First time music video commission. Questioning my export settings as well as clients request

Help/How To
1

Hey everyone - I was recently commissioned for a music video. I’m still pretty new when it comes to navigating video work and most of the time I feel like I’m just totally guessing when it comes to export settings…etc…

The video itself is 4k
24FPS

My export settings were…Preset:H24. Highprofile
Codec lib246
Constant bitrate of 100M
Interpolation Bicubic
Deinterlacer YADIF + Spacial(best)
The video is 7:30 seconds and came out to be 3.69GB in size

Audio Codec ACC and I didn’t really do anything else with that.

I’ve been uploading stages of the video privately to you-tube to see what changes the clients wanted…etc… and using those settings and it seems to look just fine.

Are those “best” or right export settings?.. or does this look insane to someone reading this who knows way more than myself?

Also the client requested a YouTube compatible version and a full res version. What exactly does that mean? Do I need to do a prores export for that? Just a little and very confused all at the same time.

Any help appreciated as I need to upload everything ASAP!

2

I would select the “youtube” option on the export tab.

3

Your best bet is to ask your client exactly what he wants. It is no use anyone else telling you as their idea of what this means may not be what your client expects.

4

Ask for clarification. Generally, a full res version can be uploaded to YouTube to get max quality. YouTube even accepts ProRes files. I don’t know why a separate version would be necessary.

Synthetic music (like electronic, dance, synthesizers, etc) can often benefit from using AC-3 with at least 384k bitrate instead of AAC. AAC can introduce excess distortion on synthetic sources that sometimes doesn’t sound good.

Good call.

Unless you absolutely need constant bitrate mode (which is not needed for YouTube or local media player playback), then quality and file size can often both be improved by using VBR mode at 68% quality (CRF 16). 100Mbps is targeting that quality range anyway, but variable bitrate mode can breathe if it needs more bitrate for tough sections, and can avoid wasting bits on the easy sections.

If the recording is YUV 4:2:0, then there is no point in making a ProRes file (which is 4:2:2). The libx264 file would be as good as it gets without going lossless.

If your recording actually was 4:2:2, then skip the libx264 stuff and go straight to ProRes or DNxHR HQ for archiving, YouTube, and future transcoding.

If unsure what the clips are, click on a clip then go to the Properties panel. If the format is yuv420p, then it’s 4:2:0. If the format is yuv422p, then it’s 4:2:2.

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