Lets Talk About Rendering...

[NS.YT]

Rendering your video is the final step to heading to the hordes of hungry viewers. But wait....all of that beautiful crisp footage is pixelated and terrible now! Well it's time to tighten up your rendering game and I'm going to show you how!

So, let me share my evolution for you. This video was one of my bulk roll out videos when I started my channel. Notice that while it's good, it isn't crisp and it's a bit grainy. It was shot in 720p at 30FPS with no camera tweaking or anything. This came from using the template render settings in Sony Vegas. Out of all the research I did in preparation for launching my channel, rendering wasn't on that list.

Now jump to one of my current videos after I did some research on maximizing my GoPro and getting the best quality out of rendering. I wanted lossless rendering and I got it. My videos kept the same quality as when they were shot and YouTube encoded that same quality.

So, how did I get there? It's simple and I highly recommend doing it on your next project. So let's get in to it.

Your videos have a bit rate that can be shown by right clicking the video and looking at the "Properties" and then clicking on "Details". As shown below, the total bitrate is the number you are interested in. In this case it's 25107 @ 59 FPS.

Now when you go in to which ever editing program you use, you should be able to set your project properties. In this specific case I'm using Sony Vegas (I love Sony Vegas). Here is what the new project settings looks like for maximum lossless rendering. Below are my exact project settings, in the red circle is the "Match Media Video Settings" button. That is a box that needs to be ticked. It will bring you to your file explorer and you'll need to select the clip of the video you want to match quality with.

Make sure your width height match your video and the "Full-resolution rendering quality" is set to "Best". Now get to editing and we'll tackle the actual render next.

Okay, here we go. Below you will see my personal rendering settings. Towards the bottom you'll see the "Variable Bit Rate". This is what you are remembering your source video's bitrate for. Our source video was a bitrate of 25107 so to compensate and just to make sure we get the best quality you will change it to over what your actual bitrate is. In this case I keep it at 26,000,000. The first two numbers are the important ones. 25 on the source video becomes 26 in the render settings. You want your "Profile" to be set on "High". Again check your frame size to make sure it's at your frame setting.

The GoPro records audio at 128k bps and 48,000Hz. My audio is clear because of matching audio bitrate and using a condensor microphone.

Finally ( I know we're almost there!) we make it to the project settings themself. You'll want to set the "Video rendering quality" to "Best".

Here we are...it's pretty simple. I honestly could have just said "Set your render bitrate to match your video's." But why not just iron it out for everyone. The render is going to take a lot longer than your are used to but then again...if you want quality you're going to have to put in some time. YouTube will encode at the same quality of the original source video you use and therefore you have lossless video rendering. So get out there and make some quality crisp video!

 

[SalvageSV]

So, this is good info, and you're correct that a higher bitrate will render a higher quality video. But, you also have to consider your audience. I used to render at an average of 22 mbps (2 pass VBR) and ran into an issue with YouTube dropping the quality on playback due to my connection speed. My AT&T U-Verse internet is only rated at 11 mbps and will hit up to 13 mbps on a good day. But, that means that I can't play back that 22 or 25 mbps video at full quality, so YouTube degrades it.

I now render at a 15-16 mbps average and get better playback on my slower-than-full-broadband connection. In addition, there are recommended YouTube bitrates and other settings that you can reference. I want to say they recommend 12 or 14 mbps for 1080p video. Now, the framerate should be considered with that (60 needs more than 30 for the same quality) but it's a good reference and some insight into the compression algorithms they use.

And I hate to tell you, but no matter what you upload, it's going to get pushed through YouTube's hardware encoders and reencoded to their standard. No matter if it's 20 mbps or 200 mbps. But, the higher the original bitrate, the more data the encoders have to work with when transcoding, so you're more likely to end up with a quality product. YouTube will never increase the quality on encode, so more is definitely better.

Also, you want to use two-pass VBR for the best quality. It takes twice as long but gives much better quality in bitrate-heavy areas. And if you set the average and max bitrates to the same value you may as well use CBR. VBR specifically allows the encoder to increase the bitrate as needed to yield the same quality video with a smaller file size. The "average" is the usual bitrate used, but VBR allows it to increase up to the "max" value as needed. The extra encoding pass just looks the footage over twice to ensure the best quality for the chosen settings.

And changing the profile to "high" shoulnd't matter for our content, as it really changes the max allowed encoding values for the content. The "main" profile has more than enough headroom for GoPro stuff, even at the higher Protune bitrates (45 or 60 mbps). But, it doesn't hurt to change it really. I honestly haven't done a side-by-side comparison of the profiles.

I did a pretty in-depth write up of encoder settings a while back if you wanted to check it out and compare notes. https://motovlog.com/threads/video-export-settings-explained.13400/. I used Premiere Pro though, and your write up is great for people using Vegas. You can see a lot of the crossover in the settings.

 

[dandoolittle]

Some good content dude


Will send this to members in the morning

 

[willph]

Thumbs up!

 

[SighBored]

I like the FCPX because it sorts out the frame-rate issue especially if the source raw videos are of different rates without any issue.. But yes, still need to check the project settings to make sure it's set correctly when exporting/rendering out the final file.