- Hey, guys, my name is Matt Johnson with whoismatt.com.
And if you are shooting video with the Sony A7S III,
you may be a bit overwhelmed
by the amount of video formats you can film in.
XAVC S, XAVC HS, XAVC S-I,
4:2:0 8bit, 4:2:2 10bit.
What the heck should you pick to film your videos with?
To answer that question right now,
I would recommend using XAVC S 4K as your video format.
And when you select your specific frame rate
that you want to film in, for Record Setting,
I would select the highest bitrate and 4:2:2 10bit.
This should record a high-quality video
while also keeping your file sizes from being too large.
Your hard drives will thank you.
Now if you want to know why I've chosen these settings,
you're going to have to watch the rest of the video
because I'm now going to explain why I've chosen them.
Let's start with the basics.
Looking at the video format screen for the A7S III,
you'll see that you can record in XAVC
with three main options:
HS, S, or S-I in 4K or HD.
And while it may not look it,
Sony has actually organized these formats in an order,
and that order is from most difficult to edit
to easiest to edit.
At the same time, these file formats
are also organized from the smallest file size
it will create to the largest file size.
You wouldn't know any of this though at first glance.
Looking first at HS, this format
is going to give you the smallest file size you can get
while still recording high-quality video with the camera.
"Small file sizes? That sounds great, Matt.
I can save money on memory cards and hard drives.
Let's film in that."
Well, hold on to your beard for a second.
See, XAVC HS records using the H.265 codec,
and if you've ever edited with H.265,
you'll know that it is quite difficult
and slow to edit on most computers.
We're talking you jump to a part of the video
on your timeline, wait five seconds,
then finally it loads slow,
seriously affecting your editing speed.
So while XAVC S may give you the smallest file size,
it is also the biggest pain to edit.
Because of that, I would typically avoid filming in HS,
unless you have a video editing workflow
that includes creating proxy files to edit your videos.
These proxy files
will make editing those HS clips very smooth,
but it will, of course, take more time to create them.
Incidentally, I do have a tutorial
about how to create proxy files in Adobe Premiere Pro.
I'll link to it up in the corner
and down in the video description.
Going in deeper now,
if you've chosen to record in XAVC HS,
while selecting your frame rate,
which record setting should you choose?
100M 4:2:2 10bit, 4:2:0 10bit,
50M 4:2:2 10bit, there are so many options.
This is simple.
I would always choose the highest bitrate and 4:2:2 10bit.
This letter M at the start here
stands for megabits per second,
which is the bitrate of your video
that you will be recording.
100M is 100 megabits per second,
and 50M is 50 megabits per second.
What about 4:2:2 10bit or 4:2:0 8bit
that you can see when recording in other formats?
To explain this as simply as possible,
by recording in 4:2:2 10bit,
you are recording significantly more colors
than you are in 4:2:0 8bit,
so I would always recommend recording in 4:2:2 10bit.
In summary, selecting 100M or a higher number,
depending on the frame rate you're filming at,
and 4:2:2 10bit, will give you the highest quality video
and colors that you can get while recording in XAVC HS.
Moving on, let's look at XAVC S,
the format I told you at the start of this video
that I prefer to film with.
If XAVC S sounds familiar to you,
it may be because every single,
previous Sony mirrorless camera filmed in this format.
So if you have experienced filming and editing
with any Sony mirrorless cameras in the past,
this format is going to feel familiar to you
and your computer should handle editing it pretty similarly
to how it handled previous Sony camera footage.
Notice I'm saying pretty similarly,
because unlike previous Sony cameras,
this XAVC S format can now record in 10bit
and at much higher frame rates
than any previous Sony mirrorless camera.
So if you notice that your footage is slowing down,
it may be time to use proxies
or to upgrade your video editing computer.
I have some video editing PC build guides
that I'll link just like I did for the proxies.
Now in my experience,
XAVC S may not give you a smaller file sizes
as you will get when recording in XAVC HS,
but the reason it does not is because it's less compressed.
Unlike XAVC HS,
which was using the quite difficult to edit H.265 codec,
XAVC S is using the older, less compressed,
and much more common H.264 codec
that most computers can edit much more easily.
So your file sizes will probably be larger
with XAVC S than XAVC HS,
but the tradeoff is they will also be much easier to edit.
Looking at the record settings now
after you choose your frame rate,
you will see you have significantly less options
than you did in XAVC HS.
Do you want to record 100 megabits per second 4:2:2 10bit,
4:2:0 8bit, or 60 megabits per second 4:2:0 8bit?
This choice is easy.
Yet again, always the highest bitrate you can, 4:2:2 10bit.
Last, but definitely not least, we have XAVC S-I,
and this is the format where things get crazy
with much larger file sizes and much higher bitrates.
To explain why XAVC S-I is so much larger
than the other compression options
when it comes to file size and bitrate,
video is inherently just a series of still images
or frames that are played back very quickly,
in this video's case, 24 frames per second,
so that this looks like I'm moving,
when in reality, it's just a bunch of still images.
Scientists that are way smarter than me
figured out that if they want a camera to compress a video
and make it smaller, the camera doesn't need to record
every single one of these frames.
Instead, the camera can just record the movement
that happens from frame to frame.
Everything else not moving can just use
what was in the previous frame,
and this saves space with a minimal loss in quality.
Sounds great, right?
A smaller file size with a minimal loss in quality. Awesome.
That's how XAVC HS and XAVC S work.
XAVC S-I on the other hand says,
"Forget that. I don't care about compression nearly as much.
How about we record every single frame
regardless of the movement
and give people the best possible quality?"
So XAVC S-I is going to give you the largest file sizes
by far because the bitrate is so much higher,
so it can record every single frame of video.
But this comes with the benefit of XAVC S-I
being one of the easiest formats to edit
because it's so lightly compressed.
Your computer should be able to handle editing it
more easily than XAVC HS or XAVC S.
This high bitrate, every frame recorded video file
from XAVC S-I is arguably going to give you
the highest quality video that you can get internally
from the A7S III, but after pixel peeping
and really comparing this format versus the other formats,
I'm not seeing much, if any, difference in quality
between XAVC S-I and the other two formats.
That said, there are two scenarios
where you may want to record in XAVC S-I.
Imagine highly detailed tree branches
with leaves blowing quickly in the wind.
This is a very difficult shot
for more compressed video codecs to record properly
due to the amount of movement
that needs to be recorded from frame to frame,
but with every frame being recorded by XAVC S-I,
you should be good.
The other scenario where you may want to record in XAVC S-I
is if you're recording someone in front of a green screen.
I don't own a green screen, for some reason,
I really should buy one just to have,
but my understanding is that if you record using XAVC S-I,
that can help you get a better color key
due to motion detail being better recorded
in that video format.
Other than those two scenarios, though,
whenever you factor in the tradeoff
of a minimal gain in quality
to a massive increase in file size,
I don't think it's worth filming most things in this format.
I primarily film weddings, which are all-day events,
and the V90 SD cards and CFexpress Type A cards
the A7S III uses are expensive enough,
even having to buy a few of them.
I don't want to have to buy three times
the amount I currently own to record everything in XAVC S-I.
In my opinion, if you want the ultimate in video quality
from the A7S III, skip recording in XAVC S-I
and purchase an external recorder,
like the Atomos Ninja V
and record in ProRes or ProRes Raw.
Because although that setup may end up costing you
nearly a thousand bucks,
once you factor in the cost of the recorder and SSDs,
those SSDs are still much cheaper than memory cards.
Lastly, you may be thinking, "Matt, you didn't talk
about the record setting for XAVC S-I.
Should I be recording in 4:2:2 10bit or 4:2:2 8bit?"
No, I didn't.
You don't have any option when recording in XAVC S-I.
You get one choice: the maximum bitrate in 4:2:2 10bit.
I told you, XAVC S-I is the highest quality you can get
recording internally.
With that, you now know the three formats
the A7S III films in.
And like I said at the start,
the most well-rounded format, in my opinion,
that gives you great quality without a massive file size
is XAVC S 4K in 10bit.
That is the format I'm planning on filming with
for my wedding films, YouTube videos,
and anything else I create for the foreseeable future,
but I will occasionally jump up to XAVC S-I
if there's a lot of movement in the shot as well.
With that, I hope this video has been helpful to you
in determining which video formats
and bitrates you should film in with the A7S III.
Incidentally, I have another video
that is a memory card buyer's guide for this camera.
So if you're confused whether you need to buy SD cards
or CFexpress, and what speeds you need
and which brands are the best,
I will link to that video up in the corner
and down in the video description as well.
Lastly, I have many more videos about the A7S III planned,
so if you'd like to see them, it would be a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video and subscribing.
Also, do you happen to film weddings like me?
You probably want to book more couples
and film more weddings.
To help you out with that, I've created a free guide
that's gonna walk you through some practical steps
that you can take right now in your business
to book more couples and film more weddings.
It's a completely free gift to you.
You can download it at the link
down in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.