Magic Music Visuals

I just recently purchased a copy of Magic to produce graphics to accompany music on YouTube. However, I am struggling to get good results at the bit rates supported by YouTube.

So far my work flow consists of creating a scene and then exporting it as an .mp4 using Magic’s default settings. This process produces the results I’m looking to achieve. However, I then import the mp4 into Adobe Premiere to add titles etc. I then render it out using the default for YouTube at 1080p. Unfortunately, the results are very blocky/pixelated and unusable.

I know this must be a bit rate issue but don’t know how to preserve quality while conforming to YouTube standards.
Another point, which I’m failing to understand is that my results from this overall process have been inconsistent. i.e. The first export from Magic was not too bad after processing through Adobe Premiere. This was with an audio track of 4.11 minutes (only minimal lost of quality after Adobe), while my second, which used the same scene but modified and an audio track of 6.20 minutes came out of Adobe completely unusable because of the loss of quality.
Has anybody got any advice or tips, I would be most grateful.

Regards Peter

Hi Peter, unfortunately this is an issue for which there is no good solution. We've actually discussed it quite a bit on here. The main problem is that YouTube's bitrates are designed for natural camera footage, which is much easier to encode than the kind of animation Magic creates.

If you want to improve the YouTube quality, you can try uploading at a higher resolution, such as 1440p. Have a look at this video (which I always use as an example), and compare 720p to 1440p: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qbY8BKnjEM. 1440 looks *much* better. In the description, the author even says "select 1440HD for a decent preview quality".

Another step you can take is exporting from Magic as a .png sequence rather than an .mp4. It will take longer, and you'll have to add your audio back manually afterward, but the picture quality is perfect because it's lossless.

Let me know if that helps or if you have any questions.