Does Videotoolbox support 10-Bit?

[Brandonshire]

Hi there! I haven't looked at Other_Video_Trandcoding in a bit, but noticed that that the main page currently still indicates that Videotoolbox only uses 8-bit HEVC encoding. But when I look through the changelog there seems to be an update indicating that at some point in 2021 10-Bit was enabled for Videotoolbox, in Big-Sur and later (unless I'm misunderstanding what the changelog is indicating, which I very well might be).

So basically I'm just looking for clarity on what capabilities there are for Videotoolbox encoding on Macs. Can I get 10-Bit encoding? Also does the recent mentions of moving HDR10 metadata to encodes apply to that?

If all of the above is supported it might be time to update the main page? Anyway, thanks for your help! I'm about to get an M2-Pro Mac Mini and would love to be able to use your tools to downsize my UHD disc rips, without losing quality!

[ttyS0]

I can't speak to HDR, but I did just verify that other-transcode --hevc --10-bit produces a 10-bit output. I'm on Ventura (macOS 13.2) Here's a snip from mediainfo:

Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@Main
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Writing library                          : Lavc59.37.100 hevc_videotoolbox

This is on an M1, but I would expect the same with an M2.

On a side note, unless you just really want HEVC, the Apple Silicon CPUs do a great job with x264 software encoding, and scale well with the more cores you can throw at it.

Core count isn't going to matter with VideoToolbox, as it just uses the media encoder circuitry.

Not sure if any of that helps. Just wanted to clarify that current macOS with M1 does indeed produce 10-bit HEVC output via other-transcode, if instructed to do so. :)

[lisamelton]

Thanks, @ttyS0!

@Brandonshire Did Sean answer your questions?

[Brandonshire]

Thank you both! Yes, I believe that does!

I'm generally use HEVC because my primary goal is saving space. But I'll play around with different options. In the past I've generally used software encoding, just because of the higher quality to size ratio, but with 4K content the time it takes is pretty daunting, so I'm looking more into hardware-accelerated encoding than I have in the past. But we'll see! I'll play around with different options when I get my new computer!

[lisamelton]

@Brandonshire OK, I will close this now.