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Compressor Data Rate Question
I’m encoding videos for the web (h.264, 1080p) for Youtube using Compressor. When you manually input the data rate for video, is that number the constant data rate, average, or peak?
Also I usually put in a number like 8000. I’ve been getting good results but do you think I’m still losing some quality at that date rate?
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3 Replies
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Compression with any lossy codec will lose some quality. The question is can your eye tell. That’s a judgement call.
To see what’s going on inside a compressed file, MediaInfo (Media Inspector in the Mac App Store) is a good utility to use.
https://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en
https://mediainspector.massanti.com/
If you are running Parallels or Fusion with Windows, I like this.
https://www.winhoros.de/docs/bitrate-viewer/ -
Any reason you’re not using the apple preset for youtube? It runs at either 8k or 20k (depending on your version of compressor.) The larger the file, the less compressed, the longer the upload – and know that youtube will recompresses from what you send them.
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
New- my book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website -
Well I started with the YouTube Preset but made some tweaks to it. For example, on the YouTube support page it says to have frame reordering deselected; on the preset it has it selected. The preset also has the frame size at up to 1280×720. I change that to 100% of source since I’m working with 1080p. I have Final Cut Studio 3. I guess it was before YouTube allowed 1080p uploads.
Back to my question, would you say that a data rate of 8000, in most cases, will be okay for 1080p? I want to be at a point where I am getting a little bit of overhead or only losing just a little bit of information. I am using this chart on this site as a reference https://support.brightcove.com/en/docs/video-source-file-specifications-and-recommendations. I just wanted to get some second opinions. I know it is different for each situation and that I should make different versions at different rates and SEE for myself. But again, I just want to know from a “in general” standpoint.
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