17.2 – Blender Video Editing (Best Render with HandBrake / Lossless Rendering)

50 Comments

1. Hey Mikey, is there any way to render vector graphics in the Blender VSE? I want to display an SVG file. It is rather simple but large, so the equivalent in raster would be huge (in file size)

2. Thanks a lot Mikeycal for all your effort. You are doing a unbelievable great work with this videos. I have no idea what you could make better. Instead I wanna say that for me it’s very good when you repeat shortcut’s and other stuff you tought us.

   I wish you a lot of succsess, best regards 🙂

3. Thanks for all the great content as always. First off…I have no idea what encoding is or what handbrake is lol.

4. Note: avi can be concatenated with FFMPEG’s -c copy codec, mp4 cannot.

5. I have a problem when I press "Animation" to export —> "could not open file writing". Find no solution :/

6. Hi,
   Is there a way use Blender to convert normal videos to side by side "3d" like the kind used for google cardboard?

7. I ran into an issue where the output file was split into multiple files. For some reason the Autosplit Output was selected by default so if anyone else has this issue make sure to deselect that. It is the checkbox under Lossless Output.

8. awesome tutorial man, plz make more. just finished my first blender video. every thing about blender editing I have learnt from you. thanks for all the tutorials.

9. Help! i loaded up blender and i have no sound! I didnt anything just loaded my previous save, all the sound is on my volume is on please help.

10. very hard

11. Hi. Thanks for great lessons.
    In the latest blender versions (straring if I don’t mistake from 2.76) there is a frame server format for video output. Do you have experience of using it (for creating of higher quality video without large intermediate lossless file)?

12. Do you know what exactly could work in Youtube or Vimeo for luminosity in video ? They are looking darker than my desktop preview, I try raise gamma but don’t get huge change !

13. Could you mention the average size/min that you usually get after doing this?

14. This has been invaluable. Thank you so much for making this video. Now that HandBrake is set up, back to Part 4!

15. i cant find encoding in my blender..
    it just >render
    >dimension
    >anti aliasing
    >shading
    >performance
    post processing
    metadata
    outoput
    bake
    frestyle

    canyou tell me why??

16. Are you Ted Mosby from How I met your mother? Also, great job on the tutorials, such a newbie as me has gotten very much out of them!

17. I love your videos! I’m just getting started in AMV making and your tutorials are the only ones that make sense. I have a kind of complicated question:
    I’m trying to overlay a video of a timer onto another video clip to visually show how long an event takes. However, the video clip and timer clip have different frame rates. If I use the base video’s faster frame rate for both, the timer runs too fast and shows the wrong time. However if I use the timer’s slower frame rate the event takes longer in the original video and I still get the wrong measurement. I don’t think changing the frame rate for either in Handbrake will work because I still need the correct time. Is there any way to work around this? Or should I just try to find a timer video with the right frame rate?

18. But Mike, what if I’m a lazy bastard who just wants video and doesn’t really care about super control over the render?

19. Been on Utube since it’s inception and I just want to say, man.. This is one of the best tutorial series I’ve seen on here!

    It always seems to be the open/free software guys who make the best series. I guess it’s love and appreciation of the software.
    It’s not as comprehensive, but personally, I place this alongside BlenderGuru’s massive series.

    I’ve already directed a whole company to your videos. They needed a free video editor and an accompanying practical intro into that would allow their students to start with the basics on day one and to be introduced to some concepts from a general perspective within 3 days. They were thoroughly surprised, I must say!

    Blender – like most open source software made by open source lovers- is an intimidating piece of software for the average user and the blender docs don’t hold hands either ;). I suppose that’s thanks to the nature of open source developers who frequently only consist of programmers and people who know the science and philosophy behind what they want to do- the bare essentials if you like. They don’t really have the resources to convey it effectively to the average user.
    Your method of teaching is just what is needed for the uniniated to start getting to grips with this powerful piece of software(and Blender as a whole IS an amazing bit of software).

    Keep it up man!

20. umm, a little question…you can manually type in a higher bitrate than 10k but I’m not sure if it is actually higher or just, you know "telling" it is higher… so may I just use this "trick" instead or is it worthless?

21. Great videos. thanks

22. When doing lossless rendering as well as PCM their is no actual video or audio, it may just be my computer (even though I am using a really good and bulky-ish computer) so I really don’t know what is.

    So should I just do rendering without any lossless rendering?

23. when i used your settings on handbrake it changed the source resolution from blender and i don’t know why. it wont let me change it. just make the pic smaller
    blender resolution: 544 324
    handbrake resolution: 504 324

24. you are perfectionist!!!

25. Mikeycal , you are just awesome. The tutorials are at the point. I was searching for blender tutorial to do some of travel video editing. This is very useful .. Good job !!!

26. Found your videos very helpful as an absolute beginner. You have earned a subscriber. Thank you.

27. Thanks for the handbrake tutorial

28. This is so frustrating I can’t refresh my sequence when I am trying to make a new project. Do I really have to delete every single cut it made one by one? I click on new project and it goes to the grid thing and keeps my project from the last time in the sequence when I go back to the sequence and I try to click refresh sequence and nothing happens. Can someone please help me with this!? This may seem small but it is so freakin frustrating.

29. I remember using a trial software maybe 2 – 3 years ago that had lossless rendering of the unedited parts of a mp4 clip. For example. I apply a 2 second fade in on a clip. Then rendering the clip only re-encodes where I did the fade in, plus a little, since it is an mp4. It does not look like Handbrake will do this. Do you or anyone else know of a software that will do like I described? Thank you

30. The presets are for lossless compression, so you have to decide whether you want to save storage space and bandwidth while uploading and burn cpu for a lot longer time or save encoding time by using more bandwidth and storage. Profile is set for compatibility and actually setting profile to baseline has maximum compatibility with older devices, compatibility won’t be issue if you are uploading to sites like YouTube but I think you should leave it to baseline.

31. When in Handbrake for Linux and I go to File/Preferences and de-select iPad etc., my file format is still MKV. Any idea why this is?

32. Nice, you save me time with Lossless Output that I have not see to render all montage in img before bring it to ffmpeg !
    Handbrake is the really good option to drive the H264 codec as you want, and you can also use commend line in it…
    The last option is using directly ffmpeg in cli for compress video and sound which is not so difficult, I don’t know if Handbrake give same automatic parameters for same profile…

33. What would be be the benefits of Handbrake over WinFF in the Linux world?

34. Yes, that’s a problem because Blender didn’t see the CABAC and should have it on !
    I research the Gain feature in ffmpeg, I found the Gamma enabler but it’s not the same…

35. Heya I’ve been following your tutorials and they’ve helped me A LOT in uploading higher quality videos. I’ve encountered a problem however. When I render my video, put it through handbrake the videos come out fantastic. But when I upload them to youtube, the quality is reduced (on full screen anyway). I heard it could be the bit rate is too high but everything is set to what is shown in your videos (expect FPS which is 60) and in the past they were not as ‘fuzzy’. Not sure what I can do increase quality for youtube :/

36. Thank you Mike for these great tutorials, I just released a video on Youtube using Handbrake, did the quality setting on 23 and very slow. The original video was 1, 07 GB, and now it is 55,3 MB… wonderful, million thanks!

37. Okay, so how do you actually export a video from blender? This is apparently some guarded secret or something, can’t find anything online that tells me how to just export it…

38. when i try to use the blender render, it renders ALOT more than it should, and also takes forever!

    Also take your time to reply im not in a big hurry

39. I record at 96kHz, after rendering in blender and while using handbrake, the maximum samplerate in blender is 48kHz, any solution how can I solve this problem. Any other alternate software?

40. Absolute great! As always. Thx a lot

41. Hey man, I decided to come to a newer video so you would hopefully see this comment and be able to help.
    few things so you can understand where I am in the blender learning stage haha.
    1. I’m pretty new to editing in general.
    2. I am on the 10th episode of the Blender video editing tutorial play list
    3. I only need the video editing portion of the blender program, I don’t creat 3d videos and such

    so here are some of my questions.

    1. can you edit audio in blender? or will I need to separate my audio and video files somehow, import the audio file in audacity or something and take out back ground noise etc. THEN import it into blender and try to synchronize everything?
    2. I don’t know how to make this question very clear, but I am getting confused on having the different strips on different Y axes’s. does the video try to play over each other? I know you did the 3D view to try and help clear it up but…I guess my question is, would you just have the strips separated for segment editing, then end up putting everything back on one line when you are done editing?
    3. if you simply wanted to delete a portion of the video (or strip if you will) would you have to cut the strip at say frame 25 and again at frame 30, then delete the selected 5 frames and piece back together the two separated strips?

    and finally, thank you so much for making these videos. the learning curve seems steep for this beginner but I hope to be able to grasp it all soon so I can start editing. you have gained a sub my man 🙂

    *edit: oh also, in video 11 you talk about image overlay. what if you want an image to be moving while the video is playing? is there a way to do that easily? or would you have to add in a new version of that image each time (or each frame rather) that you want the picture to move?*

42. quick advice about the sound quality. For mp3 sound it’s the best to use files with 48k bitrate and w/o dithering. MP3 codecs work natively with the bitrate and the dithering is included as a part of the coding process. Also – when making a video for the YT, remember, that the uploaded videos will be converted anyway, so the sound quality may drop significantly (not sure if it’s the case, so check the YT technical notes on that)

43. Handbrake seems to have problems with 8k resolutions 😀

44. Hi Mikeycal! I have 2 questions.

    1) To test this out I imported a video that, when I go to preview in Handbrake, says "Source 1920×1080, output 1584 x 892 (80% actual size)". I’m using a mac. I believe I did all of the handbrake settings exactly as you showed them in your video.

    I can go into the "Picture Settings", and with a locked ration, manually up the output to 1920×1080 again while keeping cropping custom with 0s all around. I suppose this will work as not the Source and Output are the same in the preview as well as on the, um, bottom of the mainpage of Handbrake under Encoder Options (for lack of a better term).

    I suppose this will work just fine, though I’m wondering why it would have been changed to begin with. There was originally a cropping preset value that I had to reduce to 0s all around. Perhaps even after I reduced them to 0 some cropping still remained that I had to manually adjust? I don’t know. Just wanted to run this by you to see if everything sounds fine. Any thoughts?

    2) Does setting the audio bitrate from 160 to 320 as you like to do significantly affect render/encoding time, file size, or both, or neither?

    Thanks! And thanks to your videos I have been able to make my first two episodes of The Joy of Drinking and get them on YouTube using blender!

45. Hi, videos are great! Thanks a lot first of all 🙂 Then, I lost all video, there’s only audio, when i check lossless output. There’s no problem, when lossless output is unchecked. What can be the problem, any ideas?

46. i’m having a problem and I am unsure if it is blender or youtube. i render my videos at 1920×1080 60 fps and a bit rate of 30,000. however whenever i upload my videos to youtube the best resolution i can get is 480. How can i get Blender to output HD videos that youtube will recognize. or is this not a blender problem?

47. so i tried to render my video and now its stuck on the last frame. When i click play it will play the audio but not the actual video

48. Thanks for the great video series! I have watched all your videos on rendering and tried multiple combinations of settings but still seem to get a video render that is darker then the original "raw" footage — Even when I go lossless. Any suggestions on what I might be missing? Thanks!

49. Hi Mikeycal. If I understand correct, after rendering video in Blender, you suggest to render it ones more time in HandBrake?
    For me, it looks like play with 1.jpg in PS, save it as 2.jpg and than 2.jpg open in Gimp and save as 3.jpg
    I think, 2.jpg will have better quality than 3 jpg because of compress compressed file…
    Please, explain. Thank you.

50. I have been following your tutorials for a while now when I realized I have never once commented on them. So here is my short and to the point critique.

    Critique:
    Wow, good job!

    Reason:
    You instructions stay on point and you give good reasoning for what/why you do something. Not "This is the best way, do it this way." You also ask "If you know a better way please let me know. This shows me you are always ready to learn new and alternate ways to improve your knowledge, and then you share those in your videos as well.

    Now to all of you who leave comments on these tutorials, thanks I have learned from these as well.