How to render better.

So, you are almost done with your Oscar deserving edits and you want to reveal it to the public. But as soon as you hit export, you’re just appalled seeing the render settings. Video Codec? Bitrate? VBR? you just wanted a simple .mp4 file for your YouTube channel. Well, let me help you out!

Rendering shouldn’t be hard!

Let’s understand the basics.

A video is basically a collection of frames which are played at a certain frame rate, quantified as Frames Per Second (fps) or Hz. Having a higher frame rate results in your video looking much “smoother” (I suggest you try this on you mobile phone. Go ahead, open your camera app and switch from 30 to 60fps or vice versa). Each frame can be considered as a static image. These are raster images of course, which means they are represented by dots or pixels. Each frame has a fixed resolution which shows how many pixels does the frame contain on a width×height basis e.g. 1920×1080, which is commercially know as 1080 or full HD. Don’t worry, you do not need to memorise the resolution, but they are all the more beneficial if you do.

Frame rate defines how smooth your video looks. Resolution shows how clear it is

See the mosiac image. You can consider pixels as the individual tiles in it! (Rolls in themoreyouknow! meme). Source: pinterest.com

This is actually how animations are done even today. If you see to the right bottom corner of the gif you can see a number incrementing. That basically shows the frame number. This gif is playing at 16fps and it has 32 frames in total.

Alright so you got the basics (Hopefully). Let’s talk Video Codec vs Video container

Many people live in the confusion that.mp4, .mkv or .avi are video codecs while in reality they are video containers. Like the name suggests, their job is to only contain all the data for your audio and video. Video encoding refers to the process of converting raw video into a digital format that’s compatible with many devices as they decode it during video playback. Encoding also allows you to compress video files into much smaller file sizes which has it’s obvious benefits leading from storage to data transmission over the Internet. So, then you ask which is the most compatiple video encoding standard? Well that’s mostly H.264 a.k.a Advance Video Coding (AVC). It’s used by various streaming and broadcasting services including the likes of YouTube. Other famous video encodings are H.265 aka HEVC,VP9 and AV1 On the other hand, the recommended audio encoding is AAC.

Imagine a box of chocolate🤤. Its box can be considered as the file container while the content inside can be considered as the video and audio codecs. Life is like box of chocolate!

Here’s a gif for a visual understanding the difference between video codecs and video containers. Source: wowza

A “bit” on bitrate 😁

So bitrate basically is the amount of data encoded in a second. Just like your internet bandwidth, this is measured in Mbps (Mega bits per second). Obviously a higher bitrate means better quality video but also leads to having larger files. So what should you do? Well I suggest you look up the recommended settings on the internet. I have attached the recommended birate for youtube below. For a rough estimate, an iPhone 8 can record a 1080p 30fps video at 16Mbps and 23Mbps at 60fps.

Alright let’s move on to CBR vs VBR. Well, VBR is short for Variable Bit Rate and as you guessed it, The bitrate doesn’t remain constant and keeps changing.Therefore, you see two sliders in Premier Pro or Media Encoder which talks about Maximum Bitrate and Target Bitrate where target bitrate will be the average bitrate and maximum bitrate will be the highest value if there is some high quality graphics or video in some parts. CBR on the other hand stands for Constant Bit Rate which means the bitrate will not change at all. If you are looking to upload on the internet though, I would not recommend using CBR at all as it leads to much larger file sizes which will lead making it hard to stream. Hence whenever you render, use VBR pass 2 for better render quality.

VBR pass 1 will only go through your sequence once while pass 2 goes twice. Pass 2 increases your render time but will provide you the best possible quality.

Here’s the birate settings for uploading a SDR (Stand Dynamic Range) video on YouTube. Click here to check the other settings for encoding your video

And that’s it !

I think all these details are enough for you to start exporting your dream video. I know these all settings might seem daunting at first, but trust me all you gotta do is rinse and repeat! Also, as a parting tip ☹️, try looking up the various encoding settings for all the website you wish to upload to and create separate version for each one of them so you can post the best possible quality. Happy encoding!!