“Key Frame Distance” confusion

[Sascha Hoffmann]

Hello,

I googled and read the adobe help sites but I am still confused about key frame distance (KFD) in the media encoder options.

When I encoded my animation which has relatively quick movements and scenery changes, I noticed some minor stutters in a few instances and I thought changing the KFD might improve the flow of my animation. But the information I gathered seems to contradict the outcome of my video files.

on adobe help it says:
“Key Frame Interval [Seconds] or Set Key Frame Distance (Frames): Number of frames after which the codec creates a keyframe when exporting video.”

and further:
“If your footage has a lot of scene changes or rapidly moving motion or animation, then the overall image quality may benefit from a lower KFD. A smaller key frame distance corresponds to a larger output file.”

So I figured that a key frame distance of “1” is the smallest possible distance and “300” the largest distance. But when I encode and export my videofiles, the one with a KFD of “300” is always the largest file (and vice versa KFD1 is the smallest, although adobe help clearly states that a lower KFD will increase the file size)

Can somebody please help me to understand KFD properly and maybe give an advice how to deal with the KFD for future projects? I am obviously still quite inexperienced.

My project has 29,97 fps.

Cheers,
SH