Best MPEG4 for uploading to Google Video

NickHope wrote on 2/10/2006, 9:38 AM
Hi folks,

I'm preparing some videos to upload to Google Video. We've discussed this before but things have moved on. Also I only want to discuss the best video format for uploading, not Google Video itself.

My Source Footage:

My source material is PAL DV-AVI (video 720 x 576 interlaced 25 fps, audio stereo 48khz 16bps). I want to retain as much of the quality as possible.

What Google Say:

According to the help files Google prefer the following upload formats:

MPEG4 with MP3 audio

Scrubbing MPEG2 off the list for file-size reasons, I'm looking at MPEG4 with, I guess, MP4 audio preferred.

Tools I've Got Already:

Vegas 6's built-in MPEG4 AVC/AAC encoder
Nero Recode 2 (Nero Digital H.264 codec)
DivX Pro 5.2.1 (and i could upgrade this to 6 for $4.99)

Wouldn't mind getting Xvid or Quicktime Pro or whatever if it gave me an advantage.

My Questions:

1. Which encoder would be currently recommended?

2. How does the Sony AVC/AAC codec stack up against Nero Digital?

3. What are my options for MP4 audio (or MP3) so I can give Google what they want? (seems Nero codec is AAC-only audio as well as the Sony one)

4. I've heard that Google re-encode in any case, so I may as well encode at the maximum possible resolution and original framerate, just deinterlacing. Any thoughts?

5. Detailed Nero Recode guidance would be most welcome. Tutorials I've found focus either on HD encoding or on making DVDs.

Thanks, Nick

Comments

NickHope wrote on 2/25/2006, 3:36 AM
Sorry for the one-man thread but if anyone is listening, I've discovered this...

If you download a *.GVI file from Google Video, rename it to *.AVI and look at its properties in Vegas, it always seems to be like this:

Video: 480x***x24, DivX® 5.2.1 Codec
Audio: 128 kBit/s, 44,100 Hz, Stereo, MPEG Layer-3

They seem to retain your original framerate and and the *** is calculated according to the aspect ratio you sent them.

Please let me know if you find exceptions to this as my findings are
based on not very many downloads.

Lessons to be learnt:

1. Send them material 480px wide if you can so they don't resample and screw up the quality.

2. Sending them material wider than 480px will not achieve anything other than using up your upload bandwidth.

3. Consider encoding your video in DivX5.2.1. You never know, they might not re-encode. But I expect they still will.

4. Send them your audio at 128 kbit/sec, stereo 44,100 khz.

Now if anyone knows how to combine a DivX video stream (or MPEG4) with an MP3 audio stream in a single file, I'm all ears.

Nick