blurry youtube videos

[martypdji]

Hi I'm using Corel videostudio Ultimate X6 and regularly record live bands, upload them to youtube after I convert them to a MP4 format using videostudio. A few months ago one of the venues installed a set of quick flashing lights, now my videos look blocky and you can't even make out their faces. Have people run into this problem before, and what can I do about it?

[martypdji]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_72uGO0HWI
This is an example of one of the .mp4 videos I uploaded. It's clear at parts, but mostly their faces and parts of the stage are blurry. Also that sign on the back wall that says Venue Of Merging Arts is clear in other videos I took, but it's blurry in this video.

In contrast, It was daytime when I took this one, and the text on the sign is much clearer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOa_gv9Palo

[BrianCee]

you need to change the privacy settings on the first one Marty - -

private video.PNG (11.63 KiB) Viewed 5557 times

[skier-hughes]

Manually control the camcorder, for focus, exposure etc, I've not watched the videos, but it sounds like you are using auto and the cam is maybe hunting for focus when the lights flash and or over-exposing, or of course get them to change the lights back

[martypdji]

Sorry about that, the videos should all be public now. I am using manual settings, and this was never a problem a few months ago, just after they installed those lights. Yeah it would be good if they uninstalled them, but I don't know that they will, and I was just looking for the reason why this happening, and if it would help if I encoded them in some other format, etc.

The videos don't seem to be blurry from the files directly from my camcorder (but those files are at least 10 times as large), so I'm wondering if I used a different format to encode the files, not mp4, and what format would be best. I liked .mp4 because it was a a small file but still fairly clear. I guess I'll have to use a different format now, but I don't know which one.

[skier-hughes]

Seen them now.
The blockiness is definitely caused by the conversion, compression artefacts.
Does your mp4 converted file look good before uploading to youtube?
Can you upload the original file to youtube.
How does this look?
If it's just as good, then we can assume that the file you have converted to, when uploaded to youtube doesn't work well.
Can you give us the file details of both the original and the converted file going to youtube.
Right click on the file whilst on the VS timeline and let s have the properties.

[martypdji]

The file looks fine before being converted to .mp4, afterward it looks blocky and crappy. I don't think I can load the original file into youtube because I don't think youtube recognizes canon's format of .m2ts plus I don't think I'd want to cause that file is about 10 times as large, almost 500Mb as opposed to 50 Mb. I think I need to find a different file format to convert to, but I don't know which one.

I kinda like .mp4 because the audio quality was good even at smaller file sizes. It's not like that for all the file formats.

[skier-hughes]

The file looks fine before being converted to .mp4, afterward it looks blocky and crappy. I don't think I can load the original file into youtube because I don't think youtube recognizes canon's format of .m2ts plus I don't think I'd want to cause that file is about 10 times as large, almost 500Mb as opposed to 50 Mb. I think I need to find a different file format to convert to, but I don't know which one.

I kinda like .mp4 because the audio quality was good even at smaller file sizes. It's not like that for all the file formats.

Making something 10x smaller will have some effect on quality, so I think experimenting with settings and formats is your way forward, find a compromise somewhere which gives you decent quality with a fair sized file.

[martypdji]

I figured what the problem was, the .mp4 compression format I was using was M$V-SP, which was fine, never hurt before, but I guess it doesn't like flashing or changing lights at all, and was doing the unwanted effects. I changed to H.264-main compression, and the problem almost totally went away. It took me a while to find out this was the best one, and I still haven't tried all the codecs yet.