When I got into videography two years ago, I had to absorb a lot of technical information in relatively short order. At the same time, there were various other topics which I knew I should know about, but which I put off to a later date because they seemed less interesting, or in some cases, mind-numbingly boring.
One such topic was the question of video settings – the choice of resolution, frame rate, codec, bitrate and so forth. For a while, I got by using my camera's default settings with some tweaks, but this week I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and did a deep-dive.
My goal was to figure out the best video settings for my own needs (emphasis on my own), set up my camera (Fuji X-E5) accordingly, and hopefully leave them largely untouched for the next few years. Set and forget, as they say.
That said, I don't want to completely forget this hard-earned knowledge, so I thought I'd set down what I learned in a blogpost. The topic is frankly rather dry, but as with my mechanical keyboard posts, this post is mainly for my own future reference. If it helps anyone, that's a bonus.
The video settings that I was looking into are resolution, frame rate, codec, chroma subsampling, bit depth, format and bitrate.
The way I went about this was to (a) do a bunch of internet research (two good sources that I found are Pal2Tech's guide to shooting video on the Fuji X-T5, and this page from Canon), (b) shoot a series of 6-second video clips of my cat at various different settings, and (c) analyse and compare. You can see two such samples on my YouTube: Full HD and 4K. And here are thumbnails of all seven clips:
Some caveats: These are short clips, with soft, consistent lighting and relatively little movement. Results can and do vary when clips are longer and have more going on. Also, my comparison is based on my own camera, display environment, hardware resources and subjective preferences. Your mileage may vary.
As an aside, did you know that you can right-click on a YouTube video and bring up "Stats for nerds"?
Anyhow, the settings that I plan to use going forward are:
Resolution: 1080p Full HD at 16:9 aspect ratio
Playing back the straight-out-of-camera video files on my monitor (Dell E198WFPf 19-inch 1440×900px widescreen LCD), I actually can't see a difference between FHD and 4K. When uploaded to YouTube, I can see a slight difference – see the clips linked above – but not enough to make me want to shoot 4K for personal projects (as opposed to paid work).
Shooting and editing 4K requires significantly more storage and processing power. For example, my 6-second-long 4K file is 139 MB, whereas my FHD file (other settings being identical) is only 51 MB. 4K also requires faster memory cards, drains the camera battery and increases the risk of overheating. So FHD it is.
As for aspect ratio, the only two choices are 16:9 and 17:9. The former is more common, and anyway if I want a wider ratio, I can always crop.
Frame rate: 24fps
Online video content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok is often shot at 30fps or even 60fps. Some people feel that faster frame rates look smoother or cleaner. Higher fps video is also more forgiving of camera-shake. But I prefer 24fps for its more cinematic look and smaller file sizes.
One downside is that my phone (Google Pixel 6a) shoots video at 30fps by default, and doesn't offer 24fps. So if I use both phone and camera footage in the same video, I might need to slow down the 30fps phone clips to 80% speed, or risk dropped frames. But such is life.
Codec: H.265
When it comes to codecs (video compression formats), my camera offers a choice between H.264 and the newer H.265 aka HEVC. H.264 is more common and widely supported, while H.265 compresses more efficiently, resulting in smaller file sizes with the same quality. H.265 does require more processing power for playback and editing, but so far, my computer seems to be up to the task. If I subsequently run into problems, e.g. with longer videos or more intensive editing, I might switch back to H.264.
Chroma subsampling: 420
The choices here are 422 and 420 (often written as 4:2:2 and 4:2:0). With 4:2:2, you get slightly better quality – a negligible or perhaps indiscernible improvement for my purposes – at the cost of slightly bigger file sizes. More importantly, the free version of Da Vinci Resolve, which I use for video editing, only supports 4:2:0, so that seals the deal.
Bit depth: 10-bit
H.264 is 8-bit while H.265 (my choice, see above) is 10-bit. Higher bit depth (not to be confused with bitrate, see below) means more tonal detail can be recorded, allowing for smoother gradients, and more flexibility in editing. I suspect the difference is negligible for my purposes, but my H.265 file, as I mentioned, turns out to be slightly smaller, so there's no reason not to go with 10-bit.
Format: MOV
The only other option is MP4, which is also fine. But on my camera, H.265 encoding only delivers MOV (H.264 offers both MOV and MP4). For what it's worth, Pal2Tech also favours MOV because it includes slightly better quality audio (LPCM as opposed to AAC), but I'm not sure how much I care about that.
Bitrate: 50 MBPS
With the aforementioned settings, my camera offers bitrates from 8 MBPS to 200 MBPS. Online recommendations vary: Pal2Tech recommends using the highest bitrate available, but many others seem to think that 50 MBPS is plenty for FHD.
My file sizes for 6-second-long clips shot at 8, 50 and 200 MBPS (other settings being kept constant) are 12, 40 and 51 MB respectively. Much to my surprise, I can't actually see a noticeable difference on my monitor between even the highest and lowest bitrates. So I was tempted to just roll with 8 MBPS, but it's possible, even likely, that higher bitrates will prove their worth in other shooting environments, e.g. more movement or challenging lighting conditions. As such, 50 MBPS seems like a safe bet.
It makes sense to have good quality footage to begin with; later I can choose to export the edited video at lower bitrates if I want to save space, and if I can do so without noticeable degradation. On that note, I like this comment from u/CNCcamon1: "Your goal should be for the YouTube encoding to be the bottleneck for visual quality."
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Blog note: A blog like mine should ideally display differently on desktop and mobile (responsive design). I didn't like Blogger's default options for "mobile view", so I left it in "desktop view" for mobile browsers too. But that makes the text-size very small on phone screens. In my mind, this was an interim solution – I thought that someday I would code and set up the mobile view myself. But realistically, I don't know when, if ever, I will do that, so tonight I picked one of Blogger's default mobile themes (Dynamic view). I still think the desktop theme, which I extensively customised, is far better. But if you're reading on your phone, as I often do myself, the blog should now be more readable than before.
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