Rendering Surprise

Dave wrote on 1/18/2010, 6:10 PM

I've been experimenting with new rendering settings in VMSP9 after purchasing a new camera. I stumbled over one thing that was quite a surprise. I found that when using "Quality VBR" mode in the "Windows Media Video 9" Format on the Video tab, the "Quality" settings on the slider make a huge difference in the resulting file size. I never expected this.

I rendered a 10 second video adjusting the Quality setting from 90% to 100%. Here's the breakdown:

90% 11.1mb
93% 15.7mb
97% 34.4mb
100% 50.5mb

I never would have guessed that moving that slider just a little bit would change the file size so much.

Comments

Tim L wrote on 1/18/2010, 7:15 PM

Can you see a difference in quality? Maybe with a 10 second clip it would be hard to tell, but there might be significant differences in sharpness of the image, or in how well it deals with motion, etc. (With that big of a difference in file size I would expect pretty obvious differences in video quality somewhere...)

Dave wrote on 1/18/2010, 7:20 PM

Yes there are quality differences from 90% to 100%. Obviously, the higher the %, the better the quality.

I uploaded each of them to YouTube to test. I found that (on my computer with a basic DSL connection) 93% is the best setting. Above that, the videos play with stuttering.