Movie Formats

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Movie Formats

Consider that even when a given movie format is supported by the software, your specific hardware build may or may not have the performance or storage space necessary to support this format at a given resolution and frame rate.  Please consult with us on your intentions when designing a project, so that we can help designate a build that suits a certain media plan.

Data rate % notes in the following table are expressed relative to the most common encoding style: 8-bit per pixel RGB/4:4:4 .

Most Common Image Sequences

Format

Description

Example Data Rate Calculation (1920x1080 @ 30fps)

TGA

Longstanding, common industry format for uncompressed images.  Generally encoded at 8-bit per channel RGB. (24-bit/pixel).

 

VARIANTS:

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [8+8+8] b * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 178 MB/s

32-bit
(Adds alpha transparency channel support at 33% additional data.)

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [8+8+8+8] b * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 238 MB/s

RLE
(Applies lossless run-length encoding for variable but often significant file size savings at the expense of significant and variable realtime playback overhead to "unzip" frames on the fly.  Compatible with 24-bit or 32-bit TGAs.)

Variable

16-bit
(Lower quality at 5-bit per color and optional 1-bit alpha, at a 33% overall data reduction)

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [5+5+5+1] b * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 119 MB/s

7th 4:4:4

Uncompressed RGB/4:4:4 image data format, most commonly at 8-bit per channel, equivalent in quality and data rate to TGA 24-bit

 

VARIANTS:

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [8+8+8] b * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 178 MB/s

10-bit, 12-bit
(more channel value resolution at the expense of equivalent added data rate)

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [10+10+10] b * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 223 MB/s

(10-bit example.  For 12-bit just replace 10+10+10 by 12 support.+12+12)

4:4:4+A
(adds alpha transparency channel support at 33% additional data.  )

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [8+8+8+8] b * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 238 MB/s

RGB-Z
(lossless compression, comparable in relative filesize and performance tradeoffs to TGA RLE)

Variable

7th 4:2:2

33% data rate reduction in exchange for 4:2:2 chroma sub-sampling (RGB values are converted to YCbCr representation, full resolution luma/intensity is maintained but essentially chroma/hue component is shared between 2px pairs.  4:2:2 sub-sampling is generally considered the least intrusive form of lossy data compression, because the human eye is generally agreed to be more sensitive to differences in image intensity than hue.)

 

VARIANTS:

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [8*4+8*2+8*2] b / 4 px * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 119 MB/s

10-bit

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [10*4+10*2+10*2] b / 4 px * [1 B / 8 b]* [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 149 MB/s

4:2:2-Z

Variable

12/10-bit 4:2:2+A
 
(Y12CbCrA10.  A uniquely optimized format combining 12-bit Luma [Y], 10-bit 2px shared chroma values [CbCr], plus a 10-bit alpha channel.  Effective total 32-bit/pixel. Supported as of Delta 2.8.11+)

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [12*4+10*2+10*2+10*4] b / 4 px * [1 B / 8 b]* [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 238 MB/s

7th 4:2:0

Similar to 7th 4:2:2 (8-bit), but a 50% reduction in file size in exchange for deeper chroma value sharing.  Essentially the same chroma value is shared between 4px instead of just 2px.

VARIANTS:

[1920 * 1080] px * 30 fps * [8*4+8*2+8*0] b / 4 px * [1 B / 8 b] * [1 KB / 1024 B] * [1 MB / 1024 KB] ~ 89 MB/s

4:2:0-Z

Variable

7th YCoCg DXT5

A 3:1 flat, lossy data reduction as made popular by the HapQ codec. 8-bit per component.

Exact calculation beyond scope of this guide, but effectively 33% of TGA / 7th 4:4:4 8-bit)

7th NotchLC

A lossy compression algorithm achieving data rate between 5:1 and 8:1 with mild perceived quality loss. Supported as of Delta 2.8+

IMPORTANT:

NotchLC movies are produced by 3rd party tools exclusively in MOV-wrapped format.  Delta will attempt to play this format, but doing so is not advised for performance playback (as NO WRAPPED CODECS are advised.)  There is a tool ‘NotchLCTo7th.exe’, included as of Delta 2.8.7+ which will unwrap NotchLC MOVs, decompress from any LZ4 compression, and repackage each frame as .7th images files in a sequence.  The actual image data is unchanged, so this process maintains exact source image quality, and is relatively fast in processing versus full image data rendering.

Embedded audio track playback in MOVs is not supported by Delta, and its extraction is not supported by NotchLCTo7th.  Attempting such may crash the software.  So, be sure to render your NotchLC MOVs with no audio track.

See: MC256 Managing Media for Delta, NotchLC to NotchLC7th utility.

Variable

7th 6to1

LEGACY.  6:1 compression, lower hardware requirements

Exact calculation beyond scope of this guide, but effectively 17% of TGA / 7th 4:4:4 8-bit)

DPX

Uncompressed, most commonly encoded as 10-bit RGB.

Other supported variants:

8-bit RGB

8-bit or 10-bit RGB+A

10-bit YUV/4:4:4

12-bit 4:4:4

Little- and Big-endian bit orders

Filled and packed types

V2.0HDR is supported from Delta 2.7 build 7.

Exact calculations beyond scope of this guide, but loosely closest in data rate to the 7th 4:4:4 of same bit depth.

Less Common Image Sequences

Format

Description

Raw YUV 422

Raw, single 4:2:2 frames in 2VUY [UYVY] 8-bit format.

CIN

Uncompressed, 8/10-bit

A7S

8-bit or 10-bit, RGB or 4:2:2 encoding, with optional lossless compression.

SGI

Uncompressed 8-bit

 

Preview/Utility Only

Wrapped codec formats in these flavors may also be renderable:  
MXF, MOV, MP4, LXF, ASF, WMV, DV, MPEG-PS, MPEG-TS, GXF, FLV, AVI, MKV, WebM, HapQ, ProRes, NotchLC.
 
Audio tracks were not supported in NotchLC MOVs until 2.8.12+.

As well as these additional image sequence formats:
BMP, TIF, PNG, JPG2000, JPG.

The "Record" Tool

The Record tool is a featureset available via the classic playhead "Record" button in the lower left of DeltaGUI.  It is a compositional layback tool, in other words it allows you to record out the channel render result of a composed timeline to an image sequence on disk.  This tool may also be referred to as the "carving" or "slicing" tool, because is often used to cut a large piece of media into multiple smaller pieces of media for cooperative playback my multiple servers.  

This tool is introduced here so that its output format support can be described.   The record tool can output to JPG, JPEG2000, BMP, TIF and PNG frame sequence.

Page edited [d/m/y]: 01/12/2025