So I bought this program 2 days ago and have already made a few videos to my taste. I have a question to make sure I am doing everything right in terms of bit rates.
My process at the moment is, add a mp3@192kbps to Magic, add a simple spinning vinyl and a simple spectrum or wave.
I then export directly @ 720p (1280x720) at 60 frame rate.
Since my target is Youtube @ 720p, I set the Mbits option to 7.5, because Youtubes recommended settings says so...(Link below)
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en
File ends up being around 450MB and takes Magic aroudn half an hour to encode.
Then uploading to Youtube takes a while... But the result when it is actually on Youtube is great.
Am I doing this efficiently in terms of bit rates ? I guess the main priority is to preserve audio quality, which Magic does great. But I'd like the video to look good as well, even though it isn't much.
Here is a video I done earlier. Most of my videos will be in this style/format.
In grand scheme of things, compared to other videos I have seen around here created in Magic, my videos are extremely simple and amateur so please keep the laughter to the minimum. But this is my intended result lol and Magic does this wonderfully !
Exporting for Youtube question / suggestion (bit rates)
Re: Exporting for Youtube question / suggestion (bit rates)
An important thing to know about YouTube is that it always re-encodes your video, even if you use the recommended bit-rate.
So, the strategy of most people (not just Magic users) is to encode at a high bit-rate to preserve as much detail as possible in the original video, and then let YouTube do its thing.
The only disadvantage to encoding at a high bit-rate is that the file will be larger and thus take longer to upload. So it's really up to you -- it's just a trade-off of quality vs. time. If you have time, I'd suggest leaving the bit-rate at 100 Mbits/sec which is a pretty high value that produces good-looking videos even at 1080p.
Another important thing to know is that even when you specify 100 Mbits in Magic, the .mp4 encoder is smart enough to not use all that bandwidth if your video looks good without it. So you can think of 100 as the "maximum" to use, but it might be a lot lower than that depending on the content in your video. Which is a good thing, because the file won't be any larger than it needs to be.
So, the strategy of most people (not just Magic users) is to encode at a high bit-rate to preserve as much detail as possible in the original video, and then let YouTube do its thing.
The only disadvantage to encoding at a high bit-rate is that the file will be larger and thus take longer to upload. So it's really up to you -- it's just a trade-off of quality vs. time. If you have time, I'd suggest leaving the bit-rate at 100 Mbits/sec which is a pretty high value that produces good-looking videos even at 1080p.
Another important thing to know is that even when you specify 100 Mbits in Magic, the .mp4 encoder is smart enough to not use all that bandwidth if your video looks good without it. So you can think of 100 as the "maximum" to use, but it might be a lot lower than that depending on the content in your video. Which is a good thing, because the file won't be any larger than it needs to be.
Re: Exporting for Youtube question / suggestion (bit rates)
Thanks for the response Eric. It makes sense what you're saying. Some of the mixes I have are pretty long so, will have to let Magic do it's thing overnight. File sizes are not a concern too much as I generally delete the video exported by Magic as soon as it is on YT. Just wanted to make sure I am doing things efficiently and not missing something obvious.