Surely, like me, you have often wondered which video format is best for recording, editing and exporting for YouTube or social networks. And there is not a single format for everything, but many, too many! Let’s see what you need for each task.

In what format to record on camera

The semi or professional video cameras that we can find in the market have recording options in the most common formats, in addition to some RAW formats that we can find in cameras of higher segments. For example, the BlackMagic 6K is capable of recording in Blackmagic RAW, the new format developed by BlackMagic Design.

It is always advisable to use formats as compressed as possible as long as we are going to work intensively with the color of that video. This is like a photograph: we will always have much greater room for maneuver with a RAW photo than with a compressed JPG photo.

Therefore, the cameras include slightly more compressed formats, such as ProRes, H.264 or H.265. ProRes is a midway format, which offers a good balance of image quality and size and allows color correction without loss of quality, which makes it suitable for professional environments. But certainly the fastest and most suitable for mortals is the H.264. H.264 is the JPG of video, an all-terrain format accepted by the vast majority of online video players and services.

H.264 problem? At the time of editing it is a resource devourer, since the CPU has to decompress the signal. But if you have a moderately powerful PC you shouldn’t have a problem. Oh, by the way, there are video editors capable of decoding H.264 and H.265 using the GPU, not at the software level, but at the GPU level. For example, in DaVinci Resole Studio we can activate this option by going to the preferences and in Decoding we activate Use hardware acceleration and NVIDIA or the graphics card that we are using. I tell you that the speed jump is dramatic.

In addition, there are some cameras capable of recording in H.265 format. For example, we can record in H.265 (also known as HEVC) on the Panasonic GH5, but only in a very specific recording format. It is noteworthy that this mode in the Panasonic allows HDR through HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma or high dynamic range). So if you have a monitor compatible with this system, use the original color space of these Rec2020 HLG clips, since by selecting this color space in DaVinci Resolve you can get images with a large dynamic range, or then change the color space to Rec709 to recover brightness levels of this standard space.

The big question came up here: in what format do we record? It depends. It is not the same if you are recording a short film than a video for YouTube. According to my personal experience, for YouTube I don’t complicate my life and use more or less standard configurations. In fact, right now I’m recording this using the default setting of the GH5 H.264 with 8bits of color at 25fps and 100mb and with the Cinelike D color profile, not V-Log or anything like that, but Cinelike D. Taking Note that then YouTube compresses the video, I don’t see much sense recording with more bitrate or more color depth, so I use this simple and dragging preset.

Then there are other formats such as MP4 or AVCHD, but basically they use a lower bit rate.

But it may be the case that we want to record a movie with our GH5. In that case I do recommend going to more “professional” profiles, so to speak. Keep in mind that each camera is a world, but as a rule, when we are recording something with more cinematic aspiration, I recommend going to the highest quality option that the camera gives. There are cameras that allow recording in RAW, so we need tons of storage. For example, in the GH5 the highest quality preset is 4K at 400 megabits per second with a color depth of 10 bits. Take chestnut. That is, 50 megabytes per second at 10 bit color, an absolute madness.

In fact, it is so crazy that any SD card is not worth it, because if we use one that has a low write speed, we will be buffered and the recording will stop. That is why it is essential to use special cards that allow this recording speed, for example I have the Sony M Series 128GB, which allow a write speed of 150 Megabytes per second. Mind you, here we are mixing megabytes and megabits. In the camera preset we will see 400 megabits, that is, the mbps in lowercase, while the card shows it in Megabytes, with the MB in uppercase.

That is, if my camera sends the signal at 50 megabytes, this card would theoretically withstand three times the writing speed, but this is in theory, and then in practice each card is from his father and mother and the speed of writing decreases.