Video compression is important. Getting the bottom file measurement with the highest quality for the supply medium doesn’t simply save house, it additionally saves money and time.
Given the significance of video compression, and the complexity of the algorithms concerned, it’s not stunning that there are many myths and misconceptions surrounding this matter. So let’s begin with a more in-depth have a look at video compression normally, then we’ll break down a few of these myths.
If you need to skip to the myths, click here.
What is bitrate?
A time period you’ll stumble upon virtually instantly when exporting a file is bitrate. Video bitrate is solely the variety of bits (ones and zeros) used per second to explain the video picture. The bitrate occasions the length (in seconds) would be the measurement of the file.
It’s measured in bits per second (bps), however since video information require an enormous variety of bits per second, video bitrate is most frequently referred to in megabits per second, a million bits every second, which is often written Mbps. A tenMbps bitrate for 10 seconds makes a 100Mb file. A 20-second clip with the identical bitrate can be 200Mb, and so forth.
Bitrate is the one factor that impacts the file measurement.
Higher bitrates will typically provide you with higher high quality, however not all the time. The selection of video codec will have an effect on the standard so much, since completely different codecs have very completely different compression algorithms. Some codecs are 8-bit solely, some solely do 4:2:0 color. Some can solely create video information in sure body sizes. Some compress every body independently (intra-frame codecs) whereas others have a look at earlier frames (inter-frame codecs), and many others.
Some codecs are designed to carry out greatest at excessive bitrates, whereas others are made to excel at decrease bitrates. Different codecs even have particular person thresholds, the place rising the bitrate is not going to additional enhance the standard.
Given all of this, we are able to’t know a lot in regards to the high quality of the video from bitrate alone—and evaluating the bitrates of various codecs doesn’t make a lot sense, since their capability to compress video with minimal high quality loss could also be very completely different.
Is 45Mbps a excessive bitrate for 1080p HD at 29.97fps? For a ProRes file it’s very low. it’s the bitrate of ProRes 422 Proxy, and also you’ll see plenty of compression artifacts. For the XDCAM format, it was the usual for a lot of broadcasters for greater than a decade. For H.264, it’s excessive, with only a few visible issues.
That’s why it’s not very informative when folks say that their modifying venture is “huge, with more than 10TB of material attached.” If that footage is 6.5k Arri RAW Open Gate on ALEXA 65, the information price is 5.89 Gbit/s at 24fps. 2.6TB per hour, so the ten terabytes is simply wanting 4 hours of footage, which isn’t a lot. If the footage is H.264 shot at 50Mbps, the ten terabytes will retailer lots of of hours.
Constant bitrate vs variable bitrate
Constant bitrate, or CBR, means precisely that; the bitrate is pretty fixed, it doesn’t matter what the content material is. It’s helpful for conditions like broadcasting, the place a constant, predictable knowledge stream is most popular. But CBR will sacrifice high quality when the complexity of the scene pushes the encoder past its knowledge restrict. Variable bitrate, or VBR, makes use of the bits in a wiser manner, growing the bitrate when the picture is advanced, and lowering it when the picture is easier. VBR could be executed in a single or two passes. 1-pass VBR is quicker, however it solely analyzes a bit of the video at a time. 2-pass VBR is slower, because it analyzes the entire video earlier than allocating the bits.
The VBR algorithms might not all the time agree with you on what’s extra vital within the video, and allocate too few bits to the areas you really feel are most fascinating. Maybe you don’t tolerate as a lot blocking or noise within the shadows, or as a lot smoothing, because the algorithms. In these instances, strive CBR as a substitute, as it could look higher in some instances.
Unless you’re utilizing CBR, the bitrates you set when exporting aren’t absolute. They’re goal bitrates. If the footage is nearly static, or if there’s little or no element within the topic, or a shallow depth of discipline, the bitrate might be decrease as a result of it’s simpler for the algorithms to compress that picture. If it’s a handheld shot from a telephone, with an enormous depth of discipline and many motion and element—assume clouds of confetti or a windy forest—the bitrate required might be greater.
A have a look at YouTube playback bitrates
It would possibly shock you to listen to, however bitrates on YouTube movies aren’t created equal. The HD model of Metallica performing King Nothing (St. Louis, MO – November 5, 2023) has a mean video bitrate of 1,367Kbps when watched within the AV1 format, whereas YouTube Premium customers stand up to three,724Kbps within the VP9 format.
The Premium model is noticeably higher (extra element, much less artifacts, feels cleaner). There’s even a 1,762Kbps VP9 model, which is extra just like the AV1 model when evaluating high quality, and the two,690Kbps AVC model additionally appears about the identical because the AV1 model.
You can use Stats for nerds on YouTube to see what model you’re watching. Right-click within the video and select Stats for nerds to see the codec and codec ID (sometimes a three-digit quantity in parenthesis), then use this list to search out out what which means.
In comparability, Mamoworld posted an HD tutorial on Getting Started with Automation Blocks for Premiere Pro which received a measly 439Kbps, six occasions decrease than our Metallica instance. And it should look terrible, proper?
No, it appears okay. But why is the bitrate a lot decrease?
A video tutorial with a lot of virtually static display screen recordings of software program doesn’t have as a lot motion and small particulars because the rock live performance. Most of the display screen is static for lengthy intervals at a time, with solely the mouse and some panels altering—there’s no picture noise in screenshots, both. And when Mathias is on digicam, it’s a locked down shot. This means there’s plenty of redundancy in consecutive frames, so the codec algorithms can compress the picture very successfully with out shedding an excessive amount of high quality.
Of course, the Premium model of the Metallica live performance was encoded with a distinct, extra trendy codec (VP9) than this tutorial instance (H.264), so a direct bitrate comparability isn’t that helpful. Mamoworld additionally has 20k subscribers, whereas Metallica has 10.1 million, so YouTube offers them greater precedence. Hence, no VP9 model of the Mamoworld tutorial.
Note that the bitrate of 439Kbps within the Mamoworld video is a mean. Bitrate Viewer exhibits that it varies between 17Kbps and 3776Kbps, relying on how a lot motion and element there may be. The video begins with Mathias on display screen, which calls for the next bitrate, whereas the center half is usually virtually static display screen recordings. This half has a a lot decrease bitrate, and in case you look rigorously, it is possible for you to to identify the I-frames within the Group of Pictures, or GOP, exhibiting as quick spikes in bitrate.
Somewhere in between, 7 Years of Film Editing Knowledge in One Big Video, posted by This Guy Edits received a mean of 1,645Kbps within the VP9 model.
Although this 96-minute piece has plenty of function movie snippets, they appear to be principally low-resolution copies, which could be compressed extra simply than full HD clips.
Video compression fundamentals
Uncompressed video ends in gigantic bitrates and due to this fact enormous file sizes, so most video is compressed in a roundabout way. Different strategies are used for various functions.
A fast look on the desk right here exhibits that uncompressed video will produce information which might be prohibitively enormous. High-quality variations of the commonest modifying codecs, AKA “mezzanine” codecs, give us considerably decrease bitrates, however nonetheless giant information.
The H.264 export presets in Premiere Pro delivers bitrates which might be 60-70 occasions decrease than the uncompressed ones—whereas YouTube streams could also be greater than a thousand occasions decrease!
| Codec (1920 x 1080, 29.97 fps) | ≈ Target Bitrate, Mbps |
| Uncompressed 12-bit 444 | 2,237 |
| Uncompressed 10-bit 422 | 1,326 |
| DNxHR HQ | 208 |
| DNxHR SQ | 138 |
| ProRes 444 (no alpha) | 330 |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 220 |
| ProRes 422 | 147 |
| ProRes 422 LT | 102 |
| ProRes 422 Proxy | 45 |
| XAVC Intra 422 | 100 |
| XAVC Long 422 | 59 |
| H.264 High Quality 1080p HD preset in Premiere Pro | 20 |
| H.264 Facebook 1080p Full HD preset in Premiere Pro | 12 |
Sources: Apple ProRes White Paper, Wikipedia, and Avid Knowledge Base. There could also be some rounding errors.
Intra-frame codecs like ProRes and DNxHD compress every body independently, similar to JPEG. That’s why they’re simple to edit, so they’re typically utilized in post-production, and when making proxies.
Inter-frame (long-GOP) codecs have a look at a number of frames at a time seeking repeating pixels, movement estimation, and patterns, and may compress the sign rather more successfully than the Intra-frame codecs, yielding a lot smaller file sizes. Without getting too deep into the weeds, they use a mix of various body sorts—Index (I), Bilinear (B), and Predictive (P)—which you’ll sometimes see listed as “IBBPBBPBB” or comparable. This is the “group of pictures” that defines the time period GOP.
Because of the smaller file measurement, they’re broadly utilized in cameras, good telephones, and drones.
Inter-frame codecs like H.264 (AVC) and later are wonderful for distribution and viewing functions that simply require playback. But they’re more durable to edit and scrub by way of, since displaying every body (aside from I-frames) relies on studying a number of different frames in a GOP.
Premiere Pro makes use of {hardware} acceleration to learn a few of these codecs, so relying in your recording format, your CPU and your GPU, your system might wrestle so much, or scrub easily with out dropping frames. Exports and renders too might be sooner when the acceleration kicks in.
The codec selection relies on what your video is supposed for. If you’re exporting a video file that might be edited additional by you or another person, or used as a part of a movie, you’ll principally need to export to codecs like ProRes, AVC-Intra, or DNxHD. The information might be huge however will face up to additional changes like coloration grading very effectively. If the movie is completed, and the file you export is for distribution solely, you’ll doubtless be utilizing H.264, or different extremely compressed long-GOP codecs.
There are many different codecs out there, reminiscent of VP9, AV1, and many others., every with its personal benefits and drawbacks. DCPs for cinema distribution and Netflix IMFs each use compression based mostly on the JPEG2000 nonetheless picture format.
Some codecs are protected by patents, which suggests NLE builders and streaming corporations should pay to make use of them. This is why corporations like YouTube are transferring in direction of the AV1 and VP9 codecs, that are open and don’t have any patent points. Note that, whereas Apple ProRes can also be a patented codec, the decoding is an SMPTE standard. So it’s protected to make use of as an archiving codec, as it’ll mainly be readable perpetually.
Lossy and lossless compression
When encoders compress video, they’re eradicating redundant, repeating, or irrelevant knowledge, reminiscent of consecutive frames which might be comparable or an identical, or particulars that aren’t noticeable by the human eye. The goal is to make the file smaller with out shedding any vital data.
It’s actually doable to do utterly lossless compression, utilizing algorithms like run-length encoding (RLE), Huffmann encoding, and many others. It’s a bit like compressing a folder right into a ZIP file. Nothing is misplaced, even when the file measurement is smaller. The authentic information within the folder could be restored with none loss.
DCT (discrete cosine remodel) is utilized in many of the video codecs you’ll encounter (and JPG photographs). In itself it’s not lossy, however the precept is to characterize the sign in a manner that’s simpler to compress, and find yourself with small numbers that may be rounded off to make RLE-based compression algorithms blissful. When we do such rounding, we introduce errors, and the unique sign can now not be recreated completely. We’re now doing lossy compression, and we’re additionally dramatically lowering the file measurement.
If we scale back the bit depth, we are able to save plenty of knowledge. We additionally use math to transform the RGB picture to YUV, the place Y is the black and white data, and U and V include the colour data. Then we are able to use chroma subsampling, reducing the decision in our coloration indicators, to cut back the information by a further 33% (4:2:2) or 50% (4:2:0), in comparison with 4:4:4. Don’t fear in case you don’t totally perceive these chroma subsampling numbers. All it’s essential know is that greater numbers means greater coloration decision.
Encoders may do issues to the picture earlier than encoding long-GOP codecs, like noise discount, blurring, pores and skin smoothing, and many others., to assist the algorithms compress higher.
YouTube Help says: “YouTube’s video processing may remove some noise to achieve streaming bitrates. You can get more control by denoising your video before rendering it for upload. Denoising can also help if your video looks too “compressed” when streamed.”
As you possibly can see, there are various methods to cut back the bitrate. But we’re now throwing away plenty of data for every pixel, so we’re undoubtedly getting lossy outcomes. Surprisingly, you might not be capable of see any distinction in high quality between an 8-bit and a 12-bit picture, or between 4:4:4 coloration and 4:2:0 coloration. Since our eyes don’t see as a lot element in coloration as we do in black and white (you already know, rods and cones) the video should look excellent!
But once we do issues like coloration grading or keying and compositing, then throwing away all that data retains us from getting a clear consequence. Recordings from client and prosumer cameras are sometimes closely compressed, and should initially look good, however they will break down quickly when doing submit manufacturing work.
When we push the bounds of the compression strategies, we get compression artifacts like DCT blocking, ringing, posterizing and “mosquito noise”. The extra we decrease the bitrate, the extra artifacts we get. For a visible rationalization of how lossy compression appears, watch “Why Snow and Confetti Ruin YouTube Video Quality” by Tom Scott.
Image: Artifacts
Caption: Tom Scott pushes the algorithms to their limits and past on this YouTube video.
If you need to actually perceive all of the settings for H.264 within the Export tab, examine H.264 profiles and levels on Wikipedia.
Hardware vs, software program decoding and encoding
Most modern CPUs and GPUs have {hardware} help for decoding and encoding video codecs, starting from ProRes to AV1. Apple and AMD aren’t all that open in relation to itemizing what codecs are supported by which {hardware}, however you’ll discover particulars for Intel and Nvidia on the hyperlinks under.
Premiere Pro and different software program can use this built-in {hardware} help to make decoding and encoding these codecs a lot simpler and sooner. If you select a setting in Premiere Pro export that falls exterior your {hardware} encoder’s talents—which could be affected by body measurement, body price, 2-pass VBR, bitrate, profile/degree, and many others.—you’ll see a message saying, “Your system’s hardware does not support hardware acceleration for the current settings.”
In these instances, encoding on the CPU (software program encoding) would be the solely choice except you alter the settings to fall throughout the limits of your {hardware}.
Be conscious that {hardware} encoding is primarily constructed for pace, not essentially for high quality. Hardware accelerated VBR exports are all the time 1-pass, and a few solely help 4:2:0 coloration.
There have been reviews that {hardware} encoding has a noticeable lack of high quality over software program encoding on the similar bitrate, particularly when doing 2-pass in software program. But you’re paying along with your time—exports take a lot, for much longer.
If your system has each Intel & Nvidia accelerated decoding chosen, the Intel decoding is prioritized over the Nvidia decoding by Premiere Pro. If your timeline has a {hardware} decoded H.264 supply clip, and also you’re exporting to a {hardware} encoded H.264 video file, Premiere Pro will use the Intel acceleration for decoding, even when Nvidia is chosen. This is to keep away from points with decoding and encoding on the similar time with Nvidia acceleration.
Interlacing? Please no!
Interlacing is more durable to encode, since you actually have two half-res picture sequences, with no shared pixels, taken 1/fiftieth or 1/sixtieth of a second aside. In many areas, broadcast continues to be produced at 1080i50 or 1080i60, which suggests 50 or 60 half-res photographs per second—interlaced. The European Broadcasting Union did intensive testing of digital transmission of 1080i50 and 720p50 (50 progressive photographs at 1280×720 px). They discovered that 720p50 gave a a lot better perceived picture high quality than 1080i50 at a given bitrate.
Since bandwidth is a price, most broadcasters have been transmitting 720p50 for a few years, with only a few complaints. Many of them at the moment are switching to 1080p50 and even 4k for digital distribution. Avoid interlacing in case you’re not particularly requested to ship interlaced video.
Frame measurement and body price matter
UHD (3840x2160px) is 4 occasions as many pixels as commonplace HD (1920x1080px). That means you’ll have to make use of much more bits to explain the picture with none loss in high quality—however not 4 occasions as many. In a picture with greater decision, extra neighboring pixels may have smaller variations, which helps the codecs describe the picture utilizing fewer bits. You don’t want as a lot as 4 occasions the bitrate for UHD in comparison with HD, however somewhat a little bit lower than that, if you wish to hold the identical high quality.
In Premiere Pro, the “High Quality 1080p HD” preset has a goal bitrate of 20Mbps whereas the “High Quality 2160p 4k” preset has 80Mbps—precisely 4 occasions as excessive. You ought to due to this fact, in keeping with concept, get a barely higher picture high quality with the “High Quality 2160p 4k” preset.
For many functions, exporting a high-quality HD file is usually a a lot better selection than exporting a low-quality UHD file. For the identical purpose, delivering a high-quality 25fps file as a substitute of a decrease high quality 50fps file may even be higher in lots of instances.
This is equally related whenever you’re exporting an audio podcast (sure, even audio solely podcasts are sometimes edited in Premiere Pro, particularly since we received speech to textual content). If the one factor that’s stereo sound is the jingles firstly and finish, you might need to export mono audio, as a result of the entire audio bitrate is used on that one channel as a substitute of two (stereo). Even although it’s one channel as a substitute of two, you possibly can’t halve the bitrate and hold the identical high quality. But you possibly can scale back it fairly a bit—or simply get higher sounding audio in case you hold it on the similar bitrate.
Take benefit of Smart Rendering for sooner exports
If you’re exporting lengthy or advanced timelines, you might profit from exporting a ProRes grasp file, and use that file to create the H.264 export. This has the additional good thing about providing you with high quality file for the archives—perhaps even with multichannel audio containing stereo combine, nat sound, dialogue, atmosphere, music, and many others. on separate channels.
To use Smart Rendering—for super-fast exports—I like to recommend utilizing ProRes 422 or ProRes 422 HQ because the preview codec in Premiere Pro, as a substitute of the default ProRes LT. Use the flavour you need your grasp file to have. If you then render previews of elements of the timeline whenever you’re having a pause, you possibly can profit from good rendering by utilizing these preview renders whenever you export. On giant tasks, you possibly can even do in a single day renders, similar to we did within the outdated days.
Smart Rendering means your NLE is principally copying frames, with no re-encoding. Avid DNxHR would even be a sensible choice for Smart Rendering.
Apps for calculating and checking bitrate and file measurement
There are a number of apps and net pages that may be helpful when calculating storage wants, file sizes, bitrates and many others.
The AJA Data Rate Calculator, aka AJA DataCalc, computes storage necessities for skilled video and audio media. Available for macOS, iOS, and Android.
The ARRI Formats and Data Rate Calculator is a web based device that calculates the recording durations and knowledge charges for various Arri digicam settings.
Wonder what’s inside your video file? Use MediaInfo, a free and open-source software program that shows technical details about media information, in addition to tag data. You’ll get data on format, codec, chroma subsampling, bitrate, bit depth, body price, and many others.
Myths
OK, now that you simply perceive how video compression codecs work, it’s time to take a look on the myths. See the top of this part for a abstract.
Myth #1: MOV is best high quality than MP4. (False)
MOV and MP4 are containers. Containers can have completely different codecs inside them, and it’s the codec that describes the picture (and audio). A MOV and an MP4 might have the very same H.264 knowledge stream describing the pixels within the video in precisely the identical manner.
There are different variations: You can’t have a timecode monitor in an MP4 like you possibly can in a MOV, and a MOV can include extra codecs (and in Premiere Pro; extra audio tracks) than an MP4.
The container format does not immediately have an effect on video or audio high quality.
Myth #2: Higher bitrate yields greater high quality. (Not all the time true)
It’s generally assumed that greater bitrates yield higher video high quality. Here’s a quote from a web based article on video bitrates:
“The bitrate has a direct correlation to the quality of the video. Higher bitrates result in superior video quality but larger file sizes as well.”
One a part of the assertion is true: It’s a truth {that a} greater bitrate ends in a bigger file measurement. After all, bitrate is the solely factor that impacts file measurement. The downside with the standard facet of the assertion is that, with out telling you so, it assumes that every part else stays the identical: body measurement, body price, codec, and many others. Even conserving body price and body measurement fixed, you might encode to 4 completely different codecs with 4 completely different bitrates, and there’s no assure that the one with the very best bitrate may have the highest quality.
As we’ve seen, variations within the footage additionally have an effect on how environment friendly the compression might be. Modern codecs are extra environment friendly and produce greater picture high quality than an older codec on the similar bitrate. The good outdated QuickTime Animation codec ends in an enormous bitrate, however does it have nice high quality? No, it’s 8-bit solely! Also, it is not going to work in FCP, in Finder, on telephones, or in lots of video participant apps. If you want transparency, Use the extra trendy ProRes 4444, and get smaller information (nonetheless giant) with higher high quality.
The high quality might even differ between completely different encoders. Some encoders can outperform Adobe Media Encoder as a result of they use extra superior algorithms. YouTube has some excellent encoding algorithms. Try exporting a ProRes HQ grasp file from Premiere Pro after which use Handbrake or Shutter Encoder to transform a H.264. They each use the identical FFMPEG engine.
So, greater bitrates don’t essentially imply higher picture high quality.
Myth #3: Export bitrate shouldn’t exceed the footage bitrate. (False)
No, that is simply flawed. You might have shot 1080p AVCHD video at about 15Mbps. Then you add some textual content and graphics, and perhaps some transitions, stabilizing and coloration grading. All of those calculations are executed in 32-bit internally in your NLE.
Should you then intentionally degrade the standard of all this stuff when exporting an MP4 file, simply because the video was shot at a low bitrate? Absolutely not!
For display screen recordings it’s virtually unattainable to get all the way down to the unique bitrate, which could be extraordinarily low if the content material is a software program tutorial or one thing comparable, with little or no motion. When we add transitions, graphics, zoom ins and many others., we’ll must export at the next bitrate than our authentic display screen recordings, or it’ll look unhealthy.
Our output ought to undoubtedly not be dictated by the bitrate of some video information used.
Myth #4: The YouTube HD preset is ideal for YouTube. (False)
We had a have a look at the bitrates we get when watching YouTube earlier on this article. What in regards to the information we add to YouTube? Since the bitrate we get from YouTube is so low, it appears logical that we don’t must add movies with a excessive bitrate. But that might be a mistake.
First, let’s make it clear that the file you add to YouTube and different social media isn’t seen by the customers. YouTube and all different social media will use that uploaded file to make copies at completely different body sizes and bitrates. It’s these copies which might be proven whenever you watch video on social media. Better originals make higher copies!
Callout: The higher your uploaded file is, the higher the copies might be. Pre-compression to a low bitrate earlier than importing to YouTube typically ends in visible artifacts, particularly within the shadows.
The YouTube export presets in Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder are all H.264. The 1080p HD model has a goal bitrate of 16Mbps. It’s not a really unhealthy high quality preset, however these presets aren’t made for very best quality, they’re a compromise between file measurement/add occasions and high quality.
Callout: Since the file will be re-encoded by YouTube, you need to add the highest quality you possibly can afford (time- and storage-wise) so long as you don’t exceed the utmost file measurement of 256GB.
Uploading a ProRes HQ file to YouTube yields a greater consequence from YouTube re-compression than H.264, even when the ensuing bitrate you get again is similar. Whatever you select, don’t use the bitrate recommended by YouTube; a measly 8Mbps. Don’t belief recommendation from social media corporations. Facebook recommends 3-6Mbps for 30fps HD video. Then once more, additionally they advocate 1280×720 frame size, so perhaps their specs want somewhat updating.
For an excessive instance of how re-compression degrades video, watch “This Is What Happens When You Re-Upload a YouTube Video 1000 Times!” by Marques Brownlee.
The YouTube HD presets are OK, however is not going to provide the very best high quality.
Myth #5: Just modify your Target Bitrate to get your required file measurement. (False)
In Facebook teams and boards, when somebody asks, “I have edited a short video, and I need the file size to be less than 500MB” folks will typically reply, “Just set the bitrate, and Premiere Pro will calculate the file size accurately.”
Most codecs, together with Apple ProRes, have a variable bit price (VBR), so the precise bitrate for a ProRes file could also be a bit decrease, or as much as 10% greater than the “norm” for that taste, relying on the complexity of the content material.
As we have now seen, the goal bitrate you set shouldn’t be essentially the one you get, since display screen recordings and action-filled scenes will end in completely different bitrates. The Estimated File Size within the Premiere Pro Export mode is simply that: An estimate, based mostly on “normal” content material—and it could very effectively be flawed. Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder calculate the precise measurement for CBR and estimate this as the dimensions for VBR. You gained’t know till you’ve exported the file if this was guess or not.
Myth #6: Video compression all the time reduces video high quality. (False)
Lossy video compression removes some knowledge from the video file completely, making it unattainable to get well it later. Lossless video compression preserves all the information from the video file intact. However, lossless video compression ends in giant file sizes, which might not be fascinating for some functions.
So video compression shouldn’t be all the time lossy, however due to the massive file sizes that lossless video compression creates, video compression will scale back high quality in most sensible instances—however not all the time.
Here’s a stunning truth: some lossy video compression methods can really enhance the perceived high quality of a video by eradicating noise, smoothing edges, and many others.
Myth #7: 2-pass encoding is all the time higher. (Partly true)
Yes, 2-pass encoding ought to theoretically all the time provide you with a greater consequence than 1-pass encoding. But you’ll solely see a distinction at low bitrates. For bitrates greater than 10Mbps (for 1080p HD) you’d be laborious pressed to identify any distinction, however on materials with a lot of nice particulars and movement, you should still see a distinction.
Hardware accelerated export is all the time 1-pass encoding.
Myth #8: Exporting top quality video takes a very long time. (False)
Smart Rendering and {hardware} accelerated decoding and encoding may also help us export very top quality at tremendous pace. So no, this isn’t essentially true. Hardware accelerated encoding doesn’t help each taste of each codec, although, so in case you want a particular taste of H.264 or another codec, you might expertise sluggish export occasions.
But, for instance, exporting a top quality ProRes HQ video file could be super-fast in case you make the most of Smart Rendering and/or Hardware Accelerated encoding (macOS on Apple Silicon solely).
Myth #9: Upscaling to 4k offers you higher HD high quality. (Partly true)
Some customers report that they get higher high quality on YouTube after they upscale their HD movies to 4k earlier than importing them. YouTube will use a extra trendy codec for 4k uploads, so it will assist in some instances.
Will your viewers spot the distinction? There is an efficient likelihood that they’ll, in the event that they get to see the “4k” model, but when they see the HD model, they might or might not see the distinction. Using AI upscaling, the standard of the 4k video might get so good you will notice a distinction in all of the variations.
You’ll must do a take a look at to see if it’s value the additional effort.
Myth #10: Exporting at a excessive bitrate will make the video stutter. (Partly true)
In virtually all instances that is flawed. Every social media channel (YouTube, TikTook, Instagram, X, Facebook and many others.) won’t ever present the file you add. No one will ever see it! The viewers get to see a replica of the unique, encoded in numerous sizes and bitrates for various viewing conditions.
The authentic you add could also be saved on their servers ready for extra environment friendly encoding algorithms sooner or later, although. Some locations, like on Vimeo, you possibly can select to let viewers obtain the unique file that you simply uploaded, however they won’t stream it.
Only in case you’re exporting a file to a self-hosted video service that exhibits the unique video file, or for native playback on a system, will the bitrate have any impression on playback efficiency.
Myth #11: You can’t export ProRes on a Windows system. (False)
For some purpose, that is nonetheless a standard false impression. You can undoubtedly export ProRes .mov information from Premiere Pro on a Windows system. Premiere Pro helps importing, modifying, rendering and exporting ProRes in most of its flavors.
Callout: Just a fast warning about exporting ProRes from Premiere Pro: The presets are all set to render in 8-bit. Always change this to 16-bit to make sure you get a real 10-bit output, to keep away from banding and posterization.
I additionally advocate that you simply allow Render at Maximum Depth and Use Maximum Render Quality for all exports out of Premiere Pro. For an in-depth evaluation of those settings, learn my article on Maximum Render Quality in Premiere Pro.
Summary of myths
| Myths | True/False |
| MOV is best high quality than MP4 | False |
| Higher Bitrate means greater high quality | Partly true |
| Export bitrate should not exceed the footage bitrate | False |
| The YouTube HD preset is ideal for YouTube | False |
| Simply modify the Target Bitrate to get the specified file measurement | False |
| Video compression all the time reduces video high quality | False |
| 2-pass encoding is all the time higher | Partly true |
| Exporting High Quality Video takes a very long time | False |
| Upscaling to 4k offers you higher HD high quality | Partly true |
| Exporting at a excessive bitrate will make the video stutter | Partly true |
| You cannot export ProRes on a Windows system | False |
Conclusion
If the one factor you already know a couple of file is the bitrate, you don’t know a lot in regards to the high quality. Video compression algorithms are difficult and massively completely different, so immediately evaluating the bitrates of two information with completely different codecs It’s not significant.
If you need the very best high quality on YouTube, Vimeo, and many others. you must add a high-quality 4k file in DNxHR or ProRes HQ format, or higher, even when the unique is HD.
No matter what you do, movies with high-speed particles like confetti, and movies with a lot of transferring small particulars, will disintegrate and look unhealthy on social media platforms, as a result of the algorithms are pushed too far on the low bitrates.
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