Decrease Your Render File Size Down

[Nicekid76]

For the past few months/years I've thought that my render settings in my video editor were way too high for the quality of video I was producing on Youtube.
For a job, video file size was very important and I realized that I can cut the bitrate down quite a lot before the final video quality starts to fall apart.
Today, I looked up Youtube's recommended video settings which can be found [HERE] and matched those settings in my rendering settings. My bitrate was about 3 times higher than it needed to be , but that's because I was using the programs default settings.
I re-rendered my most recent personal youtube video using these settings and it dropped my final video size to 68% what my original render was. From my testing the render time didn't improve but my computer renders videos pretty quickly so I don't mind the extra 60 seconds.

Since I archive all of my video renderings, dropping the file down is extremely helpful. I actually found that I can drop my bitrate much lower than the youtube recommended and still have a high quality video. I will likely revisit this to find just how low I can drop my video's bitrate before I think it no longer looks good.
Obviously this depends on the quality of camera you use (I'm using a DSLR from 2011/2012) and the type of video you create (I create "story time" / talking head videos).
If you use a Red Epic and shoot high action CGI scenes you will likely want to keep the bitrate higher to get all the crispness you paid for. That being said, I still think this is a good exercise to go through to better understand the bit rate your style of video actually requires to avoid creating files that are 10x bigger than they actually need to be.

Happy Editing!

 

[Rhody Seth]

Thanks for that. I'll definitely check this out because honestly I know little and less when it comes to exporting my videos. Basically sometimes my videos look like crap (often when there's a lot of background forest shots) and then I crank up the bitrate which seems to help. But I'm just shooting in the dark, hoping I hit something. I should certainly learn more but after work, family, editing - I tend to just want to get the video up. So thanks again - gonna bookmark this and make use of it next time!

 

[cy's escapes]

Another tip I've discovered. YouTube has different video encoders that encode your video once you upload it. Anything under 1440p will get the old .avc encoder which generally does not make for as crisp footage. Anything above 1440p will get the newer vp09 encoder which makes for great crisp footage. This is one the reasons why I shoot at least 1440p or higher. Eventually once you get big enough YouTube will automatically use vp09 on any video resolution you upload my buddy with over 1,000-ish subs recently has seen his latest 1080p videos get vp09 as a reference. You can see for yourself by right clicking any YT video and checking "Stats for Nerds" to see what encoder is given to your video.

 

[JayZippo]

A long time ago I read the I should be rendering everything at nothing less than 16. That creates a 20 minute video to be 2.5GB.

Is that too high for video game vids?

 

[cy's escapes]

I don't think so if you can manage the space and size of videos. I'm assuming you are referring to video bit rate when exporting. 16 is pretty universally accepted for HD video.

 

[JayZippo]

I don't think so if you can manage the space and size of videos. I'm assuming you are referring to video bit rate when exporting. 16 is pretty universally accepted for HD video.

Yeah it's what I read a while ago. 16 is the max, 10 is the min. Space is not an issue with me, so I go 16, let YT deal with the size. lol