way, no matter how many people you’re working with, everyone knows who’s doing what by when. Teammates can easily discuss work and share ideas, and you can deliver projects on time.
Asana is the best platform for mass and online project collaboration because you can:
1. See where everything stands, so you
At Asana, we collaborate, coordinate, and manage all of our work with Asana. Asana is built for your entire team, so you can stay on track and hit your deadlines—every time.
Good collaboration software helps eliminate communication and information silos by organizing your work in one place. That way, no matter how many people you’re working with, everyone knows who’s doing what by when. Teammates can easily discuss work and share ideas, and you can deliver projects on time.
Asana is the best platform for mass and online project collaboration because you can:
1. See where everything stands, so you can better coordinate work
With Asana, you can do your work, share feedback, and collaborate in the same place. Because your entire team is working in the same tool, there are no surprises or missed projects. Organize all of your team’s tasks in one place to create a single source of truth, so you and cross-team collaborators have a clear sense of what’s happening, when.
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The average employee uses about 10 different apps in their workday—and that time spent app switching gets in the way of meaningful work. That’s why Asana integrantes with your favorite tools, so you can limit toggle fatigue and maximize visibility into the work happening across your organization. Here’s a snapshot of our most popular integrations:
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With Asana, it’s easy to create a task or project that’s private to you, shared with a small group of people, or shared with a specific team. Alternatively, you can set tasks or projects to “public,” which means everyone in your Organization (aka everyone with the same email domain as you) has visibility into that work. By making certain work public, you can prevent information silos that get in the way of high-impact work.
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The best way to know if Asana is for you is to try it out for free. Add team members, create projects, and collaborate on tasks so you can see how valuable Asana is for your team. Get started with a free 30-day trial today.
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H.263 was created in continuation as part of H.262 which went on to become a part of the official MPEG-2 Standard. H.263 was mainly targeted for communication video over network mediums viz., Video Conferencing and thereby propagated the packet / GOB header mode. H.263 went to become a part of MPEG-4 Visual, more specifically as the Short Video Header (SVH) mode.
H.264 was started as an extension to MPEG-4 as MPEG-4 Part-10. The main objective of the new codec is always “Better Quality at same bitrate” or “Lower Bitrate at same quality”. What this statement doesn’t capture is the inherent incre
H.263 was created in continuation as part of H.262 which went on to become a part of the official MPEG-2 Standard. H.263 was mainly targeted for communication video over network mediums viz., Video Conferencing and thereby propagated the packet / GOB header mode. H.263 went to become a part of MPEG-4 Visual, more specifically as the Short Video Header (SVH) mode.
H.264 was started as an extension to MPEG-4 as MPEG-4 Part-10. The main objective of the new codec is always “Better Quality at same bitrate” or “Lower Bitrate at same quality”. What this statement doesn’t capture is the inherent increase in the resources viz., compute and memory.
If one looks into specifics of the implementation, we can find multiple differences like Intra Prediction, Multiple reference frames, Quarter Pixel compensation, In-built deblocking filter etc as some first order differences.
It is very tricky to predict, but my guess is that H.264 is going to be here for a long time, because, while Google's move is a noble one, it won't have much effect on the end-user and hardware manufacturers. Here is why:
1) PC Web used Flash and will continue to use Flash. Removing H.264 from Google Chrome just entrenched Flash as the defacto video player. Adobe is cleverly supporting both formats, therefore, Flash, which is used to play 90% of the PC Web video, will remain the most practical way to play video on the PC Web. Flash is adding H.264 GPU support, making the main technical argumen
It is very tricky to predict, but my guess is that H.264 is going to be here for a long time, because, while Google's move is a noble one, it won't have much effect on the end-user and hardware manufacturers. Here is why:
1) PC Web used Flash and will continue to use Flash. Removing H.264 from Google Chrome just entrenched Flash as the defacto video player. Adobe is cleverly supporting both formats, therefore, Flash, which is used to play 90% of the PC Web video, will remain the most practical way to play video on the PC Web. Flash is adding H.264 GPU support, making the main technical argument against it history.
2) Apple and Microsoft will stand by H.264. First they are both part of the patent pool so they have very few reasons to drop it. Also, Apple has invested a lot on H.264 to make it the most optimum way to play videos on its iOS devices (with hardware support). So, from business and technical reasons, Apple will stand by H.264 no matter what, which mean that developers and content publisher will have to deliver H.264 for all iOS devices regardless of the success of WebM on other devices. (UPDATE 2011-02-02 Microsoft just announced they will provide H.264 plugin for Firefox and Chrome on Windows 7)
3) H.264 hardware is omnipresent in Mobile and video player devices (blueray): Some could say that H.264 already won. Google cannot drop H.264 from Android even if it wanted to, and H.264 is in all setup box, blue ray players and smartphone. All of these device manufacturers cannot drop H.264 and consequently will have add WebM hardware acceleration on top of H.264, which could be costly and unnecessary, since all mobile videos needs to be delivered in H.264 (at least for the iOS devices)
So, to summarize, I think that WebM has a very hard road ahead, but its purpose is genuinely for the good of the industry, so, we might only hope.
Adobe, i.e. more time to milk flash, while the useless battle is raging.
The thing is, as long as Apple is behind h.264 (almost) every website
will support h.264, so maybe Google will want to add support for videoM,
but they'll never achieve that while supporting Flash bot on the desktop
(which is not really a choice) and on Android.
Meaning they'll have to do something drastic like dropping support on YouTube,
which I don't see them doing, but hack they're Google, they do weird shit all the time.
It a sad stuff because it would postpone non-plugin based web.
Today, H.264 is dominant. No question.
Long-term, I think it depends on how much Google innovates in the codec space. H.264 is defined by a standards body of slow-moving organizations, and that technology tree isn't going to move quickly. I wouldn't be surprised at all if VP10 is the best technology around in 2018.
If Google can protect VPx from patent suits, and commits to winning, they have a good shot over the long run.
That's probably putting too much stock in it. H.264, also known as MPEG-4 part 10, came out in 2003. It's a "coded video representation" -- a format for compressed video -- and could fairly be called one of the most efficient and sophisticated video formats standardized to date. (Microsoft VC-1 and Ogg Theora are comparable in efficiency and also get a fair bit of use, but H.264 is an international standard.) It's more efficient than its predecessor, MPEG-4 part 2, which came out around 1999, and about twice as efficient as another predecessor, MPEG-2 part 2, which came out around 1996. MPEG-2
That's probably putting too much stock in it. H.264, also known as MPEG-4 part 10, came out in 2003. It's a "coded video representation" -- a format for compressed video -- and could fairly be called one of the most efficient and sophisticated video formats standardized to date. (Microsoft VC-1 and Ogg Theora are comparable in efficiency and also get a fair bit of use, but H.264 is an international standard.) It's more efficient than its predecessor, MPEG-4 part 2, which came out around 1999, and about twice as efficient as another predecessor, MPEG-2 part 2, which came out around 1996. MPEG-2 is still used for DVDs, digital cable, HDTV, and some Blu-rays.
Calling H.264 "the future" seems a bit much. It's a seven-year-old format for compressed video that's about twice as efficient as the 14-year-old format, MPEG-2. Eventually it will be superseded by a more efficient format. And people who record and edit videos don't use the most compressed formats -- these have less flexibility and latitude for editing. (Similar to how photographers like to shoot RAW instead of the lowest JPEG quality they can get away with.) For acquisition and editing, the industry uses formats like Apple ProRes 422 that retain more information and keep each frame independent. H.264 and friends are generally only for the last stage in a video's life, when it's sent to a consumer over a link with limited throughput or capacity.
Meanwhile, the bigger changes are occurring in the video you pump into the compression algorithm, not in the compresser itself. E.g.:
- Video's resolution for the brightness used to be 720x480 (a U.S. DVD); now 1920x1080 is common.
- Today, consumer video has the colors at 1/4 the resolution of the brightness -- e.g. a DVD has color at 360x240 and HDTV is 960x540 at best. In the future, the colors will be at a higher resolution.
- Today's videos are restricted to a palette of 11 million distinct colors clustered in only a section of what the human eye can see (the 8-bit Rec. 709 colorspace) -- in the future videos will be able to capture more of nature's grandeur as seen by our eyes.
- In the past, video was distributed on prerecorded media or broadcast -- now it's sent peer-to-peer over the Internet and streamed by sites like YouTube and Hulu and Netflix.
- Video now is mostly two-dimensional -- but the industry is making a major push for 3D consumer video.
- People are again talking about videotaping their entire lives and searching the results whenever they want.
- Cable-TV operators are changing from pre-allocated 6 MHz channels to "switched" digital video, potentially allowing any site on the Internet to have equal footing with ESPN on your broadband cable system coming into your home.
- People are walking around with cell phones that can record video and then post it on the Web immediately afterwards, and soon they'll be able to stream live over the Internet.
- Schoolchildren are supposedly now just searching YouTube for videos instead of looking on Google for Web pages (not even to mention traditional authorities) when they want to research something new.
Who knows which of these developments will come to pass or make a difference, but probably it's more appropriately these kinds of changes to video -- not the seven-year-old consumer compressed format that's 2x as good as the 14-year-old compressed format -- that will be thought of as the future of video.
Where do I begin?
I spend a LOT of time talking to people about their spending habits. Here are the biggest mistakes people are making, in my eyes:
1. Getting overcharged when shopping online.
You might be surprised how often you’re overpaying on Amazon and elsewhere.
Big stores like Amazon know that no one has time to price shop through dozens of sites, so there’s often no incentive for them to offer bargain prices.
I typically hate browser extensions with a fiery passion, but if you don’t have Capital One Shopping installed yet, do yourself a favor and grab it.
When you shop online (on Amazon or e
Where do I begin?
I spend a LOT of time talking to people about their spending habits. Here are the biggest mistakes people are making, in my eyes:
1. Getting overcharged when shopping online.
You might be surprised how often you’re overpaying on Amazon and elsewhere.
Big stores like Amazon know that no one has time to price shop through dozens of sites, so there’s often no incentive for them to offer bargain prices.
I typically hate browser extensions with a fiery passion, but if you don’t have Capital One Shopping installed yet, do yourself a favor and grab it.
When you shop online (on Amazon or elsewhere) it will:
- Auto-apply coupon codes for you to save you money.
- Compare prices from other sellers to make sure you’re not missing out on a better deal.
It’s saved me a ton of money more than once. Here’s a link to add it to your browser.
2. Not paying off credit card debt.
Debt can make you feel hopeless—even if you’re responsible about making payments on time, the interest sometimes prevents you from paying off the debt.
But, believe it or not, plenty of companies (National Debt Relief, for example) are willing to help you pay off your debt.
Here’s how it typically works:
- A company like National Debt Relief (there are plenty of others, too) negotiates with your credit card companies, banks etc. to try and reduce your debt
- If possible, they’ll consolidate all of your different sources of debt so you only have to make one monthly payment to one place.
A lot of times you’ll end up paying significantly less than you owe. Here’s an example from NDR’s site:
E.g. he was $36k in debt, but only ended up paying $23kish.
If things go well, you could be debt-free in 24-48 months or so. Here’s a calculator you can use to get a savings estimate, if you’re interested.
3. Not using an ad blocker.
If you aren’t using an ad blocker yet, I am begging you to try one. I am not exaggerating when I say it will change your life.
A good ad blocker will eliminate virtually all of the ads you’d see on the internet.
No more YouTube ads, no more banner ads, no more pop-up ads, etc. It’s incredible.
Most people I know use Total Adblock (link here) – it’s $2.42/month, but there are plenty of solid options.
Ads also typically take a while to load, so using an ad blocker reduces loading times (typically by 50% or more). They also block ad tracking pixels to protect your privacy, which is nice.
Here’s a link to Total Adblock, if you’re interested.
4. Not getting a financial advisor.
99% of people don’t have one, and it’s typically a huge mistake.
Sure, you can manage things on your own if you want to, but most people don’t have the time to actually do things right. There are huge benefits to having somebody pay attention to your money all the time.
- People with financial advisors tend to beat the market by ~3%/year (according to a 2019 Vanguard Study). That can make a huge difference over time.
- But more important: a good advisor will handle ALL of the annoying retirement stuff & bizarro tax implications you would have never thought of
If you don’t know a financial advisor personally, use a comparison site (like WiserAdvisor) and find somebody near you that has good reviews.
Or if you want something easier, here’s a quiz you can fill out that will find an advisor/planner based on your reqs.
5. Overpaying on car insurance by $400+/year.
The average American family still overspends by up to $417/year on car insurance.
Check out a site like Coverage.com to compare the best car insurance options available.
Answer a few questions and get matched with a customized offer today.
6. Not using high-interest savings accounts.
If you’re like the average American, your savings account pays you virtually zero interest (typically under 0.3% a year, in my experience).
But believe it or not, plenty of banks are willing to offer you 10x that rate.
Pacific Western Bank, for example, has an account that pays a whopping ~5%/year right now (with no minimums).
(E.g. if you store $100k in a 4% interest savings account today, in a year you’ll have netted $4,000 from interest alone)
If you’re interested, here’s a free resource (Raisin) that shows you the best high-yield savings options in your area.
7. Not investing in real estate (start with as little as $20).
It’s no secret that millionaires and billionaires love investing in real estate, but for the rest of us, buying property has been prohibitively expensive (if not impossible, for some).
Times have changed. There are a few amazing real estate startups that allow you to buy shares of rental homes for as little as $20/share (Ark7 is one of our favorites).
They take care of the property management and collect rent checks for you. Then, on the 3rd of the following month, your share of the property’s profit is distributed to your account.
It’s an interesting way to build yourself a little rental home empire (without spending like a magnate).
If you’re interested, take a look at Ark7’s properties here.
Hope that helps someone!
Here are a few factors that would determine the fate:
- A big strong point in favor of H.264 is hardware support. Most chipsets (in devices) support decoding H.264. Devices are going to be key to how video will be consumed. Not to mistake - chipsets do support other codecs but H.264 is by far the largest.
- A lot of standards are evolving w/ H.264. SVC (Scalable Video Codec) is built on top of H.264 and is getting some traction now. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.
- One uncertainty around H.264 is licensing. It is free today but the owning authority hasn't yet defined the future. If
Here are a few factors that would determine the fate:
- A big strong point in favor of H.264 is hardware support. Most chipsets (in devices) support decoding H.264. Devices are going to be key to how video will be consumed. Not to mistake - chipsets do support other codecs but H.264 is by far the largest.
- A lot of standards are evolving w/ H.264. SVC (Scalable Video Codec) is built on top of H.264 and is getting some traction now. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.
- One uncertainty around H.264 is licensing. It is free today but the owning authority hasn't yet defined the future. If they start charging down the road that might slow this down. It is free till December 31, 2015.
- My theory: Google bought On2 to get into the game of codecs. They control large online video properties but don't control the fate of codecs. Their hope is to make VP6/8 codec open source so that they can get a say in the codec space. Unless I am wrong, they don't have a presence in H.264 patent pool. This is also a thing to watch out for. Google's success in doing this will contribute to H.264's future.
- More and more online video technologies are supporting H.264 as a common sub-set making content more and more interoperable. This direction makes me believe they are betting on H.264.
As I said this is not a complete list but something that comes to my mind here. For now it seems that H.264 is ahead in the race.
Just to follow up to this question. Google officially announced today that they will be dropping support in the near future. http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
Video lossless coding has the following key elements:
- You treat each frames as Intra
- You rely heavily on prediction and avoid lossless quantization
- You optimize arithmetic coding
Instead of using prediction by just left-most and top-most neighbors, you allow predictions at an angle. The more angles you have, the better (but you increase encoding time)
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You failed to specify the application. h.264 refers to a section of the MPEG-4 standards document that describes a video encoding method. There are many video encodings, but they tend to be suited to specific purposes. The contemporary replacement for AVC (h.264) is HEVC (h.265), which offers more efficient space compression at the cost of more complex encoding. HEVC is not nearly as well supported as h.264, so it may not be a good choice if you want to reach the widest audience.
h.262 (MPEG-2) was used in DVD players and sometimes used today in BluRay Disc (though h.264 is most common). This e
You failed to specify the application. h.264 refers to a section of the MPEG-4 standards document that describes a video encoding method. There are many video encodings, but they tend to be suited to specific purposes. The contemporary replacement for AVC (h.264) is HEVC (h.265), which offers more efficient space compression at the cost of more complex encoding. HEVC is not nearly as well supported as h.264, so it may not be a good choice if you want to reach the widest audience.
h.262 (MPEG-2) was used in DVD players and sometimes used today in BluRay Disc (though h.264 is most common). This encoding is not as widely used today as h.264 as it’s far less space efficient. However, it takes relatively little processing power to decode.
h.263 (3GP) was designed as a low-resolution low-bit-rate codec intended for use on mobile devices. It was designed to require very little processing power and be space efficient for small frame sizes. This was meant for what we now call “feature phones”.
If you are willing to stray from the MPEG standards, there are a hundred or more encoding options. Apple Animation is RLE-based and lossless. There are various RAW formats, the ProRes encodings, the VPx encodings, etc.
Depends what you need an alternative for. Assuming it is an open source alternative with no royalty issues, then Theora from Xiph and WebM from Google.
- http://www.theora.org/
- http://www.webmproject.org/
Otherwise, DivX, VC-1, Sorenson Spark and Real Media to name a few.
There are multiple alternatives that are available in the world today. VP8 used to be the closest competitor for this standard, until VP9 came along.
From an ISO perspective, HEVC / H.265 is gaining traction and adoption in industry as a new standard. Google has been promoting VP9 (and VP10) aggressively. Majority of the youtube content today is VP9 and Youtube accounts for majority of the video traffic across internet today.
BBC had their own codec called Dirac (BBC Open Source) which has seen some limited adoption.
Variants of H.264 prior to it’s formal standardization like x.264 (implementatio
There are multiple alternatives that are available in the world today. VP8 used to be the closest competitor for this standard, until VP9 came along.
From an ISO perspective, HEVC / H.265 is gaining traction and adoption in industry as a new standard. Google has been promoting VP9 (and VP10) aggressively. Majority of the youtube content today is VP9 and Youtube accounts for majority of the video traffic across internet today.
BBC had their own codec called Dirac (BBC Open Source) which has seen some limited adoption.
Variants of H.264 prior to it’s formal standardization like x.264 (implementation specific) can be found.
MPEG-4, xVid, DivX are some of the other formats which are widely employed in the world.
In China, Real Video variants, RV8, RV9, RV10, RMVB are also widely employed. These codecs unfortunately don’t have a clear standardization document. Essentially, these branched off from H.264 when the reference code was being developed. Under the hood, most of them are similar, but finite differences exit. Lack of documentation makes reading and understanding these different formats a huge challenge.
I’m not sure what you particularly want to know but here’s the short:
XViD is outdated, looks cruddy, has larger file size, and isn’t webfriendly.
H.264 is clean, small file size, and is very web-friendly (and is supported by most devices, unlike XViD)
No. H.264 is strictly a video codec. Typically H.264 video is multiplexed with an audio bitstream as well.
H.264 is a video compression codec. It's also referred to as AVC (Advanced Video Codec) and as MPEG 4 Part 10.
As well as being used on the internet for some video streams, it's also widely used in broadcast, and in particular for the broadcast of HD channels. It's also one of the supported codecs for Blu-Ray discs.
H.264 is fairly processor intensive, though modern PCs can decode it much more easily than a few years ago; nevertheless, many modern graphics cards have H.264 acceleration, and the codec is supported by many mobile devices too, including the iPhone and iPad, where it's typically use
H.264 is a video compression codec. It's also referred to as AVC (Advanced Video Codec) and as MPEG 4 Part 10.
As well as being used on the internet for some video streams, it's also widely used in broadcast, and in particular for the broadcast of HD channels. It's also one of the supported codecs for Blu-Ray discs.
H.264 is fairly processor intensive, though modern PCs can decode it much more easily than a few years ago; nevertheless, many modern graphics cards have H.264 acceleration, and the codec is supported by many mobile devices too, including the iPhone and iPad, where it's typically used with SD video.
Consumer confusion often arises when H.264 is simply referred to as MPEG4; many cheap video players or personal media players support MPEG4 video, but not MPEG4 Part 10 (H.264); instead they support other MPEG4 video codecs (Xvid and 3GPP, for example, are also part of MPEG 4, but not as advanced as H.264).
It is a modern video compression algorithm often used for online video. It can be used in Flash-based players. H.264 files are often saved with an .mp4 extension.
There is some dispute about patenting. H.264 contains patented technology, so all software makers that use it need to pay royalties. The patent owner, however, has stated that they will never demand royalties from anyone, so H.264 is essentially free. But it is not open source.
This has stimulated google to develop WebM, which is essentially the next version of On2. This is a truly open source codec, and will probably be the video stan
It is a modern video compression algorithm often used for online video. It can be used in Flash-based players. H.264 files are often saved with an .mp4 extension.
There is some dispute about patenting. H.264 contains patented technology, so all software makers that use it need to pay royalties. The patent owner, however, has stated that they will never demand royalties from anyone, so H.264 is essentially free. But it is not open source.
This has stimulated google to develop WebM, which is essentially the next version of On2. This is a truly open source codec, and will probably be the video standard of the future, if it offers sufficient quality.
Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also called H.264, is the most common video compression standard in use today. AVC/H.264 can encode high-quality video at lower bit rates than older compression standards (the "bit rate" is the number of units of information that have to be processed for each second of video).
H.265 is also known as High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), and it is the compression standard that followed H.264. It provides even better picture quality than H.264. Many video hosting servers use H.265 in addition to H.264. However, because the older H.264 is so widely adopted and already o
Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also called H.264, is the most common video compression standard in use today. AVC/H.264 can encode high-quality video at lower bit rates than older compression standards (the "bit rate" is the number of units of information that have to be processed for each second of video).
H.265 is also known as High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), and it is the compression standard that followed H.264. It provides even better picture quality than H.264. Many video hosting servers use H.265 in addition to H.264. However, because the older H.264 is so widely adopted and already offers good quality at manageable bit rates, it is likely to remain in use for some time.
Moreover, it supports high-definition (HD) and full high-definition (FHD) video resolutions, allowing for sharp and detailed visuals.
H.264 is a finishing codec, meaning it is meant to be viewed and not to be edited. However, you can edit h.264 footage but that would be a huge cpu hog and everything would seem to be laggy.
H.264 is a highly compressed file which makes it difficult to color grade without losing quality and provides little dynamic range to play with.
Prores is a lossless codec and gives more room to color grade. If you're not using a mac, you can convert your footage to lossless AVI which would work as an equivalent for Windows.
P.S. You can also shoot RAW with magic lantern hack for Canon cameras which gives
H.264 is a finishing codec, meaning it is meant to be viewed and not to be edited. However, you can edit h.264 footage but that would be a huge cpu hog and everything would seem to be laggy.
H.264 is a highly compressed file which makes it difficult to color grade without losing quality and provides little dynamic range to play with.
Prores is a lossless codec and gives more room to color grade. If you're not using a mac, you can convert your footage to lossless AVI which would work as an equivalent for Windows.
P.S. You can also shoot RAW with magic lantern hack for Canon cameras which gives amazing dynamic range and quality.
I’m a DaVinci Resolve colorist, and I have done both.
Resolve can grade H.264 footage natively, but it can be clunkier. More so, in v11–12 I noticed footage seemed to be 1 frame off… so I gave up on that experiment, and transcode the H264s whenever possible.
As was pointed in the other answers, transcoding the H264 will not make the footage quality any better all of a sudden.
As for if H264 from a 7D leaves “enough room” for grading… that depends on “what is enough” :) By professional standards, no, it’s not a $65k Alexa. But there’s still plenty you can do with it.
You will not gain any color information that was not in your original source. You may however, find it easier to grade depending on the system you use as far as resources go. H264 is a delivery codec but it grades just fine and transcoding it in post will not help the actual grade.
Higher bitrate - higher quality. You should use 2-pass encoding and a fixed bitrate when you want a video with a fixed file size and even picture quality, regardless of its dynamics and complexity.
How does 2-pass encoding work? On the first pass, it analyzes the bitrate demand for each part(step) of the video. In the second pass, it encodes each part of the video with a variable bitrate according to the needs using collected data. This way the total average bitrate is equal to the set one. That is all.
H.264 is also called the Advanced Video Codec (AVC).
H.264 was developed AFTER H.263 and H.263L, so it is named H.264 (It is the 264 -th Standard in the H Series).