Recording CBR vs CQP: Is CQP better than CBR? Is It Worth It? (See Description)

Is CQP better than CBR for recording video? I got into a short discussion on Reddit where a fellow YouTuber told me that recording Constant Bit Rate was “wasteful” and then immediately told me he used CQP 10. This perplexed the media professional in me, and I decided I’d do a little experiment, to see if CQP is better than CBR.

Below are the specifications for the test, as well as demonstrated video links:

Conditions for TEST ONE: A 2 minute recording, Tom Clancy’s The Division, recorded in the underground HQ with a variety of low-light conditions, contrast, moving subjects, etc). Test was conducted with my character constantly moving and running through the facility in order to gauge how the encoder acts on movement in the scene, and rapidly changing pixels.
Video 1: 1440p60, NVENC, High Quality Preset, main profile at 34000 constant bitrate
Video 2: 1440p60, NVENC, High Quality Preset, main profile, at CQP 10

Conditions for TEST TWO: A 1 minute recording, Tom Clancy’s The Division, recorded in the underground HQ with a variety of low-light conditions, contrast, moving subjects, etc). Test was conducted while standing in one place, and not moving the camera at all. This simulates what we would see as a difference with scenes that do not feature hardly any movement at all.
Video 1: 1440p60, NVENC, High Quality Preset, main profile at 34000 constant bitrate
Video 2: 1440p60, NVENC, High Quality Preset, main profile, at CQP 10

In both inspections, the bitrate to YouTube for all four videos was encoded with identical settings, as follows.

Rendering Times:
CBR34000 Motion – 25Mbps: 8 : 43
CQP10 Motion – 25Mbps: 10 : 49
CBR34000 Still – 25Mbps: 2 : 02
CQP10 Still – 25Mbps: 2 : 15

CQP10 Motion – 50Mbps: 11 : 02

Video settings (4 videos):
2560×1440, 60fps, Progressive fields with square pixels, NTSC.
Rendered at Maximum Depth and Maximum Render Quality (both boxes ticked)
Bitrate Encoding VBR, 2-Pass
Target: 25Mbps
Maximum: 26.75Mbps (YouTube will not be allowing more than this on displayed video anyways).
Audio exported 320kbps, AAC 48khz

TEST 1 – CBR3400 Motion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmDbg8Jbmjo
TEST 1 – CQP10 Motion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=03TAI1Th39U
TEST 2 – CBR3400 Still: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKsX_3iXcPM
TEST 2 – CQP10 Still: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryHq-VUhc-U

I’ve also included a fifth video… encoded with your stated preferred settings for which you encode at (the CQP=10 video from the first test is encoded for YouTube to your specifications).

CQP10 Motion – 50Mbps Export: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7bXWcR-MIM

In the event that you aren’t the kind of person that takes any time with their videos, and you’d like to know what each of these samples look like without going through Adobe Media Encoder first, I’ve also included the sample videos uploaded direct from OBS below:

TEST 1 – CBR3400 Motion – Untouched: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm1YjYwYvA4
TEST 1 – CQP10 Motion – Untouched: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WNx8YTAIVw
TEST 2 – CBR3400 Still – Untouched: www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2DLqMqO5u0
TEST 2 – CQP10 Still – Untouched: www.youtube.com/watch?v=psGCy1l-m38

It’s important to note that all footage was recorded with the NVENC encoder, which is a hardware encoder built into the GTX 1060 GPU of my stream/media production PC. If you are able to record x264 at medium or slower without any performance loss on your system, you’ll find that the quality of your recordings improves further at lower bitrates, allowing for smaller file sizes for the same look. The test was done with NVENC because all of my live stream recordings are done with the NVENC encoder, as the CPU handles the live broadcast.

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