Massive quality loss in Compressor

madthing · Oct 9, 2022

Hi all

I have the Mini 3 pro and I am amazed at the beautiful footage straight out of camera. 4k and a big screen and It looks incredbile! However using handbrake or compressor to get the file size down is chomping away at my quality. Just wondering has anyone managed to avoid this? It is such a shame but I cant use a 4GB file anywhere online

Looking forward to suggestions

akdrone · Oct 9, 2022

There is a lot to compressor but one of the main attributes to consider is the bitrate. Both facebook and YouTube will compress the video further so many folks suggest a bitrate as high as 150MB but the file size is shockingly large when using that. The second critical issue is matching fps which most people don’t have a problem with and is tied more to jumpy video than video quality. There will always be a direct correlation between video size and quality. One thing that you can do that is important is to shoot in H265 and output in H265 if that is available. It will result in much smaller file sizes right off the bat. Older computers struggle with H265 so be aware of that and consider using proxies when editing. I rarely post 4K due to the huge file size. Most folks are lucky to be able to view video in HD and now YouTube has announced they are going to (maybe?) make 4k available only to pro users. If that’s the case I’ll be looking harder at Vimeo or some such thing. I have all of about 25 people following me on YouTube so…no big thing to me

.

madthing · Oct 10, 2022

Hi! Thanks for your reply. They are all recorded at h264, 23.98 frames and 4k. I have tried compressor with these settings but it is giving me massive quality loss and boxy squares of graphics. It still looks ok but heart breaking when you see the stunning quality of the original file. Ive have tried a lot of different settings in compressor. Ive even tried handbrake but didnt get anything much better. I cant find how to change bit rate in compressor...

Lister · Oct 10, 2022

Handbrake is an excellent tool. If you're seeing "massive quality loss" and "boxy squares of graphics", you're not using it correctly. There are many, many presets available, or you can roll your own. Test, test, test.

I have compressed 4K h.264 from Resolve to both 4K and 2K h.265 with excellent results and no visible loss.

btw, not trying to be pedantic, but the phrase

many folks suggest a bitrate as high as 150MB

is incorrectly used. In this highly technical world we need to use precise language if we're going to understand each other.

"150MB" says "One hundred and fifty megabytes" and mentions nothing about rate of delivery.

The probable intention was "One hundred and fifty megabits per second",
ie 150 mbps. Not MB/sec or mB second or anything else. mbps, all lower case.

Data rate is nearly universally quoted in MegaBITS per second, correctly abbreviated as mbps. There is an eight times difference between megabits per second and megabytes per second.

madthing · Oct 10, 2022

Lister said:
Handbrake is an excellent tool. If you're seeing "massive quality loss" and "boxy squares of graphics", you're not using it correctly. There are many, many presets available, or you can roll your own. Test, test, test.

I have compressed 4K h.264 from Resolve to both 4K and 2K h.265 with excellent results and no visible loss.

btw, not trying to be pedantic, but the phrase

is incorrectly used. In this highly technical world we need to use precise language if we're going to understand each other.

"150MB" says "One hundred and fifty megabytes" and mentions nothing about rate of delivery.

The probable intention was "One hundred and fifty megabits per second",
ie 150 mbps. Not MB/sec or mB second or anything else. mbps, all lower case.

Data rate is nearly universally quoted in MegaBITS per second, correctly abbreviated as mbps. There is an eight times difference between megabits per second and megabytes per second.

Thank you , all good to know. Ive used the same settings for years for XT4 video. Never any issues. But with the MINI 3 pro the 4k files are beautiful. Ive already tried several of their built in presets but nothing working out. I would love to try someone else's settings piece for piece. I tested most of yest evening with no nice looking file at the end of it.