premise: do not shoot me if I talk about AVHCD on YouTube... that is high quality put into a low-quality container
I have a Panasonic SD20 camcorder which produce AVHCD files.
I would like to put them on YouTube and I wonder what is the best suggested compression, keeping the "YT HD" format.
So far, for about 3-4 minutes video I cold only manage to achieve 100 or more MB file, which is quite heavy if I think that a standard non-HD file in WMV is only 10-20 MB for a similar video length.
I agree with Trevor to a point. YouTube will convert whatever you send them, even flash.
What I do is send them the highest quality file I can that still fits within their time/size limits. For me it's either DV-AVI or MPEG-2. No sense in losing quality rendering it to flash when they will just re-render it, losing more quality.
However, in your case, since you are dealing with such large files rendering them to flash may be the way to go.
I use a setting of 1280 x 720 MPEG-2. Makes a huge file that takes an age to load up but it seems to work OK. Here's one I did only yesterday. (We are in the middle of the coldest snap for 30 years) Need to let the video run for 15 secs, I put too long a lead in black. Meant to use it for title but forgot (Age you know) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1O9qlqc9aM
John Mitchell
We all make mistakes, that's why pencils have erasers on the end!
Thanks for the feedback.
I just figured out that it is possible to customize a .flv template with a wide-screen HD-like resolution, e.g. 1920x1080. I will try to render my project and see what's happen in terms of size.
I finished my project, 16 minutes video.
Now, I want to upload on Vimeo and I have to choose a balance between the maximum file size (500MB for Vimeo) and teh quality, preserving the original video size (16:9).
I tried different render options with following results:
1. MPEG2 DVD 16:9: everything is fine
2. wmv-HD (Video studio X3 prest): the rendering crashed with C Runtime error message...
3. flv and set a custom resolution to 1920x1080 (as the originalk project setting) and selecting the 16:9 output: the rendered video has black bands at the bottom and top, i.e. it looks more like a 4:3 playing a 16:9...
4. mp4 (H.264): it works fine, i.e., the final video looks 16:9 but the quality is very low (in fact, 16 min came out into 74 MB only).
5. AVCHD (original video sources are in m2ts): rendering ok but a lot of jerky playing in some part of the video, which I do not think being due to my PC (just bought and quite powerful)
So...
1. how to improve the mp4 quality ? Which one of the different mp4 preset "works better" ?
2. any suggestion about why the wmv HD should crash the rendering ?
3. any suggestion about why the AVCHD output should be so jerky ?
I finished my project, 16 minutes video.
Now, I want to upload on Vimeo and I have to choose a balance between the maximum file size (500MB for Vimeo) and teh quality, preserving the original video size (16:9).
I tried different render options with following results:
1. MPEG2 DVD 16:9: everything is fine
2. wmv-HD (Video studio X3 prest): the rendering crashed with C Runtime error message...
3. flv and set a custom resolution to 1920x1080 (as the originalk project setting) and selecting the 16:9 output: the rendered video has black bands at the bottom and top, i.e. it looks more like a 4:3 playing a 16:9... Uncheck-Non Square Pixel Rendering from the File Project settings when creating FLV files.
4. mp4 (H.264): it works fine, i.e., the final video looks 16:9 but the quality is very low (in fact, 16 min came out into 74 MB only).
5. AVCHD (original video sources are in m2ts): rendering ok but a lot of jerky playing in some part of the video, which I do not think being due to my PC (just bought and quite powerful) There is a problem with AVCHD and transitions causing a 'blip' at the end of the transition.. i think X3 has overcome this problem????????? do a search on the forum for 'Blip' .........or batch convert the AVCHD to say DV-Avi before editing.
So...
1. how to improve the mp4 quality ? Which one of the different mp4 preset "works better" ?
2. any suggestion about why the wmv HD should crash the rendering ?
3. any suggestion about why the AVCHD output should be so jerky ?
Thanks in advance for your help
What version of Video Studio are you using?
Last edited by Trevor Andrew on Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
Why not try what You Tube recommend ie: Video
Resolution Recommended: Original resolution of your video - for HD, it is 1,920 x 1,080 (1,080 p) or 1,280 x 720.
Bit rate Because bit rate is highly dependent on codec, there is no recommended or minimum value. Videos should be optimised for resolution, aspect ratio and frame rate, rather than bit rate.
Frame rate The frame rate of the original video should be maintained without resampling. In particular, pull-down and other frame-rate resampling techniques are strongly discouraged.
Codec H.264 or MPEG-2 preferred.
Preferred containers FLV, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4
Audio
Codec MP3 or AAC preferred
Preferred containers FLV, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4
Sampling rate 44.1 kHz
Channels 2 (stereo)
John Mitchell
We all make mistakes, that's why pencils have erasers on the end!
I did some YT tests in the past. FullHD upload (AVCHD 1920x1080 rendered 16MB/s VBR) files within the size/time limit is no problem.
Two remarks though when playing back the YT files on a fullHD PC screen set for 1:1 pixel mapping:
FullHD still testpatterns show only a marginal hor resolution reduction as compared to the originals,played back on the same screen (VCL player)
the vertical resolution seems to be halved (line doubling I suppose)
Real AVCHD FullHD (16MB/s VBR) moving picture don't playback without interupts because my internet connection speed sometimes goes down to <10MB/s and the content needs sometimes 17MB/s
Only setting the YT playback resolution to SD seems to solve this problem. In the future I will get higher download speeds from my IP but in the mean time, creating lower bitrate AVCHD could solve thist problem which I didn't test up to now
On behalf of clearness, my project is 16min, targeted for 16:9 format, composed with 1 main video + 2 overlay video tracks, 1 audio track, 1 voice track, 2 title tracks, mostly AVCHD files from my Panasonic SD20 camera, some jpg pictures, some mp3 and wav, many transitions and effects from newBlueFx and Adorage Prodad.
My computer is fully described in my profile.
The post title targets YouTube, but actually I want to upload on Vimeo and Facebook because YouTube time limit is just 10 min and my project length is 16 min (actually, about Vimeo, actually I do not remember the time limit, I need to check this evening... but I know that the file size limit is 500MB).
For Facebook, it is 20 minutes, so my project length (16 min) can fit it...
And eventually, I can also use Youku.
In fact, the final taregt is to embed the video into my website, so, the web "container" is not an issue.
So, the time is not an issue, but the size vs. quality definitively is the target.
Hence, I am still doing some experiements with VS X3 and my project, trying to render into different formats.
I just remember that the rendering in DVD 16:9 MPEG2 is ok, no crash, steadily (I tried it many times as I have to slightly change few details in the project before the final version).
Yesterday I tried to render in wmv 720p and it crashed at 95%... also the file size of what has been saved was huge: 1.3 GB, while the MPEG2 DVD 16:9 format was only 995MB... this is a bit weird to me, as I thought the wmv were somehow a lighter format.
Right now, at home, my PC I am trying to render in mp4 720p... this evening I will see the result.
Also, I will try to batch-concert the DVD 16:9 into a lighter format, keeping the original frame source size: I did some experiments but changing to 16:9 and this created additional top-bottom bands.
So, in addition to the question about the "best format" in terms of time vs. file size vs. quality, I also wish/hope that Corel will seriously try to improve their SW by fixing these unexpected crashes.
I still wonder why the SW should crash the rendering with some formats and not with others... to me, it does not look a project-related problem, but rather some issues with some CODECS... and in my PC I just installed teh original VS X3 CODECS, no other additional package.
Also, the DirectX are fully updated.
Does enybody else experience rendering crashes with VS X3 ?
