Are you aware that the quality of your videos can be affected when you convert them between different formats? It can take place for a number of reasons, but the good news is that there are steps you can take to mitigate the risk.
If you want to preserve the quality of your videos when you convert video formats, there are several tips that you should follow:
- Try to not transcode the video unless necessary
Converting the video container alone should not affect its quality, but transcoding it (i.e. converting its codec) can. That is why as far as possible you should try to avoid transcoding the video.
For example if you convert just the container of a video to MP4 its quality should not be affected. But if you also convert the codec to H.264 then it may be.
- Do not transcode the same video file multiple times
The reason why transcoding the video can affect the video quality is because every time you convert the video codec the data is re-encoded using lossy compression. That means that some data will be discarded, and if you transcode the same video file several times it will start to add up.
To avoid that you should try to never transcode the same video file multiple times.
- Store the original and convert from it
As a rule you should store the original video file and keep it safe. That video will be the highest-quality version that you have available, and you can use it as a fallback to restore the video quality should it be affected when you convert its format (or for any other reason).
On top of that if you transcode the video from the original, you will avoid the problems that arise from transcoding the same video file multiple times.
- Avoid adjusting the video settings
If you want to preserve the video quality, you should try to avoid adjusting the video settings when you convert its format. Doing so will only reduce the quality of the video, and adjusting some settings (such as the frame rate) could cause other issues that affect the quality too.
- Make sure the bitrate is high enough
The one video setting that you should check when you convert videos is the video bitrate. If it isn’t high enough for the format that you are converting to it could cause compression artifacts to appear in the video.
Typically this is only a concern if you are converting the video to a format with less-efficient compression.
The tips described above should prove useful, regardless of the video converter that you use. For example you can apply them if you use Movavi Video Converter for Mac as an AVI to MP4 converter Mac.
Overall if you follow the tips you should be able to maintain the quality of your videos as you convert them between formats. That is essential – especially if you are going to be converting videos on a regular basis.