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Best (good) rendering-resolution for digital video distribution?
For years, we delivered final video-recording projects on DVD. That format is fast going obsolete, although a few customers still want it. But as we switch our biz model to distribute via uploading to Dropbox or Google Drive, etc., we’re in a quandary about the best resolution to use for rendering from Vegas. We’ve produced several beautiful1920x1080 videos of dance performances, but the filesize is humongous (5 gigabytes to 10 gigabytes) and some customers can’t even download them. Is there a “best” rendering-spec to yield very good video image at an optimally manageable filesize? (We can distribute the huge files on USB sticks, but we’re hoping to migrate away from physical distribution altogether.)
Advance thank-you’s…
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4 Replies
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There is no right answer to your question. There is always going to be trade-off between quality and filesize, no matter what you do. It is all a function of the data rate. This was even the case with DVD production, however, unlike DVD production where the data rate had a top limit and the video size also had a top limit, current distribution formats for video have much higher limits in both video image sizes and the data rate.
In the end, you will always have to make a compromise based on your customer perception and also based on the equipment that your customers are likely to play the videos on.
Vegas allows you to set the data rate for most of the video formats and this is the figure that ultimately set the filesize and the perceived video quality.
Try some experiments with the following settings:
Container: mp4
Video format: AVC
High definition (1920×1080)Profile: High
Entropy coding: CABAC
Bit rate: 4,000,000I have found that is setting is the most compact and acceptable on most slow moving subject matter.
Review the video and if it is not acceptable, start incrementing the bit rate. (I typically upload video to YouTube or Vimeo with the bitrate set to 16,0000,000 as you want to start off high, as these streaming services then downsample as required.
Don’t be afraid to spend a couple of days, rendering at various data rates and reviewing it on different playback equipment. That’s what I did when I first changed to HD.
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Perhaps in your situation where some clients are unable to download because their Internet speeds do not support it, you can simply host the video for them to watch and provide a link they can use to watch it whenever they want? Or render a high quality and lower-bitrate 720p file for those who can’t download the higher quality files?
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Take a serious look at Voukoder. It is what i use now for all my rendering output to clients, media houses, Broadcast Stations etc…. (And it’s free). No need to fiddle with much settings or confusing options.
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A lot of great things said about MagicYUV…… https://www.magicyuv.com/
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