Hey

Strugling with the proper export settings for video projects here.
All looks great on raw videos, but after compiling all together in Resolve quality is pretty crap
So what settings i should be usin for 2k video exporting?

Here is a resent sample:

Im a beginner trying to understand how to maximise the quality of my videos too. Firstly, your dog is freakin' awesome!

Secondly, are you shooting in D-Log and applying LUT file to file? Im not actually sure this is what your meant to do...

I found that if you just hit the "YouTube 2160p" in the Deliver stage instead of the Custom Apple H.264 @ 2160p it will reduce the size of the file significantly but the added compression will cause it to pixelate when there is a lot of detail like trees and water. Again, don't know if this is actually true but its just an observation. Another thing I noticed was that if you change the frame rate from 29.9X it seems to affect the way the videos will respond to movements.

I want to stress tho that your video looks pretty good for a 1080p production and the only real issue i noticed was the pixelation from the youtube compression defaults. The way i see it a 50MB file can't have that much detail in it. If I'm right just change it from default youtube and go with apple H.264 and cop the extra file size for the extra quality.

There seems to be a serious lack of help with how to optimise videos (from what I can see) so if anyone has any procedures/tips/advice on how to get the best quality videos (clarity/detail/colour balance) please LMK!!!

Sorry to hijack your post...

Thank you for your input Drone_Hack
Cinematic -1 -1 -1 is video settings, no lut, just some color correcting in Resolve.

2nd test is here, with lovely 1,5h upload time

Love the dog too but why fly so close to the dog or does it just look the way?  Video looks pretty good to me....

Visual Air Posted at 2017-1-8 17:40
Love the dog too but why fly so close to the dog or does it just look the way?  Video looks pretty good to me....

Close up of dog is recorded as hand held, motors off

Tried rendering of original 4k Mavic-vids with Pinnacle Studio 20, DaVinci Resolve 12.5 and Adobe Premiere Elements 15:

Pinnacle studio does give You much choice on quality at 4k: max. bitrate to adjust would be 40 Mbit/s (origninal footage is 60 Mbit/s)

DaVinci gives almost NO choice on render-format (except professional formats, which are unusable for the non-profi, we can have only .mov resulting in a not so good final quality with and without applied LUTs)

I achieved the best results with Premiere Elements 15 at 4k and medium quality set (100 MBit/s): videos are crisp and sharp and optimization is automatic)

kari5 Posted at 2017-1-8 14:07
2nd test is here, with lovely 1,5h upload time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ckkmZxke8I

So... are you shooting in 1080p and then processing at 1080p? Or, shooting at 2160p processing in 1080p?

if i had to pick without knowing for sure, i would say 1080p - 1080p...?

the upload times here in Australia are stupid slow too

Angelo26 Posted at 2017-1-9 00:27
Tried rendering of original 4k Mavic-vids with Pinnacle Studio 20, DaVinci Resolve 12.5 and Adobe Premiere Elements 15:

Pinnacle studio does give You much choice on quality at 4k: max. bitrate to adjust would be 40 Mbit/s (origninal footage is 60 Mbit/s)

I've been trying to avoid spending money on an expensive editing suite - especially one which ties you into online subscriptions like CS seems to do. But having just made a very quick dirty edit of some footage from my drone on DaVinci Resolve, your comment makes me a little sad. I was hoping DaVinci resolve would be good enough for non-pro's like me - I don't need to make money from these clips but I'd like them to at least be of the quality offered by the hardware...

spoonlamp_ Posted at 2017-1-19 02:08
I've been trying to avoid spending money on an expensive editing suite - especially one which ties you into online subscriptions like CS seems to do. But having just made a very quick dirty edit of some footage from my drone on DaVinci Resolve, your comment makes me a little sad. I was hoping DaVinci resolve would be good enough for non-pro's like me - I don't need to make money from these clips but I'd like them to at least be of the quality offered by the hardware...

Actually Premiere 15 ELEMENTS needs no online subscription: You pay once 99$ and this one really gives You most options. esp. the automatic color-correction works nicely (for me) and render in 4k gives very good results.

Angelo26 Posted at 2017-1-19 02:20
Actually Premiere 15 ELEMENTS needs no online subscription: You pay once 99$ and this one really gives You most options. esp. the automatic color-correction works nicely (for me) and render in 4k gives very good results.

Ah - that's good news thanks. I remember looking into this and following lots of info sources which seemed to just keep leading back to a CS subscription. I'll have a look for that now...

spoonlamp_ Posted at 2017-1-19 06:05
Ah - that's good news thanks. I remember looking into this and following lots of info sources which seemed to just keep leading back to a CS subscription. I'll have a look for that now...

I am still working with Premiere Creative Suite 5,5 which completely suffices for my tasks (medical educational videos), but is limited (or nearly impossible for 4k editing). For everyday editing I always used Pinnacle Studio but Premiere ELEMENTS 15 COMPLETELY suffices for 95% of all tasks.

Automatic color-correction is almost perfect (for me), tracking function is easy to use and as reliable as the long procedures in Adobe After Effects or Mocha, and many LUTs (color-effects) are available.

Absolutely no need to subscribe to monthly payment for Adobe products ....................

I've just watched a casey Faris video where he slams the resolve h264 codec. I must say that even filmora seems to do a better job (to my eyes)

Angelo26 Posted at 2017-1-9 00:27
Tried rendering of original 4k Mavic-vids with Pinnacle Studio 20, DaVinci Resolve 12.5 and Adobe Premiere Elements 15:

Pinnacle studio does give You much choice on quality at 4k: max. bitrate to adjust would be 40 Mbit/s (origninal footage is 60 Mbit/s)

I was having serious issues with Resolve, as well.  You do all this work only to find the export formats blow.  And it seemed I'd lose some dynamic range doing ANY color correction.

I'll give Elements a shot, especially if it does GOOD auto optimization/correction like you say...  Thanks for the tip!  

Angelo26 Posted at 2017-1-9 00:27
Tried rendering of original 4k Mavic-vids with Pinnacle Studio 20, DaVinci Resolve 12.5 and Adobe Premiere Elements 15:

Pinnacle studio does give You much choice on quality at 4k: max. bitrate to adjust would be 40 Mbit/s (origninal footage is 60 Mbit/s)

Angelo, I am a long time user of Pinnacle Studio and was wondering how the rendered 4K video looked to your eyes?  I see that you thought Premiere Elements did the best job, but how did the Studio results compare?

Due to weather, I have a lack of Mavic footage to experiment on.  I do like the color enhancement screen that pops up when you click on the raw footage.  I found it much easier to color correct the raw video than DaVinci.

OK I've done a couple videos in Premiere Elements 15 now & they look great!  Very little effort to make a quick video many different ways.  The correction is pretty good, but I found I only needed to do auto contrast and that's it.  I shoot D-Cinelike, 4k30, and use the Polar Pro ND/PL Vivid filters.  I'm also liking the saving and exporting/sharing ease of use...  In fact, that's super easy for once.  Seems like that's always the trial & error step that takes weeks to figure out.
Style is 0,0,-2 but I'm going to adjust to -1,-1,-2 now.  

Petroboy Posted at 2017-1-19 09:47
Angelo, I am a long time user of Pinnacle Studio and was wondering how the rendered 4K video looked to your eyes?  I see that you thought Premiere Elements did the best job, but how did the Studio results compare?

Due to weather, I have a lack of Mavic footage to experiment on.  I do like the color enhancement screen that pops up when you click on the raw footage.  I found it much easier to color correct the raw video than DaVinci.

Correct: color correction in DaVinci is supreme (esp. when special LUTs are applied) but only available export is as .mov and .mov-quality (bit-rate) is not so brilliant.

Premiere ELEMENTS 15 does this job almost as good as DaVinci with using the auto-corrections and a little bit playing around with filters and manual saturation-settings (remember: regarding drone-video-cut I am HOBBYIST, professionally I am only excellent in cutting and producing educational videos of my surgeries )

I used Pinnacle studio 15/16/now 20 (upgrade was super-cheap here) and had to find out that 4k-rendering in Pinnacle Studio is limited to 40MBit/sec max. Mavic provides footage with 60 MBit/s. So the quality-loss (pixelations/blurring etc. esp. after applying FX and color-corrections) disturbed me very much.

Premiere Elements allows rendering of 4k-footage at 100 MBit/s, so the final quality is what I expect when I have very good original footage-quality.

I use Davinci Resolve Exclusively these days - used to use Premier Elements but Davinci's grading tools are unmatched in my opinion.  I'm shooting in 4k and then down converting to 1080p.  For 1080p I choose a max bitrate of 40000bits/s which gives excellent results and then upload that video to YouTube.  I will be experimenting with exporting higher resolutions from Resolve and may end up having to transcode from a professional stream/container to h264, since the Quicktime options at higher resolutions are not good.

griff2 Posted at 2017-1-22 10:20
I use Davinci Resolve Exclusively these days - used to use Premier Elements but Davinci's grading tools are unmatched in my opinion.  I'm shooting in 4k and then down converting to 1080p.  For 1080p I choose a max bitrate of 40000bits/s which gives excellent results and then upload that video to YouTube.  I will be experimenting with exporting higher resolutions from Resolve and may end up having to transcode from a professional stream/container to h264, since the Quicktime options at higher resolutions are not good.

I need to try a few more exports at higher settings with Davinci Resolve, but I'm wondering if I'm hitting limitations with it. I was using 4k footage and hit the export button for youtube but on 4k export. It came out the other end at 1080p and was far far smaller than I'd expected it to be...not sure what's going on. I ran out of time to try it on another setting.

spoonlamp_ Posted at 2017-1-23 05:27
I need to try a few more exports at higher settings with Davinci Resolve, but I'm wondering if I'm hitting limitations with it. I was using 4k footage and hit the export button for youtube but on 4k export. It came out the other end at 1080p and was far far smaller than I'd expected it to be...not sure what's going on. I ran out of time to try it on another setting.

Unfortunately Resolve gives too little options for highQ 4K export. Only way is to code it as .mov with highest possible bitrate .......................... Premiere Elements allows export 4k H.264 at 100 MBit/s and final result is really CRISP !

Have to get as new render-machine to check wether 4K-XVAC (H265) gives even better results.
Wanted to upload some test-vids on tracking in 4k to Skypixel but file-size is limited to 2 Gigs on Skypixel. Will render it today in 1080p and upload. Hope quality is as good as 4K

Hi guys, I'm wondering if you could help me with this render I've recently done. It seems to be exceptionally pixelated, despite having rendered it using the raw footage (4k, whatever codec comes out the Mavic Air) at 100Mbps. The original footage wasn't great, but I feel something in my export has caused Youtube's compression to drop detail specifically largely over water. In Davinci Resolve using the proxied footage, encoded in DN-HD I believe, the water is significantly clearer, even reduced to 1080p, now I've graded it, perhaps poorly but the contrast should bring more detail out, rather than blur what's there. This is a codec issue - does anyone have any tips I can adopt for my export settings all along the way?

Any help would be enormously appreciated as I've spent hours exporting researching this to find a good combination of settings, both specifically for Mavic footage, but also for water without mush.
Thanks a lot guys!

If there is no your favarite video format, you may use iDealshare VideoGo to convert the exported files.
It can convert between various video and audio formats.

spoonlamp_ Posted at 2017-1-23 05:27
I need to try a few more exports at higher settings with Davinci Resolve, but I'm wondering if I'm hitting limitations with it. I was using 4k footage and hit the export button for youtube but on 4k export. It came out the other end at 1080p and was far far smaller than I'd expected it to be...not sure what's going on. I ran out of time to try it on another setting.

Make sure you're matching the frame rate between the original files and your project/export.