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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

What Setting do you use to Render to Instagram?

Jason beaumont

Jason beaumont

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Ive seen some beautiful videos on Instagram, but when I export and upload my beautiful videos, Instagram gives me this highly pixelated rendition of my work. I was wondering if anyone knew optimum settings. thanks in advance.
 
I personally just export a 1080 "share apple devices" from FCPX, and chuck that right on my iPhone, and upload it from there via the instagram app. I obviously hit the scale down button so it uniformly fits the 16x9 image down to the correct aspect ratio with black bars. I'm happy with how all my stuff looks.

IG - redepicguy
 
Reg export, use Instagramuploader from desktop.

edit: now called iGallery for Instagram.
 
I usually export from Resolve as mp4. Have not had issues, even with wide aspect ratios. The only thing I resent about this method has been occasional banding in the sky.
 
I've been dealing with this at the moment.

Two options first off are either Square (1080x1080) or HD (1920x1080) and acutally the Stories resolution but I doubt I'll use that. From what I gather, their conversion algorithm is pretty brutal both on the video and audio side.

Video quality I've just been doing H.264 at like 80% out of Premiere Pro. I know historically adding a little bit of grain helps with banding when conversions are harsh so I'd do a test with that.

and finally on a different forum I found this for Audio settings.

Having done lots of testing today I have found that the most successful master audio format for Instagram video is: Stereo 44.1k 16bit peaking at -4dBFS
After conversion in Instagram to mono the audio will peak at around -0.3

I got this from this discussion when I noticed clipping on my uploaded video. Some other usefull info there too.

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-forum/1167871-mastering-instagram-beware-mono-summing.html

Hope that helps.
 
Chris McKechnie said:
I personally just export a 1080 "share apple devices" from FCPX, and chuck that right on my iPhone, and upload it from there via the instagram app. I obviously hit the scale down button so it uniformly fits the 16x9 image down to the correct aspect ratio with black bars. I'm happy with how all my stuff looks.

IG - redepicguy
Click to expand...

I watched your reel on my phone on Instagram and on YouTube at the same size, and YouTube looks phenomenally better to me. I think Instagram's compression is really severe. Things come out much softer.
 
I dont remember what worked the best. But I normally try best possible quality upload and let them transcode from there. So something like prores 1920x1920 422 or even 4444. If doing that you dont end up double dipping in h.264 which can easily happen if you upload a h.246 that is slightly out of range for them then they retranscode that and it all looks ugly. If they do it from the prores file then things looks excellent.

I use the same tactics for youtube, vimeo, Facebook etc. and it works well. Normally 4k 422 uploads.

Monstro with it´s low noise floor looks splendid on streaming services if uploaded in prores.

Here a test I uploaded to vimeo, noise is not really an issue :)

 
Instagram does not support true scope formats (anything more than 17:9). Thus on regular post .h264 1080p or 720p depending on your sending device. Add white bars for easier look in feed for scope. Anyways, looks ugly on page view.

As for bitrate - pick any, instagram will screw it up anyways. For Stories just use a 9x16 container.
 
Alex Lubensky said:
Instagram does not support true scope formats (anything more than 17:9). Thus on regular post .h264 1080p or 720p depending on your sending device. Add white bars for easier look in feed for scope. Anyways, looks ugly on page view.

As for bitrate - pick any, instagram will screw it up anyways. For Stories just use a 9x16 container.
Click to expand...


I think use any bitrate is not correct to say. But use as high bitrate as possible then their screwup will be less noticeable if they dont compress allready har compressed footage.
 
Björn Benckert said:
I think use any bitrate is not correct to say. But use as high bitrate as possible then their screwup will be less noticeable if they dont compress allready har compressed footage.
Click to expand...

My guess is Instagram converts anything into <2mbps bitrate. I've checked uploads in h.264 from 20mbps to 6mbps and the difference was negligible to my eye on a phone screen. I bet rendering to prores will give somewhat better results, but I'm on PC, thus.

I mean just render it as you usually render for web, unless you are not in a hurry.
 
Alex Lubensky said:
My guess is Instagram converts anything into <2mbps bitrate. I've checked uploads in h.264 from 20mbps to 6mbps and the difference was negligible to my eye on a phone screen. I bet rendering to prores will give somewhat better results, but I'm on PC, thus.

I mean just render it as you usually render for web, unless you are not in a hurry.
Click to expand...


Yes, but double dipping in compression is a really bad thing. So if you are not sure how to upload so that instagram does not rebake your file it´s best to go for a file compression format that is as least lossy as possible and good not to do 2x h.264 or such same codec twice is not a good thing.
 
This is a 5mbps video in h.264 . 1080p looks decent on my computer and phone but ive been unsuccessful getting it uploaded to Instagram without it demolishing the quality. Ive tried lowering the mbps, raising it, everything. I used an old ig to test uploads www.instragram.com/prematuremillionairels
 
ive found this to be worse. The higher your bitrate/ file size, the MORE it compresses it, and the worse it looks. This has been my experience.
Björn Benckert said:
I think use any bitrate is not correct to say. But use as high bitrate as possible then their screwup will be less noticeable if they dont compress allready har compressed footage.
Click to expand...
 
Anecdotal (as maybe it was the videos in question), but I've found that 720p videos get less muddy than 1080p videos after IG recompresses/converts them to whatever IG uses... But it could just be psychosomatic (thinking I'm seeing a better image that isn't really). Specifically 720p Apple Devices preset compared to the 1080p Apple Devices preset.

And yeah, to me it's "muddiness", which is kinda of resolution independent (that is to say, a muddy 4k file pretty much looks as low-res as a 1080p file anyway -- in other words, muddiness kills an image for me more than a lower resolution.)
 
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Alex Lubensky said:
Instagram does not support true scope formats (anything more than 17:9). Thus on regular post .h264 1080p or 720p depending on your sending device. Add white bars for easier look in feed for scope. Anyways, looks ugly on page view.

As for bitrate - pick any, instagram will screw it up anyways. For Stories just use a 9x16 container.
Click to expand...

I have uploaded 2.40 videos before, without letterboxes.
 
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