rendering

[lostsoul65]

I am rendering or putting many files together to make one file and not go over 4 GB because my TV won't take a USB3 only USB2 so I ordered a 64 GB USB2 from amazon so my question is why is rendering a group of files many times as big as the group of files you rendered? So is there anyway to make the file smaller?

[redwudz]

Not enough information. What are your 'rendering' settings and software you are using?
Bitrate determines the size of an encode. Higher bitrate = higher quality, lower bitrate = lower quality.

[jagabo]

make one file and not go over 4 GB because my TV won't take a USB3 only USB2

The 4 GB file size limitation isn't matter of USB2 or USB3 -- it's the file system used on the USB drive. FAT is limited to 4 GB per file. NTFS and other more advanced file systems allow much bigger files. Check to see if your TV supports NTFS.

[lostsoul65]

ACDsee Visio Studio 3 is what I'm using. I' rendering webcam files wmv to MP4. No my TV does not take NTFS

[Cornucopia]

It may not accept NTFS (many do not), but there may be a good chance it accepts ExFAT, which DOES support filesizes over 4GB.

Scott

[lostsoul65]

Yes I know that ExFAT will take over a 4 GB file and I tried it and it said "No medium found" I read the manual and it said FAT32 only but thanks for the suggestion

[Cornucopia]

...and that's information best spelled out clearly at the beginning, incl. actual model #s of your intended devices.


64GB won't improve your experience with 4GB-broken files, if you still are using FAT32. And actually, most tools won't want to format it simply as FAT32 (even though it should still be possible), they'll want to use ExFAT for things over 32GB.
Nor would USB3 necessarily be better than USB2. If your TV's player port is USB3 compatible and will allow for higher bitrates that's always better, but expected bitrates for 264/265 compressed media files would be much less that the ceiling for even USB2 anyway.

As far as your first question, when you use terms like "rendering", it makes me think that you aren't aware that some rendering workflows output an intermediate "MASTER" file that is uncompressed. Of course, that would ALWAYS be much larger than the simple sum of its compressed source parts - one has to always explicitly set the render to utilize the necessary compression & bitrate for the target.

Scott

[johnmeyer]

I am just about to deliver my 37th annual Nutcracker production. I've delivered on DVD since the late 1990s and have been shooting in HD since 2005. However, I've only had demand for HD in the past few years. Since Blu-Ray never really took off, I chose to deliver on thumb drive. I quickly realized that most TV sets are NOT compatible with either NTFS or ExFAT. What's more, you have to look at what sort of video format they can play. This is where it really gets tough. As already mentioned, when it comes to compatibility -- whether with TV sets or smartphones -- you have to look at:

Resolution: 1920x1080 or 1280x720 (forget about 4K)
Frame rate: 23.976, 24, 29.97 interlaced, 29.97 progressive, 59.94 progressive
Bitrate: Need at least 15,000,000 bps with most compression schemes to get really good looking results
Codec: MPEG-2, x.264, x.265 etc.
Container: mp4, MOV, AVI
Thumb drive format: FAT32, NTFS, ExFAT

After a lot of study I decided that to minimize returns (I haven't had any since I started delivering these thumb drives a few years ago), I needed to use the following settings:

Resolution: 1920x1080.
All HD TVs can handle this resolution.

Frame rate: 29.97 interlaced.
Many TVs still have problems with 60p, but all of them can handle 1080i, a.k.a. 1920x1080 29.97 interlaced, and they all handle deinterlacing just fine. This lets me deliver something that still has the fluidity of 60p, without degrading the temporal resolution to 29.97 progressive.

Bitrate: 15,000,000 bps.
I settled on this as a compromise that was required to fit the entire 1:48:00 production onto a 16 GB stick (they're dirt cheap). Many TVs do have a limit on how high a bitrate they can process, so it's best to not push this too far, although I'm sure you could go higher than this (see note below).

Codec & Container: x.264 MP4. This is nearly universally accepted.

and finally:

Thumb Drive Format: FAT32.
My own 6-year-old Samsung will only handle FAT32. It is still the one nearly-universal format that even Macs will play. This means I have to break up the performance into four 4 GB sections, but most TVs will play each segment one after the other, and I choose the break points where the video fades to black between acts.

I haven't had a single return, and the video looks great.

[lostsoul65]

Thank you, I had no idea then after I read what you said I looked in my software and sure enough it was all there, now I just need to understand it. I took the information you posted and printed out and saved it. Thank You again.