Hi,

When looking at one of my rendered videos (h264, mp4) with mediainfo for another issue, I noticed that despite having selected 384kbps audio in the encoder options, the audio was a stereo AAC 192kbps stream. I double-checked the encoder settings and they were definitely set for 384kbps, so I went and checked some of my other h264 mp4 videos encoded with the Magix AVC encoder using QSV and they were all 192kbps (even though my saved render preset requests 384kbps audio).

I also have Magix Video Pro X and the Magix AVC QSV encoder on that only allows you to select up to 192kbps, so I'm guessing that it's a limit of either the Magix QSV encoder, or Intel's QSV hardware (I use a 6th gen Intel m-series processor in my laptop - don't judge me 😂) that is "undocumented" (or I missed it in the documentation!).

On the whole, this wouldn't be an issue in typical use, but I run a channel about guitars and music on YouTube, so audio quality is quite important. Also, YouTube's guidelines are to use 384kbps AAC audio for uploads and, knowing that YouTube is going to transcode and compress the video and audio even further I'd like to at least start with a half-decent video (/audio) 😉.

I guess I'll switch to software encoding in either MainConcept or the Sony AVC encoder and take the hit on the render time for better audio - is either of these encoders significantly better/worse for a 1080p30 h264 (mp4 container) render, bearing in mind that we're only talking YouTube, not anything like broadcast!

Cheers,

Jon Baker