Modern Video formats for High Quality RGB+A Transparent Assets

[andy.nick]

Hey community,

I'm a self-taught motion graphics guy who has always used JPG2000 to render high-quality 4-channel (RGBA) videos for re-use as assets within other AE/Premiere projects (not for final file delivery.)

With JPG2000 having gone extinct, I'm looking for a new solution.

I started using ProRes 444, and I love the quality for delivery. But, baking out clips (keyed footage, for example) seems to seriously bloat the render time once I have a few ProRes files on the timeline. I added 12 baked videos to a project and added 48 gigs to my project.

Is there another file format that has alpha, good performance, AND manageable filesize?

There must be an industry standard for this. I just wish I knew it.

Thanks in advance!

[imeilfx]

During my work I used and I'm using severa different formats and now to be honnest most of the tie i'm using file sequences (for better multiprocessing usage during render) but I also use - with successes - GoPro Cineform and Avid DNxHD - both free. 

[andy.nick]

Awesome. When you say "file sequences" you mean like a PNG or TIFF stack?

[imeilfx]

Yes. That exactly what I mean. Depending on what quality I need I render PNG/TIFF or even jpg (of course that one without Alpha). That way of rendering give you two advantages:
1. on longer renders if anything will go wrong and your render crash - you will have onle last frame or last 2-6 frames corrupted and after restart you can continue render from that point. If you are rendering to f.eg. mov - if render crash your app - you lost your entire file and you have to start from frame 0.
2. That way you can use more cores of your CPU what can speed your render time a bunch. 

[Dave Merchant]

Try the Quicktime "Animation" codec, one of the few that survived the codecopalypse. RGBA motion graphics/cartoon style content compresses very well. Cineform and ProRes are designed for camera footage and have standardized target bitrates, so the files will still be huge even if the contents are easily-compressible.

[andy.nick]

Right on! I remember being afraid of the Animation codec years ago when megabytes were at a premium, but ProRes is redefining "huge files". 12 gigs for a 1m30s HD compression?

[Dave_LaRonde]

Well, ANY video file with an Alpha Channel is going to be big. If you go to all the trouble of having transparencies in your video, you probably want good image quality as well, right?

[Dave Merchant]

All the lower-bitrate flavors of ProRes were designed for camera footage, hence no need for alpha. Only the "4444" mastering flavors support alpha, and since those are designed for post-production (e.g. CGI compositing) the very large bitrates of up to 500mbit/s are actually quite good; compared for example to an EXR frame sequence. For lower thirds etc. it's total overkill, hence why the Animation codec was retained in After Effects.