Best render settings for film showing at festivals

[Aivis Zons]

To answer your first question:
Yes and no. You are right that both results are HD, likely visually the same. The quality setting affects the following: Scaling, field handling, field rendering and framerate resample/IFR quality. So if your project doesn’t make use of these – you might not notice the difference. For scaling it’s a change between modes and the others it’s an on/off switch. So really I’d say that it has an impact, but in most modern cases it’s not too noticeable. Just set it to best and forget about it. Also I believe that the setting that matters is the one within Project Properties; not the one above the video preview. Plus this can also be overwritten by the setting in your rendering template, project tab.

Second question:
I wouldn’t aim for lowest possible, I would aim for highest allowed. Yes, there is a point of diminishing returns, but that kind of depends on your footage. For example, comparing a video that consists of 5 still images and a video that consists of 5 action shots – the latter has a lot more information so it needs more bitrate to display it without visual degradation. Lower bitrate = more compression, higher bitrate = closer to lossless. Personally I want to show my projects as close to lossless as possible.

I suggest you do some test renders of your most action-filled scenes and see at what point you start seeing artifacts. Add 1Mbps on top and that would be the lowest point. If you can go higher – just go higher to be safe. If it’s an on location showing – there’s no real reason to hold back unless they have specific guidelines – there isn’t a unified standard.
If it’s uploaded to some video service like youtube or vimeo – there will be extra compression on the platform end regardless (in those cases I suggest you re-render your rendered video at a higher resolution – allows for higher bitrates on the platform).

[Sebastian Fudali]

1. Keep the fps and resolution as native.

2. For optimal results use ProRes, 4:2:2, or 4:4:4 for best performance.

3. 10 MBps is basically youtibe quality, you will want at least 30 for mp4.

[Johnny Chevy]

My native resolution is 2048 x 1024 mostly. Very little of it is 1080p.

So I shouldn’t just render it to 1080? I feel like 1080 is good enough

How do I use ProRes?

Should it be higher for mp4? I use 10mbps for my wmv video and it looks good enough.

[Johnny Chevy]

How about audio bitrate? It’s set at 128 mbps right now.

[Johnny Chevy]

The source video is mov. Is it ok to render to mp4 or is mov better?

[Aivis Zons]

If your project is already finished I suggest you go with your project resolution as then you will get exactly what you saw in the preview in terms of aspect ratio and potential black bars.

“Looks good enough” – personally I’d say if it looks good for you – then it’s probably good – your project, your vision. Rendering in a different format likely won’t make your film look much better, there’s no magic dial for that, just minor optimizations. Professionally, however, I’d recommend you go for the better format and a higher bitrate.

MP4 is very widely used for digital distribution, because of its compression capabilities.
ProRes on the other hand is used for professional production to maintain as much quality as possible. 4:4:4 option having the highest color accuracy and largest file sizes.

So MP4 vs ProRes – ProRes is the superior format for your use case, but I honestly doubt the difference would be all that big in your case. Also Vegas Pro 17 does not have Apple ProRes rendering templates – they were added with version 19 or 20 so you won’t even find them.

Between MP4 and MOV – in your case I might stick with MOV. Just increase the bitrate. In my opinion 24Mbps at this framrate would be solid. The minimum of 30Mbps for an MP4 mentioned by Sebastian is already too safe I would say, at least at this framerate & resolution. I don’t think I could tell the difference without extensive pausing and pixel peeping.

I mainly deliver materials for digital distribution and mp4 is what I basically always use (MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4). Doesn’t matter what format the source footage is.
And I’ve set my audio bitrate to 320 000 bps. You can go lower, but perhaps not below 192 000.

And I believe I’ve outlined this before, but really there is no universal standard, everyone has their own guidelines and you might even have to re-render this project in the future to adhere to them. Consult with the festival(s) to avoid misunderstandings.

[Johnny Chevy]

Thanks again.

[Johnny Chevy]

I was rendering to mp4, (Sony avc/mvc) should I be using the magix one that your using instead? what’s the difference?

[Aivis Zons]

I’d say that the difference isn’t too big. I’m going with MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 because it’s the more modern one of the two and you can get faster render times by setting the Encode mode to NV Encoder if your GPU supports it.

However, I have read that Mainconcept AVC has higher quality, but it’s also slower. Haven’t personally tested it, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

If you choose to go with the MAGIX template then go with the Variable bitrate option. Your average will be your previous general bitrate and the maximum you should set higher, add maybe 10Mbps on top of average for that.

[Johnny Laty]

Thanks man