I'm trying to create a pipeline for an intermediate master file, with a 5.1 audio file, for a film streaming service(features) that has a limit of 50gig per file that they transcode into HLS streams. For obvious reasons I want to keep as high quality as possible before the transcoding and I've tried to create different kinds of settings, but I can't get anything to work. We usually start with a Prores file(in various formats) which I want to scale down to about 40mbit/s, and at the same transcode the audio from PCM to AAC or Dolby digital, and I want to stay in the 422.
But after a couple of frustrating days I still can't get it to work. I've tried with different XDCAM settings, but I can't can't get AAC 5.1 audio coded at the same time, because for some reason XDCAM is restricted to PCM or AAC Stereo.
I also tried a high resolution of h.264 that apparently have something called Hi422P Intra profile that will keep the 422 , but even if I set the Profile to High and the Level to 5.1 I still only get a 4:2:0 YUV.
So question number one: does the chrome subsampling to 4:2:0 affect the quality before transcoding one more time?
And two: does anyone know a way to 'open' the audio restrictions in different settings of Media encoder?
Johan