VS 2020 defaulting to 4K 60P. Why?

[jungleexplorer]

So this is a recent problem. It is not so much a problem as an inconvenience. For some reason, VS has defaulted to: XAVC S MP4 4K (3840 x 2160, 60p, 65Mbps) when rendering videos. Even when I change the render quality to something else, as soon as that render is done, it defaults back to XAVC S MP4 4K (3840 x 2160, 60p, 65Mbps). VS has never done this in the past that I can remember. It has always defaulted to MPEG-4 AVC (1920 x 1080, 30p, 15Mbps) on Start Up, and has always kept the Last Setting Used as default until I restarted it. This is more efficient, because I may render a video multiple times for reviewing and tweaking. Having to remember to adjust the settings each time, is just inconvenient when VS used to always default to The Last Setting Used.

I have looked through the preferences and can find nothing to alter this setting or choose the Default Rendering Quality. It seems like 2020 did not start out this way, but started doing this about a month ago.

[canuck]

Which VS are you talking about? Your subject title says VS 2020 but you mention 2021 in your text

[Davidk]

AFAIK, VS has always defaulted to the last project preferences setting: the one in Settings, project properties. You can change that "on the fly" as it were for specific projects, but on next open, back to what was last set as the default. So if you want VS to default to something (like FHD, as you said), make sure you have an open (new) workspace and change the project properties in the settings item on the main tool bar.

[lata]

First the 2021 program was released mid February, since then there have been NO updates to the program.

Your 2021 project properties play an influence as to what is selected by default when doing Share
If you have DVD set then doing share will show Mpeg2, and if your project properties are XAVC S MP4 4K (3840 x 2160) then Share will show as Mpeg4
What are your project properties, if using MPEG-4 Files 24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 60 fps that could be the reason for using those settings as default.

I compared 2019 to 2021 in the way they used Share default settings and for me 2021 came out the winner matching the project properties where as using VS2019 with MP4 4K (3840 x 2160) defaulted to 1920 x 1080 for the next render when I wished to use MP4 4K
So yes there does seem to be a change in the way these programs react, none being perfect but again 2021 was best for me.

[jungleexplorer]

First the 2021 program was released mid February, since then there have been NO updates to the program.

Your 2021 project properties play an influence as to what is selected by default when doing Share
If you have DVD set then doing share will show Mpeg2, and if your project properties are XAVC S MP4 4K (3840 x 2160) then Share will show as Mpeg4
What are your project properties, if using MPEG-4 Files 24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 60 fps that could be the reason for using those settings as default.

I compared 2019 to 2021 in the way they used Share default settings and for me 2021 came out the winner matching the project properties where as using VS2019 with MP4 4K (3840 x 2160) defaulted to 1920 x 1080 for the next render when I wished to use MP4 4K
So yes there does seem to be a change in the way these programs react, none being perfect but again 2021 was best for me.

In my case, VS has always, since I can remember, defaulted to FHD (MPEG-4 AVC (1920 x 1080, 30p, 15Mbps) on startup, unless you were using "Same as Project Properties" or "Same as First Video". And, if you chose a custom rendering setting, VS would continue to use that setting unless you manually modified it are restarted the program, in which case it would return to FHD. What has changed is that now, it does not retain the custom settings at the end of a render, but defaults back to the 4K setting after the completion of a render, each and every time. This used to only happen when the program was restarted. So if I am working on a custom project, I have to remember to adjust the render setting each time, after each render, because they do no stay as they did before. I don't know how this would be better for anyone, but to each his own.

David actually had the correct solution to reset the default setting to FHD by adjusting it in Project Preferences. It does not fix the problem of the program resetting to default after each render, but at least I am not wasting time accidentally upscaling FHD video to 4K unintentionally because I forgot to adjust the settings before doing my next render of the same project.

P.S. I actually shoot in FHD using XAVC codec so the program is not deriving the settings from my video properties. I seldom shoot in 4K because most of my content is for the web. I only shoot in 4K if I know that I will need to do a lot of cropping.

[jungleexplorer]

AFAIK, VS has always defaulted to the last project preferences setting: the one in Settings, project properties. You can change that "on the fly" as it were for specific projects, but on next open, back to what was last set as the default. So if you want VS to default to something (like FHD, as you said), make sure you have an open (new) workspace and change the project properties in the settings item on the main tool bar.

Thanks David this helps.

[lata]

Can you go to Settings – Project Properties ( Alt + Enter) what are they?
Can you Copy and Paste the details in the properties panel to your post.

[Davidk]

Perhaps a point that should be made is that project properties sets the default/format for a new project file, for edits of any sort. But when it comes to output, as in render per the Share mode, you can adjust the output parameters considerably without changing the project itself: you are just choosing to get output in a different form (similar to printing to a landscape page instead of portrait, when the the document under edit is a portrait format). While you can render to the same form as the first clips, or the project file, output is often dominated by the media form to be used for delivery to the intended recipients, and there may be more than one from an original project file. A typical example of this would be a project file with FHD/mp4 clips, but you want one result to go to a disk (possibly as one of several that you want from that project, others might be an FHD file on usb, or upload to YT): just choosing that media format also changes the format of the output from mp4 to mp2/mpeg (SD), with a considerable size and resolution reduction to suit the media. But unless you consciously change the project properties from FHD (1920x1080) to SD (720x576) the properties of the project file are not changed by the output choice(s).