Many people struggle to correctly set up Permute for it to fulfill the needs in all directions. Unfortunately, everyone has a slightly different goal and expectaions – and different input files. This blog posts gives some tips and tricks.
Initially, try setting the Video Quality settings to one of the Low/Medium/High/Ultra options and see if any of those meets your demands. If yes, great.
If you need, however, more control about the size-quality ratio, this is where the Custom option comes in. Please keep in mind that the higher the bitrate, the better quality, but the larger file. And the same goes for the opposite direction. What you need is to find the sweetspot that works for you.
When you set the video quality to Custom, you should specify both Bitrate and Maximum Bitrate. The values to enter depend on several things:
- the input videos (resolution, amount of motion – still videos are fine with lower bitrates, videos with a lot of movement not so much).
- everyone is aiming for something a bit different, it’s not possible to recommend one value that will satisfy all people.
My general advice is:
- start with a value that is targetting your desired file size – for example, if I want to reduce a 10-minute (600 seconds) to 50MB, I need bitrate that is (50,000 (kB) / 600 (seconds)) * 8 (8 bits per byte) which gives a bitrate of ~666kbit/s
- keep maximum bitrate 10-20% above bitrate depending on the amount of action (if you see blockiness during scenes with more movement, increase the max bitrate). If your video has limited motion, you can try lower values
- run the conversion on some sample video that is short (~1 minute) and see if you are satisfied with the result. If not, increase the bitrate. If yes, try decreasing it (try 50-100kbit/s at a time) until you find the sweetspot you are looking for.
Please note that this is very individual and everyone has the sweetspot somewhere else – this is why Permute has these options. Everyone has a different goal and is willing (or not) to sacrifice some quality for size.
