Premiere Export settings

[fernando alves]

Hi,

I have been searching about Premiere export settings. Anybody has a good article about it? My doubts are about h.264 setup. 

Which one of the h.264 steup is best to delivery a master in this format? MATCH SOURCE - HIGH BITRATE? 

For YouTube which one is better? For a 1080p movie should I choice YouTube1080p Full HD (Target Bitrate Mbps 16 and Maximum Bitrate Mbps 20)?

My workflow is this: 

- My masters are Apple Pro Res 422 HQ. Sometimes Apple Pro Res 4444. 

- For YouTube, Instagram, Facebook  I use High Quality 1080p HD. YouTube I setup WxH 1920x1080, Instagram setup WxH 1080x1350 or 1080x1920 and for Facebook WxH 1080x1350.

My doubts are about the exports for these plataforms (Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and now Tik Tok). Should I export large files or small files? Does bitrate an issue when the video is playing at the plataform (Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Tik Tok)? For exemple, does large files with high bitrate play well in those platforms? Or to play well should I export files with less bitrate? High bitrate movies has good quality, but are heavy files. Does this large files play well at this platforms? I am wondering how channels like i-D, Nowness has good quality videos at YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram? What is a good compression for these platforms? 

Thanks a lot

[ah_photo]

Personally, I have custom export presets for H.264. In them, I tend to reference YouTube's encoding specs for bitrate, and then exceed them. For example for 1080p30 SDR footage my target bitrate is 18 Mbps (YT reccommends 8 Mbps) for 2160p30 SDR I use 55 Mbps (YT reccommends 35-45 Mbps)

Here's a FANTASTIC article from the folks at Frame.io: https://blog.frame.io/2017/02/15/choose-the-right-codec/#codec-export

At the end of the day you have to realize that whatever you upload, YouTube (and most other sites) will compress again. We're all playing by YouTube's rules at the end of the day. So this is why you want to upload as high as reasonably possible, which will allow YT's encode to maintain as much of the original quality as possible.

Now the million dollar question is "Why not just upload ProRes?" and to be honest, it is the theoretical best approach (even the article above reccommends this). You can upload a ProRes copy on sites that support it and it will be the best possible quality you can maintain before it gets encoded again by YT. That said, while the answer is theoretically "it's the best", the issues that arise are more philosophical in nature:

• Is it worth that significantly longer upload time?
• Is it worth that extra processing time?
• Is it worth needing to create both a ProRes AND an H.264 version down the road anyway for platforms that don't support ProRes or for clients who wouldn't know what to do with it?

And this is where I personally deviate from the article's advice (despite it being an amazing article). My own personal take on this (and is by no means gospel) is "no". I don't think those inconviencnes are worth the potentially indistinguishable difference between a ProRes master and an H.264 encode that overshoots the bitrate reccommendation.

But then again, my workflow and delivery needs may be different than yours. At the end of the day, consider what's best for your workflow. If you're going straight from export to YouTube and that's it and having an upload fail due to a connection issue uploading a massive file is of not concern, then you may wish to go ahead and upload a ProRes master OR a very high bitrate (ex. 50Mbps CBR for 1080p) H.264.

If you want a file that also can be sent to clients or other people and ensure the file size is optimized though I reccommend something like what I mentioned, H.264 that exceeds what social media sites ask for, but also not unreasonably large. In this space there is usually not one "correct answer" rather, there's the answer that's best for you and your workflow.

[Carlos Ziade]

this article is great for youtube exports and will get you on the right track considering other platforms:

https://www.videomaker.com/article/c05/17034-encoding-youtube-videos-at-the-highest-quality

[fernando alves]

Thanks for answer back, Carlos and awh11!! I have read both articles and if I folow what they said the best choice to get high bitrate compression. I will make sme tests here. Upload some Apple Pro Res in Youtube and see how long it takes and how it transcode at YouTube. 

And for Instagram? I cannot upload files to Instagram from a desktop. I need to upload my video from mobile phone. So I upload an Apple Pro Res will be difficult for me. My mobile doesn't have much space. Any article or advice on exporting settings for Instagram?

Thanks a Lot!

[Carlos Ziade]

i think there is something called igtv in instagram, but not Appple Pro Res is too big,

always use H.264 for social media, I find it practical to play with bitrates in an H.264 export