Setting Up Permute

Permute comes with some default settings that are fine for most users, but each use case has its own goals and priorities, which is why there are settings for you to customize. This help page will try to explain some basic principles and includes various tips and tricks. All of these settings relate to preset settings that can be found in Preferences > Presets.

Tips and Tricks

• Bitrate defines how much space on the disk will the final file take up. The lower the bitrate, the smaller file, but usually worse quality.
• Videos that are mostly still (e.g. slideshows, security camera video, etc.) require less bitrate to achieve the same visual quality than videos with a lot of movement (e.g. movies, home videos, etc.).
• There are several factors that you may consider: file size, speed of conversion, visual quality. These usually go against each other - if you want a small file with good visual quality, the conversion will take longer, if you want great visual quality, but are OK with it taking up more space, the conversion will be faster.
• Hardware-accelerated conversions usually take up more space as the hardware acceleration cannot “reason” that much about the content and the data compression is lower. If your goal is to make as small files as possible, it is recommended to turn off the hardware acceleration. Without the hardware acceleration you will get better quality with the same bitrate, but it will be slower.

Setting Up Permute

Initially, try setting the Video Quality settings to one of the Low/Medium/High/Ultra options and see if any of those meets your demands. If yes, great.

If you need, however, more control about the size-quality ratio, this is where the Custom option comes in. Please keep in mind that the higher the bitrate, the better quality, but the larger file. And the same goes for the opposite direction. What you need is to find the sweetspot that works for you.

When you set the video quality to Custom, you should specify both Bitrate and Maximum Bitrate (if applicable, depends on video format). The values to enter depend on several things:

• the input videos (resolution, amount of motion – still videos are fine with lower bitrates, videos with a lot of movement not so much).
• everyone is aiming for something a bit different, it’s not possible to recommend one value that will satisfy everyone.

The general advice is:

• start with a value that is targetting your desired file size – for example, if you want to reduce a 10-minute (600 seconds) to 50MB, you need bitrate that is (50,000 (kB) / 600 (seconds)) * 8 (8 bits per byte) which gives a bitrate of ~666kbit/s
• keep maximum bitrate 10-20% above bitrate depending on the amount of action (if you see blockiness during scenes with more movement, increase the max bitrate). If your video has limited motion, you can try lower values
• run the conversion on some sample video that is short (~1 minute) and see if you are satisfied with the result. If not, increase the bitrate. If yes, try decreasing it (try 50-100kbit/s at a time) until you find the sweetspot you are looking for.

Please note that this is very individual and everyone has the sweetspot somewhere else – this is why Permute has these options. Everyone has a different goal and is willing (or not) to sacrifice some quality for size.