Hello,
I am going to purchase Sony FX3 video camera.
I would like to have 4K 25p 10bit 4:2:0 as an output rendered video file but i.e. with two options:
a) with having best quality and small video file size as a compromise
b) with having best quality and normal video file size
Can you share me what all Project settings nad what all Rendering settings I should set up to achieve a) and b)?
Can you help me?
Thank you in advance
Regards
Marcin
1. Match your Project to your FX3 Source.
1. Use the Magix HEVC template that matches your output. The hardware templates are faster, but lower quality.
Use Voukoder for Vegas, will render best quality at smallest filesize, no need to render a second version.
@3POINT Can you explain whether Voukoder for Vegas render plugin (H.265 GPU) gives better quality or rendering speed result than built in Vegas i.e. in comparision HEVC GPU plugin? Or maybe I shouldn't compare these features, because as I see Voukoder gives, first of all, possibility to set each settings/parameters seperatly and gives much more flexibility in this case than in Vegas Pro for the same codec.
Do you also have such opinion? Or maybe you can add some more?
a) with having best quality and small video file size as a compromise
b) with having best quality and normal video file size
Please elucidate. I'm trying to determine if you and I are on the same planet.
Why the Sony FX3 instead of the Canon EOS R5 C? I'm just curious? Are you already invested in the Sony lens system?
Voukoder is generally faster than MagixAVC or MagixHEVC. Now you can make it slower if you want high quality and low file sizes- it's up to you what settings you choose.
Really though it all depends on your goal for the render, and that's where John's questions come in. Please answer those first.
Personally for final renders I like x264 through Voukoder. If your pieces are very long or uploads take a long time then HEVC (h265) becomes more attractive.
Personally for final renders I like x264 through Voukoder. If your pieces are very long or uploads take a long time then HEVC (h265) becomes more attractive.
+1 X264 is also my favorite, X265 takes more time to render, time normally which not can be compensated by faster uploads due to smaller X265 file sizes.
@JohnD I am going to watch video both on my 65 inches 4K TV set and share the same video in YouTube.
I have Sony lenses, because I have Sony A7III camera. I am going to purchase Sony FX3 in nearest time, but there are big problems with accessibility of this video camera in all Europe and Poland where I live.
@marcinzm Do not start messing with settings of Voukoder, especially when watching on TV. Just use the preset video project default, audio project default. Do not select a preset in Voukoder. When selecting preset in Voukoder it can happen, depending on details and movement in your video, that the peakbitrates become too high for your TV. Shocking, hampering video playback will be the result.
I installed Voukoder. I will be using this render plugin in next rendering projects, but I would like to know what gives better quality results: when I set up "losesless" setting or "high quality" setting in one of the feature parameters?
What is the goal for this render? I would not use lossless. I use x264 with a CRF of around 20. There are guides to x264 encoding if you want to further customize.
The standard templates uses CRF23, which gives real good quality. The goal seems to be UHDTV, which normally have a 100mbps limit.
Here's an example of a Voukoder CRF23 4k render, peak bitrates should stay below 100mbps.
When I return from a shoot, I batch render all the camera clips from a Vegas Pro 19-550 timeline using Magix AVC/AAC Internet (AMD VCE) with the following customized settings:
The Mediainfo report for the files from these renders look like this:
After I charge the batteries, put all the gear away and have a drink, I push the resulting renders to my media server where I can stream to UHD TV or review on the iPad without stuttering. If someone wants something instantly, these bit rates can be handled by hand held devices with no drama.
Viva la mediocrity!
Another one of my famous asides
When I worked for a living, I was part of an industry group that would share information with other businesses in monthly get-togethers hosted by various members of the group. facebook was the host on one occasion where they described there in-house IT efforts. In the cafeteria at facebook headquarters was a poster that I thought was fascinating and though I might not remember the exact phrasing, I think it read "Done is better than perfect".
My wife isn't going to wait for perfect.
@john_dennis my comment about peakbitrates was just a warning not to change voukoder setting to too low CRF settings, which can generate peak bitrates beyond max limits.
Your Magix AVC renders are VBR renders with a fix average and max bitrate setting. Ofcourse with this kind of render there's no risk to get peak rates beyond max limits. Disadvantage the quality and filesize are not as optimal as a CRF rendering with Voukoder.
Your advice is sound. None of my TVs or Blu-ray players have ethernet adapters faster than 100baseT, though I found some UHD Blu-ray players with 1000baseT adapters at prices ~$1000.00 US. My lowest common denominator is wi-fi to a tablet device. If I want to watch UHD at outrageous bit rates, I do it from a USB port on the TV.
My mediocre settings work on that ancient Blu-ray wi-fi adapter in the bed room way upstairs.
@john_dennis I think you don't understand the principle of CRF rendering.
Not familiar with the fx3 but found some sample clips here for anyone not having the camera who wants to try some test renders:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1P5B0a5M9YERC4uk6H93RMA349gGLJNPN
Looks like there are 3 mp4 xavc files and 3 ProResRaw mov... the mp4's seem to play fine in Vegas 19. Not sure if it's the right one but looks pretty good with the 4_SGamut3CineSLog3_To_Cine+709.cube LUT from Sony.
I have a basic understanding of CRF. The goal of the best looking video at the lowest possible bit rate is not my primary goal in life.
My goal is primarily that when I send a file to someone, they don't text me and say they couldn't play it.
This is my observation about CRF, not advocacy or criticism, just fact. The overall bit rate and the distribution of the bits is driven by content. Voukoder Default CRF 23 encode from the same camera, same everything except subject matter.
Low Motion, Fixed Camera, Low Complexity
High Motion, Moving Camera, High Complexity
That's what I mentioned John. The content controls the used/needed bitrates when rendering CRF. I saw lots of complaints about hampering video on UHDTV's when people set Voukoder to an internal Voukoder preset which uses CRF17. Peakbitrates beyond 100mbps (4k) are than easily possible. Not when you leave Voukoder set CRF23.
@john_dennis I think you don't understand the principle of CRF rendering.
Not to open a can of worms here, but maybe that needs to be explored. CRF is an acronym for Constant Rate Factor. Which seems to be a misnomer. Because as John points out, bitrate is not constant in CRF design. Indeed, the stated design principle is to maintain a given quality, but bitrate be damned. The bitrate treatment makes CRF entirely inappropriate in any setting where bitrate is crucial. Like in a camera whose real-time recording media will drop frames if it's limits are exceeded. And difficult to work with over a limited bandwidth playback channel like wifi... you either need to provide enough buffering on the receiving end or perhaps do a series of successive approximation renders to hit just under the maximum bitrate of the channel to come anywhere near actually maximizing quality. Which my own testing has shown will still be below the quality of other strategies for any given bitrate. Like explicitly choosing intelligent settings for min/max/avg vbr bitrates... probably due to the fact that the quality analysis done by CRF just isn't all that great. But Voukoder provides other strategies like cq (Constant Quality, with apparently better analysis). And vbr as well as crf. All through the ffmpeg engine that drives it. Ffmpeg itself also provides in depth quality analysis not exposed in Voukoder (get ffmetrics for that)... which actually takes longer to execute than a CRF encode... which should tell you something. Fwiw, I did observe very high quality h264 results with crf=0, which is near lossless. But files and bitrates were larger than other lossless formats and generally unplayable on any player whenever crf is set lower that 3.