GH5 10 bit Lumix GH5/S S1/S5 footage in Finder on Apple Silicon?

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nobbystylus

Well-known member
I have an intel iMac 2017, which plays 10 bit footage from the GH5 / S5 h264 only inside FCP or VLC but not in FINDER or QuickTime . But I tried on my partners MacBook Air M1 Mac and noticed that those clips now playback in FINDER and through Quicktime, perfectly, fast. Hallalueha!!! But - why doesn't apple fix this? Is the software for playing back H264 10 bit files THAT hard to get working on an intel Mac'?
 
nobbystylus said:
I have an intel iMac 2017, which plays 10 bit footage from the GH5 / S5 h264 only inside FCP or VLC but not in FINDER or QuickTime . But I tried on my partners MacBook Air M1 Mac and noticed that those clips now playback in FINDER and through Quicktime, perfectly, fast. Hallalueha!!! But - why doesn't apple fix this? Is the software for playing back H264 10 bit files THAT hard to get working on an intel Mac'?
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Its all about hardware acceleration. Even software players use decoding instructions from the CPU or GPU to help playback h264 video. without it the playback would be horrible. Since 99.9% of h.264 content was designed to be 8bit 4:2:0 thats what all decoding hardware is designed to support. The M1 is the first GPU ever to natively support 10bit h.264 and h.265 compressed decoding of video. Those formats perform even better on the M1 MBA than they do on a 12 core Mac Pro right now because of that hardware decoding.

If one shoots any kind of h.264 and h.265 10bit the M1 is as of right now the way to go. The M1X is going to be even better when it eventually does come out.
 
That explanation doesn’t work , Thomas. After all, these 10-bit files play back fine in DaVinci Resolve Studio on the same hardware. I see no reason why QuickTime Player could not do the same.

What OS are you using, nobbystylus? My Intel iMac is still on Catalina for compatibility with old software. Maybe yours is too, and if we updated to Big Sur it would work? Because the M1 Mac is presumably running Big Sur.
 
Samuel Dilworth said:
That explanation doesn’t work , Thomas. After all, these 10-bit files play back fine in DaVinci Resolve Studio on the same hardware. I see no reason why QuickTime Player could not do the same.

What OS are you using, nobbystylus? My Intel iMac is still on Catalina for compatibility with old software. Maybe yours is too, and if we updated to Big Sur it would work? Because the M1 Mac is presumably running Big Sur.
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Whats your point? The files work in FCPX as well but in very few other Mac applications. Its a well discussed and known fact that the M1 handles 10bit files much better than other systems do. Its a clear tested and proven advantage it has right now.

A NLE always have the ability to do more which is why its a NLE. It has its own engine to help with the playback of media. Maybe its a Big Sur thing but the M1 does have a huge 10bit advantage for heavy compressed formats. Obviously less compressed formats like ProRes are 10bit and 12bit and work great. Its not the bit depth that makes the playback hard. Its the hardware and software decoding support which is only optimized for normal everyday 8bit 4:2:0.

Yes software decoders can be made to do better like how some NLEs provide support. Software decoding is still not spectacular compared to hardware decoding however. It comes down to using 90% of your CPU to playback leaving nothing left for anything else vs only using 10% of the CPU. Because the M1 offloads 10bit compressed decoding to its GPU it leaves the rest of the chip to handle many other tasks like realtime effects and processing for playback.
 
When I got my GH5, I immediately noticed that the 10-bit 4:2:2 150Mbps files would not play in the free version of DaVinci Resolve. I got on the Resolve forum and they made me feel like I was an idiot for thinking that the free version of Resolve would include an advanced codec for such a file format. I was told that the codecs cost money, and you have to pay (i.e., get Resolve Studio, which is the paid version of Resolve) to play back 10-bit 4:2:2 files. I was told that was why Windows Media Player could not play the files as well... Microsoft didn't pay for the advanced codec. It wouldn't surprise me if the same was true for the OS in the 2017 Mac.

I have the same computer, and now use Adobe Premiere. It has no problem working with the GH5's 10-bit 4:2:2 files. But of course, Premiere is definitely not free.
 
Thomas Smet said:
Whats your point?
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That you said “Its all about hardware acceleration” when clearly it’s not. The same hardware plays the files just fine in other applications. It’s about software support. For whatever reason, Apple hasn’t bothered giving Catalina and QuickTime Player 10-bit H.264 playback support.

I’d like to know if that changed in Big Sur, but I’ve noticed that getting a straight answer to such a simple question is pretty hard on the internet. You can have a thread with ten forum readers on Big Sur and they’d rather talk about something else than spend five seconds checking for a stranger.

Of course hardware acceleration would be nice, but right now I’d just like basic playback support in the OS at whatever speed my hardware can muster – which is perfectly smooth in Resolve Studio at 4K resolution, showing it can be done.
 
Samuel Dilworth said:
That explanation doesn’t work , Thomas. After all, these 10-bit files play back fine in DaVinci Resolve Studio on the same hardware. I see no reason why QuickTime Player could not do the same.

What OS are you using, nobbystylus? My Intel iMac is still on Catalina for compatibility with old software. Maybe yours is too, and if we updated to Big Sur it would work? Because the M1 Mac is presumably running Big Sur.
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I'm on Big Sur and haven't seen any change to Finder / QuickTime player being able to play back 10 bit G series h264 files in any system update, but on the M1 MacBook Air, they give a preview and play in QT perfectly. I'm sure its true that M1 Macs have more hardware acceleration power than intel for specific codecs, but it doesn't make sense to me that Final Cut Pro, Davinci studio and Premiere can play these files (although they are quite heavy on the processor on my iMac 2017 4.2ghz with LOTS of ram), but they can't play in the finder or in QuickTime.

VLC can play them, but longer 10 bit G Lumix h264 files tend to stutter or get glitchy.

My iMac has NO problem playing back 10 bit 4K 50p H265 files (from the S5) in finder or qt.
 
So Big Sur won’t help me. Good to know.

VLC plays them for me too, but messes up the colour so badly it’s hard to watch. I’ve taken to ingesting them in Resolve Studio just to see what I’ve shot, which is a pain.
 
Can someone upload (file sharing) a few seconds of a GH5/S 10-bit clip? (I'd like to check something.)
 
Samuel Dilworth said:
That you said “Its all about hardware acceleration” when clearly it’s not. The same hardware plays the files just fine in other applications. It’s about software support. For whatever reason, Apple hasn’t bothered giving Catalina and QuickTime Player 10-bit H.264 playback support.

I’d like to know if that changed in Big Sur, but I’ve noticed that getting a straight answer to such a simple question is pretty hard on the internet. You can have a thread with ten forum readers on Big Sur and they’d rather talk about something else than spend five seconds checking for a stranger.

Of course hardware acceleration would be nice, but right now I’d just like basic playback support in the OS at whatever speed my hardware can muster – which is perfectly smooth in Resolve Studio at 4K resolution, showing it can be done.
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Yes you can have a software decoder and a hardware decoder. A really good software decoder costs money which is why you tend to only find them in a NLE like Premiere or the paid version of Resolve. Its not as easy to build a video player for 10bit that is software only without a full NLE playback engine driving it. VLC is kind of an exception because its VLC and tries to be the kitchen sink of software video players.

A OS level player which depends on a simpler instruction set and OS level decoder is going to depend on standards mores than a NLE will.

Despite the ability to make 10bit h264 and h265 work with a software decoder that doesn't mean its the best performing solution. Even in NLEs the M1 is totally killing it when it comes to 10bit h264 and 265 performance thanks to that hardware acceleration. We don't want a software decoder that eats up a CPU and GPU to play video. We would rather have an optimized solution that uses as little CPU and GPU as possible.
 
I don't know about Samuel, but I don't think the OP has an issue playing them back and only wants to preview them in QT.
 
Thomas Smet said:
Despite the ability to make 10bit h264 and h265 work with a software decoder that doesn't mean its the best performing solution. Even in NLEs the M1 is totally killing it when it comes to 10bit h264 and 265 performance thanks to that hardware acceleration. We don't want a software decoder that eats up a CPU and GPU to play video. We would rather have an optimized solution that uses as little CPU and GPU as possible.
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Sure, but even an inefficent OS-level player would be useful to me at this point. It’s a pain to have to fire up Resolve and import fifty clips just to see what I’ve shot.

Glad to hear the clip plays smoothly with minimal resource consumption on an M1 Mac.
 
Samuel Dilworth said:
Sure, but even an inefficent OS-level player would be useful to me at this point. It’s a pain to have to fire up Resolve and import fifty clips just to see what I’ve shot.

Glad to hear the clip plays smoothly with minimal resource consumption on an M1 Mac.
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Not sure that you actually need to import them into resolve.
Once you open Resolve Studio, when you're in the Media tab you should be able to navigate to clips and play them in the viewer on the media tab - without actually needing to import them. (Of course the workflow is different if you want to play with the color of the original footage - or check how well a green screen shot will key - in which case importing into a project would be needed.)
 
I think the confusion is why Apple would support playback of the GH5 / S / S5 10 bit files perfectly in QT player / Finder on M1 computers, and not put the same ability in Intel machines? Most pro machines are still intel (although probably not for much longer) and GH5 footage 10 bit is more of a 'pro' codec than others. Yes Resolve, FCP and Premiere play these files back (although it feels heavy on intel) but it should be easy enough to play them in finder too. Does anyone on an intel machine have the ability to play these back in Finder - perhaps on a later machine than mine (2017 iMac). ?
 
nobbystylus said:
I think the confusion is why Apple would support playback of the GH5 / S / S5 10 bit files perfectly in QT player / Finder on M1 computers, and not put the same ability in Intel machines? Most pro machines are still intel (although probably not for much longer) and GH5 footage 10 bit is more of a 'pro' codec than others. Yes Resolve, FCP and Premiere play these files back (although it feels heavy on intel) but it should be easy enough to play them in finder too. Does anyone on an intel machine have the ability to play these back in Finder - perhaps on a later machine than mine (2017 iMac). ?
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Because Apple didn't make the Intel chips. Apple made the Apple Silicon chips so they could put the hardware instructions into the chips to handle this type of media.

Same goes for Intel chips that get added instruction sets over previous Intel chips. You could have two Intel CPUs both at 3 Ghz and both capable of raw power rendering from a 3D application at similar speeds. Playback of media is a totally different story however and the new CPU instruction sets helped that along a lot better.

Intel and the GPU makers have largely ignored hardware accelerated 10bit playback because 99% of consumers were never going to watch 10bit content. Thats changing now thanks to HDR and more cameras shooting a compressed 10bit format.

Canon R6 10bit video screams on my M1 as well. Works much better than on an Intel machine right now. Eventually some newer GPUs will add better hardware decoding. Until that happens you are stuck with software only solutions on the Intel side.
 
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