I use VEAI 3.0.4, and I want to export my rendering in H.264 of excellent quality.
With VEAI 2.x, I was using a low CRF which gave me a very heavy but very good quality file.
Now we can only set the bitrate. The problem is that it doesn’t seem to work, or I didn’t understand something… But even with extremely high settings, I end up with very low quality and a very small file. Moreover, the rendering bitrate is 4.5 Mb/s, instead of 180 Mb/s… Same problem observed with H.265.
The export in VP9 seems much more functional, and as a bonus with a much lighter file than what I got with VEAI 2.x… Unfortunately, it’s not the codec I want
Can someone enlighten me? Thank you very much in advance !
Hardware: Macbook Pro M1 (2021), 32 GB RAM, Monterey (12.6)
In VEAI 2.6.4, the output setting I usually use is H264 CRF 0, then I will use x265 to re-encode it. CRF 0 will export a huge but lossless file, for the best quality, I don’t mind the file size. In 3.0.x there is hardware accelerated encoding to improve encoding speed, but this also means a huge loss in quality.
I think it may be possible to add an export option that only uses software encoding and allows us to set CRF. I have created a support ticket for this and hopefully they can add the crf setting back in future releases.
That’s very dumb. Seriously. A low CRF is overall the best method to ensure good quality. A fixed bitrate will yield you too much in one place, and too little at other spots (not the case per se when you transfer a movie directly to H264, like a studio does, but certainly so when re-encoding an already coded movie).
Yes. Best to choose. We need an option to choose since you will never make everyone happy if you force one or the other option. We should have as many options as we can so each user can choose for themselves.
The workaround is of course to export in Prores HQ (as near as dammit lossless) then use Handbrake to reencode at CRF/bitrate whatever. Shouldn’t have to but it is what it is: beta or at best release candidate software, in all but name.
^^ This. H264 options have been severely degraded, as well as as H265 output (using crappy NVENC, instead of allowing quality output). I follow the same workflow you do.
would love it if Topaz would add an option to export in losless codec such as FFV1, UT-Video, FFvHuff, etc… like there is in Hybrid/Avidemux… (FFV1 and FFvHuff is most feasible as it belongs to ffmpeg and Topaz uses them) that way we can then post process it and/or re-encode it with our favorite encoding program to our liking without risking Topaz breaking any licensing.
ProRes has it’s own issues, so relaying on it is not the best
