Of course the YouTube compression will restrict your ability to see some of the differences between the two codecs. These examples are shown at the end of the video. So for most of the examples seen the XAVC-I files have been copied and re-encoded 5 times plus the encoding to the file uploaded to YouTube, plus YouTubes own encoding, a pretty tough test.īecause in most workflows I don’t believe many people will use XAVC-I in post production as an intermediate codec I also repeated the tests with the XAVC-I rendered to ProResHQ 5 times over as this is probably more representative of a typical real world workflow.

This was then rendered out, ProRes HQ rendered using ProRes HQ and the XAVC-I files rendered to XAVC-I. The slightly higher noise level of the high base ISO also allows you to see how each codec handles noise more easily.Ī sample clip of each codec was place in the timeline (DaVinci Resolve) and a caption added. I deliberately chose to use Cine EI and S-Log3 at the cameras high base ISO of 12,800 as noise will stress any codec that little bit harder and adding a LUT adds another layer of complexity that might show up any issues all just to make the test that little bit tougher. It was shot with a Sony FX6 using internal XAVC-I (class 300) on an SD card alongside an external recording using ProResHQ on a Shogun 7. But I decided to make this video to show just how close they are. I’ve also tested and compared it against ProRes many times and I know the differences are very small, so I am always confident that when using XAVC-I that I will get a great result. I’ve been using XAVC-I for over 8 years and it really worked very well for me. My own experience is that XAVC-I is actually a really good codec and recording to ProRes only ever makes the very tiniest (if any) difference to the finished production.

I often hear people saying that XAVC-I isn’t good enough or that you MUST use ProRes or some other codec.

Does davinci resolve support prores