I’m a fan of the tooltip that appears below aspect ratio if you change it, maybe this field should also have a warning .
But this is already hidden below the advanced button anyway. My guess is most people click advanced to see the resolution, framerate and codec (I remember this is what I did very early on) and then I started messing with stuff I had no idea what they did (one time I changed interpolation to Lanczos (it says best, so why not use that, right?) and of course export time increased like crazy yet I didn’t immediately connect it to my change).
IMO for a better user experience the default export panel should have a very limited and very common set of options, I’m thinking:
resolution (with a drop down of 4 very common ones: 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 4k)
framerate (I know they shouldn’t change it here but people want to see it; show a warning text if different to project)
codec (only show 5 very common ones: x264 (default), x265, av1, prores, dnxhr (+vp9?), I don’t think people even heard of any of the others anyway)
(in this mode there could be a line below estimating the final filesize as people request this very often)
audio: low, medium, high quality (I don’t know if people care about audio codec, this could choose bitrate to 96k, 192k and 384kbps aac)
“Export speed” - for encode preset, I personally think people will want to choose to export faster or slower depending on use case and codec (av1 slower would be crazy but h264 slower is usually a good ideea) so have the classic steps from veryslow to ultrafast in a drop down. Probably a helping tooltip that says “faster export will generally generate bigger files or lower quality”.
The “(default)” part must be present for everything to give beginners a fallback in case they mess something up.
I appreciate this line of thinking. But even those fundamental items that you listed have HUGE ramifications if you change them. Changing anything to mis-match the Video Mode will almost always result in unexpected results. For example, changing the resolution means the video will be scaled TWICE - once to match the video mode and then once again to match the export setting. BAD!
Maybe the default export screen could show the current video mode (with no options to change it, but a shortcut to the video mode settings) and then show what you CAN change without major impact. I’m not sure what that list would be - maybe codec and some dumbed down bitrate modes (good/better/best, etc)?
I feel you are thinking of a very casual maybe first time user to basically have a more friendly preset-chooser. Which is a valid option of course.
I’m instead thinking of an average user that is not so technical to read about advanced codec options (and stuff like interlaced or interpolation), but over time they still heard about very common stuff like resolution, codec and video size vs quality. I think this panel should be for upper beginners and intermediates to have a “walled garden” type of playground with enough options and explanations to satisfy the needs of 90% so they won’t need to press the Advanced button which gives access to everything with no constraints and is very easy to mess up.
Both options are valid depending on what your target is. I’m obviously biased here and I basically described a very “safe” version of the current advanced panel.
I strongly disagree here. Considering my line of though of “not for first timers” and the current thread, Ben is a perfect example of intermediate user that uploads to youtube and knows that for the best result he absolutely needs to upload in 4K even if he shoots in 1080p. This means that even if you implement a nice and friendly export panel he will still need to go to advanced mode to upscale which I think is quite a common thing to do for users.
Not to mention changing the video mode at the end of a project could be way worse than just scaling twice if they have position-aware stuff on the clips.
I’ve never claimed I am an experienced video editor. In tutorial intro, I’ve even mentioned I am not advanced.
I feel like video export, codecs, etc fall under the advanced/professional skillset for this space. There are too many components and nuances on this end of the spectrum, and even the pros don’t all agree. For my level of knowledge I love presets.
For my particular use-case I would love:
YouTube - minimum
YouTube - optimal
Same as the other settings, i.e. for personal storage
Why would I need PhD knowledge on codecs just so I can export? I just need a chart somewhere that tells me what the standards are, which in my research seem to be very convoluted or hard to find. As a long-time user of Shotcut, yet still not even close to conversant on this component of the software should be a good indication of where users focus their attention on when it comes to utilization.
@bentacular Is this project’s video mode set to interlaced? Is that because it is your current setting with no project loaded? Maybe when you were choosing the video mode you were paying more attention to the resolution, not the mysterious little “i” or “p” following it, and the 1080i option naturally appears before 1080p.
Shotcut’s export is already designed that if you do not know anything simply click the export button thereby using defaults and you get something good but not large size. However, it does not yet adapt to Settings > Processing Mode to export 10-bit. I will try to add that for the next version.
I think at one point in the last 6 years I tested a bunch of settings and interlaced just happened to work for me and it stuck. I have no idea if any of my settings were even correct.
I would love for Shotcut to basically force me to perform best practice
Regarding the three test videos you posted, A and B look pretty similar to me. According to YouTube’s Stats for Nerds, they are both delivered as VP9, although A (H.264) is 33Mbps while B (AV1) is 41Mbps. It seems YouTube gave higher bitrate to the AV1 version. I don’t know if YouTube will always give better bitrate to an AV1 upload. I viewed these at 4K. The higher bitrate is handy for action shots and low-light footage, if you can get it. The C video was also VP9 33Mbps and honestly didn’t look any worse than the 10-bit versions, even on the sky gradients. Local viewing the original files might be a different story. An interesting test would be how much banding happens in super low light footage.
What were the file sizes on disk? Did AV1 save you any space compared to 10-bit libx264? If not, maybe the AV1 quality percent could be dropped a little without noticing. If that doesn’t work, you may be better off doing whatever exports the fastest since all other gains seem marginal.
Sorry to get so off-topic about your original videos. I like seeing your travels! Just trying to help them look their best.
Hmm. I guess that isn’t a huge surprise. When quality settings are up this high, it kinda takes a certain number of bits regardless of codec to make a frame look nearly identical to the original. Where codecs show their strength is when the quality level is dropped a little but you see a huge size reduction, or bitrate is dropped a lot but the quality still stays high. That’s where AV1 shines. But at 80% levels, we’re asking the codec to be nearly perfect with little regard for file size. That’s where optimizing for speed starts becoming a bigger concern.
Sorry for the goose chase. I didn’t know at first that 80% quality was the target. File sizes may not get smaller unless you’re happy with the visual quality at a lower percent (of which AV1 should look better or be smaller than libx264 at lower quality settings), or you’re willing to spend more export time with a lower preset setting like 2. Aside from that, my only suggestion is the same as others, using progressive instead of interlaced.
The deinterlacer is only used if the source video is interlaced and the output is progressive (or when something scales the height of the interlaced source video).