Does h-265 codec maintain the promised bitrate in VS2018?

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Hi,

I have a VSx10 and as I found out a hard way, h-265 codec does not work as advertized. It has some issues. The codec has problems with output in 4K25p and 4K30p. (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=62062#p344943)

Now I checked it with some footage from 4K60p camera (Panasonic G9) and it looks much better, I would even say perfect (though extreamly slow). But it still does not maintain promised bitrate. For example, if I use 40Mbt setting, the resulting files are actually closer to 80MBt.

I would like to ask users who has VS 2018. Is it still the case? Can h-265 codec maintain the promised bitrate?

[lata]

Short answer NO
Every test I did resulted in a data rate approx. 17000 ish.
I did not see the data rate rise above the 60 settings, in each case it was lower.
I tried rendering with and without Smart Render, same as project settings, creating my own profile and the default templates.
There is another issue relating to Mpeg4 for Pal users, the default templates now use 60P / 30fps, when they should be 50P / 25fps. Although I doubt that has a bearing on the H265 issue.

I had not realised it was that bad as my system / Video Studio now allows me to render to h265.
Rendering to H264 appears to retain the correct data rate.


Original
MPEG-4 Files
24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 25 fps
Frame-based
H.264 High Profile Video: 59998 Kbps
48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo
LPCM Audio: 768 Kbps

Created template h265
MPEG-4 Files
24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 25 fps
Frame-based
H.265 Main Profile Video: 60000 Kbps, 16:9
48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo
MPEG AAC Audio: 192 Kbps

Rendered
MPEG-4 Files
24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 25 fps
Frame-based
H.265 Main Profile Video: 16568 Kbps, 16:9
48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo
MPEG AAC Audio: 192 Kbps

[iNate]

Render to H.264 - there is little point in delivering HEVC, anyways.

The HEVC support is a lot more useful for ingesting than delivering. A lot of devices (Set Top Boxes, Gaming Consoles, Televisions, PCs with older CPUs/GPUs, smartphones, etc.) do not have hardware decode support for HEVC; and many don't support HEVC at all.

[Ken Berry]

Trevor -- I see you have already replied to this. I too had intended to test it as my computer complies with the requirements of HEVC (7th generation Intel i7 with Intel Iris Plus 650 GPU -- which is definitely rated as meeting HEVC requirements). To my astonishment, not one of the several HEVC samples I have (one of them from you) would play video. They would only play audio. I tried with both 4K and 1920 x 1080 HEVC clips.

The strange thing is that those clips used to play correctly on this same computer, yet now I get either a black video with audio; or a message saying a clip has no video content (though it does); or else a "File format mismatch" error. As I say, all these clips used to play in VS 2018 and X10 on this computer. Those same files play properly on VLC player and in Cyberlink Power Director 16. They no longer play on X10 as well.

I have Windows 10 version 1803 fully up to date (latest update yesterday). The Intel GPU driver was dated April 2018. I found another Intel driver issued last week, and updated it. But it made no difference.

Very strange. I am wondering, though, if the last VS 2018 update might have caused it and caused a flow-on to X10 as well.

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Thank you Trevor for testing! So, no upgrade for me this time, I am going to wait for the next version.

So, again, I am really disappointed with Corel. They are selling stuff that does not work properly. The sad thing is that they cannot fix it already at least in two generations and keep promoting it on their site. Lately I practically completely switched to Power Director, though I like better editing in VS. I did it basically due to two reasons: a poor hardware acceleration (PD can use QuickSync for the output) and crappy HEVC codec. Or I just edit in VSx10, then output in the h264 150Mbt and recode it again in PD to HEVC.

I am sorry Ken that you have these problems. I have a 6th gen Intel and I play my files with MPC-HC where I forced it in the settings to use QuickSync. Works perfectly up to the 4K60p.

iNate:
I do not want to use H-264 because the files produced with it for 4K60p have to be huge to get proper quality. And I send them a lot to family and friends and (small) size matters. Also, I just bought a latest LD OLED TV, so I can play HEVC coded 4K60p files without any problems.

[iNate]

Thank you Trevor for testing! So, no upgrade for me this time, I am going to wait for the next version.

So, again, I am really disappointed with Corel. They are selling stuff that does not work properly. The sad thing is that they cannot fix it already at least in two generations and keep promoting it on their site. Lately I practically completely switched to Power Director, though I like better editing in VS. I did it basically due to two reasons: a poor hardware acceleration (PD can use QuickSync for the output) and crappy HEVC codec. Or I just edit in VSx10, then output in the h264 150Mbt and recode it again in PD to HEVC.

I am sorry Ken that you have these problems. I have a 6th gen Intel and I play my files with MPC-HC where I forced it in the settings to use QuickSync. Works perfectly up to the 4K60p.

iNate:
I do not want to use H-264 because the files produced with it for 4K60p have to be huge to get proper quality. And I send them a lot to family and friends and (small) size matters. Also, I just bought a latest LD OLED TV, so I can play HEVC coded 4K60p files without any problems.

HEVC can often look worse than H.264 due to the more aggressive compression. 60p isn’t a common cinematic frame rate. Most of that stuff is 24. Are you shooting Action or Drone footage? sports?

Otherwise I wouldn’t waste the space or power on 60FPS 4K.

PowerDirector is a better editing experience than VideoStudio, anyways, and switching is as easy as ever with v15 on Humble Bundle for $30, along with a mass of other good software from them.

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Hi iNate,

HEVC can often look worse than H.264 due to the more aggressive compression. 60p isn’t a common cinematic frame rate. Most of that stuff is 24. Are you shooting Action or Drone footage? sports? Otherwise I wouldn’t waste the space or power on 60FPS 4K.

Well, I've never seen H-265 looking worse than H-264 on the same bitrate. In my experience, H-265 looks more o less the same with half the rate. Of course, I did not study frames with large magnification, just normal visual perception. I am shooting family (my children mailnly). It is like sports

I did some project wiht 4K25p (Panasonic video camara) and was not satisfied at all. I hate this slow cinematic movement. I prefer HD at 50/60p then 4k at 25/30p. Looks much more alive. If I could, I would shoot in 120p.

PowerDirector is a better editing experience than VideoStudio, anyways, and switching is as easy as ever with v15 on Humble Bundle for $30, along with a mass of other good software from them.

Matter of opinion. I find VS more intuitive and usually I finish projects faster with VS than with PD. Also, I had some problems with PD because of some bugs, and I think VS is less buggy. But yes, VS sucks in the output file creation.

[iNate]

HEVC will never be the same bitrate, unless forced, because it's compressed more. This means that it's serving the data at lower bitrates, due to higher compression. That's the entire point of using HEVC: To be able to serve 4K video and high framerate video at higher resolutions with less bandwidth limitations and smaller file sizes. Forcing the same bitrates, you're probably better off just rendering to H.264 and compressing *less* while being compatible with considerably more hardware (i.e. devices that don't have to resort to software decoding to play the footage).

By using a higher bitrate in HEVC, you are effectively lowering the compression because you are allowing the Encoder to be less aggressive to preserve quality. Bitrate can affect the compression ratio of the footage, which is where you lose the quality - because H.264/5 compression is NOT LOSSLESS.

The quality disparity comes from the more aggressive lossy compression H.265 uses. The same thing can be observed when comparing JPEGs to HEIF images. Yes, the HEIF images are smaller, but often they are worse quality than the JPEGs, unless the camera in question is using lower compression. You may not notice this looking at the footage/images on a smartphone or iPad screen, but it becomes a lot more apparent when you're playing it on a 50+ inch 4K TV (for 4K media).

This is also ignoring the Generational Quality Loss for CODECs like H.264 and HEVC, which is higher than Intermediate/Editing CODECs. This is why NLEs have developed Smart Rendering work-arounds. To avoid re-rendering unmodified footage and degrading its quality.

I am an athlete, and I use camera to record all the time for loading footage into Video Analysis applications. I would never record HEVC because the quality is often worse than H.264, especially for hand held footage with very fast movement.

50/60 FPS looks amazing for action footage and sports. I always record that stuff I 60 FPS. I wouldn't VLOG in 60 FPS. I'd do 24 or 30 FPS. 60 FPS is a waste of space, and does nothing but make H.264 footage burdensome to work with - unless you transcode everything (and you'll end up with ridiculous file sizes, in that case...).

HEVC footage is impractical to edit directly on the timeline, anyway. This is the reason why I got PowerDirector. It has Timeline Hardware Decoding of these formats and can work with iPhone H.264 footage (for Vlogging, practice footage, etc.) natively - without QuickTime's encumbrances. VideoStudio cannot. This way, I can just keep my iPhone set to "Most Compatible" and edit the H.264. With VideoStudio, I'd have to use HEVC and use a third party application to transcode to HQ/HQX for editing in the NLE, or I'd have to install QuickTime; which is a performance hit de facto, and has stability issues when you have many or very large clips in your on your timeline.

---

@ Second Part:

I'm not sure how not having visible Audio Waveforms for the Audio in video is "more intuitive." Intuitive doesn't mean you like it better, or even prefer it. Intuitive means that it operates in such a manner that it is obvious to the average user - logical. I know the video has audio, where is it? That is a test of intuitiveness. Even iMovie shows you this, by default, because it's trying to be intuitive. Not having visible audio waveforms for video that has an audio track is not intuitive.

Marketing Hardware Acceleration that users have to turn off to avoid easily reproducible bugs in the application (or doesn't work at all, see CUDA with Optimus Notebook issues), which have persisted for half a decade or more, is not intuitive. It's actually insulting.

The track layout and inability to reorganize them are on not intuitive. You cannot split audio from video and keep the Audio Under the video, which makes certain types of edit a royal PITA in this software.

The "HD" switch on the previewer Window, which doesn't indicate what Resolution the previewer is showing, is not intuitive.

The inability to remove the Samples folder/content (most of which is useless, very low resolution, badly produced, and from 2005) from the Project Manager is not intuitive.

The broken H.265 Bitrates are not intuitive.

The non--configurable auto-rippling of the main video track isn't intuitive (Work-Around, disable it always, and only edit on Overlay tracks)...

The inability to choose a VFW CODEC installed on the machine (which works with other NLE applications) for Proxy and Batch Render Profiles is not intuitive.

There are a lot of non-intuitive things in this software, and that's expected, as the UX has largely gone unchanged for the better part of a decade. Pinnacle Studio, for example, has changed dramatically in the same time span.

---

And that's besides the point, because the reason to use PowerDirector has nothing to do with intuitiveness - at least not to me (I use much more complicated editors for my "serious work" - I can figure things out). It has everything to do with performance, and PowerDirector running literal circles around VS in Application Responsiveness, [Working] Accelerated Decode Performance, [Working] Accelerated Render Performance, and Timeline Editing Productivity.

Example: It's impossible to really do a J or L cut in VideoStudio without splitting out all of your Audio, for example, which is hugely problematic given the very limited amount of Audio Tracks available to you. Not to mention, the application will put the Audio Tracks under ALL of the Overlay, Title, and Voice tracks; which is not very intuitive when trying to make those types of edits. Depending on the Overlays you use, you may not be able to see both the Video and Audio Tracks at the same time - especially since you cannot make the tracks small. This is a complete non-issue in PowerDirector, because the Audio is right under the video. You also have much better control over track height than in in VideoStudio.

The fact that PowerDirector has better Timeline editing than VideoStudio isn't a matter of opinion. Any editor would just have to look at the two, and they would never choose VS's Timeline over PowerDirector's. This is a major competitive disadvantage vs. many of their competitors (VEGAS Movie Studio, Pinnacle Studio, Movie Edit Pro, CyberLink, Premiere Elements, etc.). It's also the source of some of the biggest complaints from people who try the software (check YouTube video feedback about the software - including the latest 2018 version).

I'm constantly having to tell people to just disable and never use the main video track, because they just complain about the non-configurable auto-rippling.

[lata]

Hi

The point of the post was to bring the to the attention of Corel that their templates do not render as expected.

The default Mpeg H265 template:

MPEG-4 File
24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 59.94 fps
Frame-based
H.265 Main Profile Video: 40000 Kbps, 16:9
48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo
MPEG AAC Audio: 192 Kbps

Creates a video using

MPEG-4 Files
24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 59.94 fps
Frame-based
H.265 Main Profile Video: 10625 Kbps, 16:9
48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo
MPEG AAC Audio: 192 Kbps

Is the change from 40000kbps to 10625Kbps to be expected?

[tletter]

The point of the post was to bring the to the attention of Corel ...

We've been repeatedly told the Corel doesn't read this forum. Has that changed?

In any event the discussion by iNate was interesting.

... templates do not render as expected.

Although the following results are for H.264, the results indicate that in general, the frame rate of rendered videos is usually significantly less than the source clips.

"Same as Project Settings" are:

NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
MPEG-4 Files
24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 29.97 fps
Frame-based
H.264 High Profile Video: 105600 Kbps, 16:9
48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo
MPEG AAC Audio: 128 Kbps

Rendered video is:

NTSC drop frame (29.97 fps)
MPEG-4 Files
24 bits, 3840 x 2160, 29.97 fps
Frame-based
H.264 High Profile Video: 37494 Kbps, 16:9
48000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo
MPEG AAC Audio: 128 Kbps

In short with VS2018, it's never clear what a rendered video will be if it renders at all.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[lata]

Hi tletter
The original post referred to rendering to H265, we should try to remember that.
But as you have raised the High Res h264, one comment….
Video Studio has a 65 Mb limit for its templates however we can render to 105600kbps
Simply use Same as Project or Same as first clip.

I do not have a problem with rendering to H264 and retaining the data rate.
If you wish to continue discussing h264 can you start a new post

[tletter]

The original post referred to rendering to H265, we should try to remember that ... If you wish to continue discussing h264 can you start a new post

I did "remember that" as I clearly stated that "Although the following results are for H.264, the results indicate that in general, the frame rate of rendered videos is usually significantly less than the source clips."

Unfortunately if we compartmentalize every reported problem then we'll not see the big picture.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Hi,

Sorry, I dropped out of the forum for a bit, just did not get any updates notifications for some reason.

In the VSx10 version I did not notice big difference in the bitrate between template and the actual bitrate in H264. Lately I was producing 150Mbit files and getting 140Mbit, I think. Not a big difference. And by the way, I do not agree with iNate about codec comparizon. He says:

"HEVC will never be the same bitrate, unless forced, because it's compressed more".

As a matter of fact, the usual way to compare codecs is to see the quality on the same bitrate. Another way would be to try to find the same perceived quality for two different codecs and compare bitrates. That is why I am saying that I've never seen H-265 looking worse than H-264 on the same bitrate. The only way for h265 to look worse - is to use too low bitrate for the particular task.

[lata]

Hi Pavel

Given your comment here, I have changed your profile to “receive notifications”
The option “Notify me upon replies by default:” is set to “no” but can be changed by you via your User Control Panel, link at top left of forum.
Otherwise can be set for individual posts when composing your replies, options tab at bottom of post

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Hi, I would like to raise this question again.

Has anyone tried to output in HEVC using VS2019? Is it still a problem to maintain promised bitrate? I remind you, that in the VSX10 and VS2019 h265 created output files with the bitrate it itself decided to set.

And what about hardware support? Can VS2019 use NVidia NVenc or Intel QuickSynk or it still sucks and blows (I mean, does it use only software codecs)?

I am asking, because I got a 60% discount from Corel for VS2019. But I do not see the point even to spend this kind of money, if they did not do anything im these 2 years.