Render Compression Issue

Question

I'm editing footage from a Canon 60D, 1080p, and have been editing it at full quality, as it has been functioning quite well thus far. The issue is when I render footage and then export it. While rendering, a loss in quality occurs. Through render compression, the image loses color information and degrades in overall quality. I've checked by render compression settings, which point to my sequence settings. I've included an image of my sequence settings in this post. Any advice? I need to do some color work and can't have the image quality degraded as a result of rendering, or anything else for that matter.

Answer 1

You kind of have it backwards - H.264 is the very compressed format, Pro Res is the high quality codec.
The file size is growing because H.264 is highly, highly compressed video. H.264 is designed for image acquisition and delivery, but not editing or post production. When you transcode to ProRes, your are 'unpacking" the video that has been compressed (jammed) together as tightly as possible into blocks of frames -  into distinct frames with a much greater storage of data per frame. This is why many high end cameras, and many DSLR shooters record on devices that use the ProRes codec - it bypasses the tremendous compression of H.264.
ProRes is a much better codec than H.264, which is why once your material is in ProRes, it will maintain quality as you move through editing and color correction, delivering an excellent quality master file that you can then compress into any delivery codecs you need.
MtD