Rant About An Interesting Professional Editing/Rendering Technique for Videos: I decided I was going to re-render both of the videos above in HVEC 4k at the highest possible depth and quality even though I shot the videos in 1080p FHD. Why would someone do that, you may ask? Well, it's because the video quality will end up looking twice as good as if I rendered it in H.264 codec at 1080 with basic settings for FHD. It's a pretty neat trick that many people aren't aware because it seems counterintuitive. Another reason why someone would want to render an FHD video in 4K is because videos uploaded onto YouTube that have been rendered 4K get streamed at a higher bitrate, noticeably increasing online video quality. Not sure how many of you dabble in videography, but this neat little trick is something that anyone can apply to even the most basic of long or short form videos, no matter what software they are using to edit and render.
There are two obvious (or perhaps not) downsides to this neat little trick and they are that 1) your videos will take longer to render and how much longer will depend on how much you tweak the 4K render quality settings. If you use a basic 4K preset, then the extra time needed for rendering and encoding will be roughly double how long it takes to render in 1080p FHD, which is effectively still not very long at all since most engines can render a one hour long FHD video into 4K in about 30 minutes. The resulting video will have improved quality, but it won't be mind blowing. However, if you use the absolute best possible render and encoding settings for 4K (if anyone uses Premiere Pro, I can share my preset with you), rending a 30 minute FHD video into 4K in the most up to date HVEC codec will take you 1.5 hours.
Another thing to consider when reading this post is your computer specifications. All of the timeframes I have quoted thus far are based off of my personal computer, which has 16GB RAM and 2 GPUS and an i7Core processor (although, for the most part, only one GPU does the vast majority of the work). My computer is three years old and represents the upper-middle end of the spectrum for PC specs for a user. Premiere Pro is so powerful that it would most certainly lag on a computer with only 8GB RAM and an average GPU, with rendering taking twice as long or longer. And if you did render something with Premiere with those specs, your computer would have such little available memory during the rendering/encoding that you would probably be unable to do anything else on your computer until the processes finished completely.
Even with my above average specs, waiting 1-2 hours for the video quality I want is annoying and my computer spends the entire render/encoding time running its fan at full speed in order to cool my 'pewter as it heats ups continuously throughout 80% of the processes. For Christmas, I've asked everyone in my family for money so that I can buy another 8-16GB of RAM. I'm going to remove my CD tray (because I never use it) and fill that slot with the additional RAM. I'll need to move some things around to maximize space; it will be like Feng Shui for my internal hardware and components. While I'm performing surgery on my 'pewter, I'll take the opportunity to double my hard drive capacity since hard drives with huge capacities are 1/3 the cost of what they were when I bought this 'pewter three years ago.
Introduction for My Latest YouTube Video: Anyways, I'm done rambling about tech. Hopefully someone finds this interesting and/or helpful! On a slightly different note, here is the latest video I made (filmed yesterday in the wildlife preserve adjacent to my parent's townhouse complex), which discusses and demonstrates what is arguably the best, easiest, and most efficient removable redirect for SRS...the BEASTHORN removable redirect! It's also not very gear intensive whatsoever, requiring (at a minimum) only your climb line and one auto-locking carabiner!
If you've never heard of nor seen the Beasthorn in action, then you should definitely at least watch the first 5-10 minutes of this video where I demonstrate how to tie it in a union and when/how to equalize the load with your primary TIP. The second demonstration is for how to tie it around a spar! If anyone decides to check the video out and if you have any first impressions, or if you've used this redirect before and already have an opinion, please feel free to discuss it/them here. This video has already been published today in celebration of the holiday, so that my viewers could have something interesting and fun and new to watch. Usually ya'll get the first look, but not this time. Sorry. =-D
Finally, this video was rendered in 4K at the highest specs and in HVEC codec, HOWEVER, it was filmed in 1080p FHD -- IN VERY LOW LIGHT CONDITIONS DUE TO OVERCAST SKIES -- which unfortunately forced my phone to use a very high ISO, resulting in some granulation of the resulting footage. So it doesn't represent how good the footage usually will turn out after using the technique I discussed at the start of this post. Also, sunlight refraction thought the cloudy, overcast sky produced unsually strong highlights, which made it hard for me to properly saturate the footage during coloring, so the images will appear a bit light.
Anyways, if anyone actually enjoys listening to me talk technically about videography, feel free to let me know! If literally nobody cares or even understands, I will still continue to say basically whatever the f*ck I want going forward. =-D
BEASTHORN Retrievable Redirect for SRS Tree Climbing!
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