- 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.
