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MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:27 pm
by Gunzta
Hello

Great software, thank you for your continued development.

I'm trying to work out a problem and I wondered if the community/dev might be able to help.

I have just tried to export a 3840x2160 60FPS movie and been presented with an error, telling me that Windows limits the maximum resolution of an MP4 to 2048x2048. This has confused me somewhat because Windows didn't previously do this. I've previously been able to successfully render out to this target resolution and had it work perfectly using a previous 1.x version of Magic. See the image below.

https://imgur.com/a/ekeEDtl

I recently upgraded to V2 and am now not able to render out at 4k 60FPS, I don't know if this is linked or just coincidence but can anyone tell me why I can't render out at 4k60FPS when I could so easily do this before without issue?

This has rather messed up my use of Magic as I was previously able to work in 4k60FPS without issue. Now my projects will not export at that target resolution and I really don't see me downgrading to 1440p or worse 1080p. Will re-installing Magic 1.x resolve this shortcoming? What is the exact issue here? I'm stunned that in 2018 Microsoft would be so short-sighted and having previously been able to do this without issue on the very same Windows 10 PC, there must be something else at play here.

@Eric. I've read the below thread and it appears that you intend to add higher resolution support in the future. That would get a massive upvote from me, but I'm still very curious as to why I could do this previously without issue.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=723

Thanks

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:36 pm
by Magic
Thanks!

Magic never supported mp4 exporting at 4k. Most likely, you exported to png and re-encoded it using some other program.

I am working on adding better 4k support. The problem is that most of the good 4k codecs are either proprietary and expensive (x265) or unusably slow (VP9, AV1). In the proprietary case, I will have to pass the licensing costs on to the end-user, meaning that all existing users will have to pay to upgrade to 4k -- it won't be a free upgrade. I am researching this very carefully to see what the best value will be. That’s why it’s taking so long.

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:50 pm
by Gunzta
Hi Erik, thanks for the swift reply. I'm an ex-developer myself so I appreciate you taking the time to reply so quickly.

I can assure you I've never exported to PNG and compiled using another program. I absolutely exported directly from Magic v 1.65 and I have the resulting MP4 files to prove this.

To support my claim, I've just uninstalled Magic v2.12 and reinstalled Magic v1.65, loaded my 4k project, confirmed that the project is set to 3840x2160@60FPS and exported the MP4 file perfectly. You can see from the video and image linked below that Magic has not given me the error about the MP4 resolution being too big and indeed the screenshot is captured during the actual render phase at 258 frames into a 31482 frame render. The video demonstrates that Magic is exporting at the target resolution and frame rate and will complete the export render perfectly. Please see the video and image below for proof that Magic is rendering perfectly at 3840x2160@60FPS.

Video: https://youtu.be/4pK4rFQPEP0 Recorded at 4k, but you might need to click the YouTube cog to get it to display at 4k.
Image: https://imgur.com/a/oWK2n4c

While you state that Magic never supported mp4 exporting at 4k, I'm not seeing this behavior. As far as I'm seeing, Magic version 1.65 supported and still supports MP4 export at 4K 60FPS perfectly.

Any chance you can update Magic version 2.xx to be able to do what I've just demonstrated with Magic version 1.65?

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 11:36 pm
by Magic
I'm not seeing that behavior here, but right now I'm on my Windows 7 laptop, and it looks like your screenshot is from Windows 10? It's possible that Windows 10 relaxed the restriction at some point, so I will verify when I get home, and I will certainly see what I can do.

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2018 12:38 am
by Gunzta
Hi Eric, yes I'm running Windows 10 Pro build 1803.

Magic v1.65 has always exported as these resolutions for me, even under earlier versions of Windows 10. For the record, I've never run Magic under Windows 7. The file date on my v1.65 installation .exe is 10/08/2016, I can't be sure which build of Windows 10 I was running back then but I always update as soon as any updates are offered by Windows Update so it shouldn't be too hard to work out the build number by looking at some Microsoft release details and dates if relevant.

Here's some more potentially relevant information. As this is my gaming PC (I don't believe in having 1 PC that does everything and has all and sundry installed on it clogging it up, I prefer to have dedicated PCs for different tasks, gaming, work, media, server etc), I don't have lots of other media related applications installed on here that might have installed any non-standard codecs. Being my gaming rig, it will have Nvidia drivers and GeForce Experience which also includes Nvidia's screen recording tech which I think is called ShadowPlay (or used to be), is it possible the Nvidia files potentially could have had a positive impact on my ability to export at these resolutions? But that doesn't explain why from this same PC with the same OS install, v1.65 will export without issue but v2.xx will not and displays the 2048x2048 max resolution error. It doesn't make sense.

Thanks for looking into this for me.

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2018 1:39 am
by Magic
No problem. I can't make any promises, but if it's a simple fix I will add it to the next release.

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2018 8:43 pm
by Gunzta
Fantastic, thank you.

From a purely personal interest point of view, I'd be interested in knowing details of why/how this happened if you felt like sharing that information, if and when you ever have a conclusion.

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 5:53 pm
by Gunzta
Hi Eric

Did this ever get resolved, or should I be looking at the new x264 plugin upgrade to completely resolve this issue and export properly at 4k using v2.xx?
supports very high resolutions (up to 8192 x 4320 and beyond
Does this mean it will actually export at the higher resolutions? Can I finally export at 3840x2160 @60FPS from version 2.xx?

Thanks.

Re: MP4 Resolution limitation

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 5:58 pm
by Magic
Yes, version 2.2 resolves this issue :).

The new default (free) .mp4 encoder in v2.2 is OpenH264, which will let you export up to and including 4K (4096x2304).

If you want to export higher than that, you will need to upgrade to x264. But you will also need to have hardware capable of higher resolutions. Your hardware limitation can be viewed in Help > OpenGL Info:

Image

In this case, the hardware limitation is 16384x16384, but I wouldn't suggest it because it would make things go VERY slow.