HAP vs H264 codec optomisation

tomloud

Hi Nick, How are you? Quick question, is there any benefit to using the HAP codec now that version 3.0 of ME can send H264 to the GPU? Do you still recommend HAP as the most efficient codec for ME? I currently use 2015 MBPs on old versions that run 720 H264 ok, but struggle when I update the OS and serato/ME. Have been considering trying HAP codec as a way to get more performance out of those machines once upgraded. Thanks

Nick

For most videos, I would recommend that you leave them in the H.264 format. The Hap codec is most useful for: 1) shorter samples (e.g. for use in MixEmergency's Sample Player), because Hap encoded videos generally take up a lot more space on your disk than H.264 encoded videos, but every frame is also a keyframe, so they're very fast when it comes to random access/seeking. 2) when you want a video to have an alpha channel that is still accelerated by the GPU (again, very useful for MixEmergency's Sample Player).

tomloud

Oh great! That’s really interesting thanks. V interesting point on alpha channel vids, it hadn’t occurred to me that I do those in non-h264. Do you recommend HAP for long alpha channel files? Or is there a solution that gives smaller files and still GPU accelerates? Thanks

Nick

For playback in MixEmergency, Hap is quite likely to be the most efficient format for files with Alpha channels.