You've hit a sensitive nerve on this forum because you've called Vegas Pro "Sony" Vegas Pro which strongly suggests that you have a pirated version of Vegas Pro (the pirate downloads still call it Sony Vegas Pro). You have already been nformed of this in a reply from a moderator in your previous and first post.

The last version of Sony Vegas Pro was version 13 released almost 10 years ago - all later Vegas Pro releases have been under MAGIX ownership. As a relatively new user of Vegas Pro (based on your posts) how can you possibly think that Vegas Pro 20 and 21 are Sony products? Unless they are pirated versions possibly.

The last post was about activation and getting the email address right- pirates don't have to deal with that. Let's try to set a welcoming tone on the forum.

I paid for it - thanks for the pre judgement ,not understood and not very helpful to the problem i'm facing with getting the best from my CGIvideo out of "VegasPro20" on you tube because i miss pronounced the name of my paid for software ...bit harsh

Thanks for your question. The bigger answer is that Youtube will always do a mediocre job with high quality CG / Ani because of losses from upstream encoding and processing to a high compression lossy format.

There is very little the tail can do to wag the dog in this case; even overkill upload bitrates have zero effect on the download quality and motion detail retention.

That said, there are some things you can do in the free Voukoder x264 Encoder plugin so Youtube "sees" the cleanest source possible; there are "Tune" settings for Animation, Film, and Zero Latency encoding that will help you.

Experiment. You will be able to get a little better quality back from Youtube than with the general purpose Mainconcept or Magix encoders.

Also, If you can encode higher resolution in Blender, Youtube renders VP9 above 1440p, which many people say is of higher visual quality.

If you have a short AVI from Blender we can play with, upload it to Drive or Dropbox and post the link here.

Cheers mark-y thank you for taking the time to help me , here are a couple of short avi's some are darker ,i always find you tubes codec smashes dark cgi scenes ,i would be so happy to find a way to navigate around the bashing you tube gives my vids because in my VegasPro they look great here are two links of my cgi ,one is dark and detailed one has great detail they are straight out of Blender. Thanks again ,Gaz

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qAjbqRJrPQT4yq2E6WxnUutoocFO1EVt/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XTCF1CR7Do3nU3EQs9mRF5HtgkqshXv-/view?usp=sharing

If you render the video as 4K, even if the source isn't 4K, youtube automatically gives it a higher bitrate, so try that.

@Gaz-Spitfire

Yeah. Rippling waves, grain, and fog are the worst enemies of modern streaming video delivery, because compression limits the available bitrate where it is needed the most. I would try the Animation Tune in Voukoder with CRF 18 and 1 b-frame and hope it's OK on Youtube. I had exactly the same issue with my clipping tests and frankly, the results were quite horrible.

I got some relief from mushy motion detail by putting my tests on Vimeo instead; I wish I had a better answer for you. Welcome to the discussions.

I now have voukoder installed i've uploaded two same vids of the Submarine in the dark against the moonlight againt the waves to you tube set on private. For Voukoder i followed a general install non specific setting setup tutorial on line .The two vids now on you tube side by side look about 60 percent worse than they do on Vegas,not good .Please understand although ive linked my voukoder to VegasPro i have very little idea how to set it up regarding the best for CGI settings .My Voukoder settings i used were

Encoder

H.264 :(NVIDIA NVENC) as i use an RTX3090 GPU

OPTIONS -: MY BIT DEPTH WS YUV 4:2:0

I picked: Preset slowest (best quality )

Profile :HIGH

Strategy :constant quantiser

Quantiser :15

Multipass :disabled

and output :MPEG-4 (mp4)

Also in Vegas within my cgi vid clips , i notice use project resample mode is on (by default )in every one of my clips which for about 6 mins is about 90 clips ,should i disable all resample ?

I really appreciate all the help im getting here ,the vid took three months to make and its almost criminal what you tube does to it . Thanks again Gaz ,SpitfireCGI

If you really want best quality why not use x264 through Voukoder instead of NVENC? Try a short section and see if it looks better than the NVENC render.

That said, there are some things you can do in the free Voukoder x264 Encoder plugin so Youtube "sees" the cleanest source possible; there are "Tune" settings for Animation, Film, and Zero Latency encoding that will help you.

I had suggested the x264 Software Encoder, not the NVENC hardware encoder in Voukoder, for some very specific reasons. I am sorry I did not enumerate those advantages in my initial response.

• x264 does not have the quality losses inherent in hardware encoders.
• It has the advantages of Tuning. Also vbv-bufsize, vbv-maxrate, b-frame constraints,  and many others once you gain experience with Constant Rate Factor encoding.

That all said, you probably won't see much if any difference in the video being returned by Youtube; its reprocessing and compression are by far the most limiting factors here, and there is really no way around them, I'm sorry to say.

@Gaz-Spitfire Hi, your submarine AVI is 1920 x 1080 24fps so I just rendered using Magic AVC/AAC, I think they're the default settings.

This is that MP4 uploaded to YT, can you explain the problem? I see no difference to the YT compared to the AVI played on my PC with a media player.

Sorry if I've totally misunderstood something

mark-y

On You Tube I have a normal 1080p MP4 uploaded and a 4k MP4 uploaded (suggested by frosty) and now The Voukoder 1080p 10 bit Animate setting you suggested . I think it is the best out of the lot but could it be better ?

I will post the three you tube private links here, so you can all see ,the vid clips are 18 secs long its the darkest scene in the whole 6min vid as the Submarine breaks the surface in the moonlight ,or are we at the best now with the setting we can be regarding you tube and Voukoder.

Once again i am so grateful for the help i am getting here,i mean that ,i think the vid content is great but you tube is frightening what it can do to all that work .

There is a small shading issue in Vegas but i can correct that easily, it's just keeping all that lovely detail up is the hard part .

Submarine upscaled to 4K CGI Normal Vegas Settings JAN 30th Mock up

Submarine 1080p native CGI Normal Vegas Settings JAN 30th Mock up

Submarine 1080p Vegas 10 BIT Voukoder Animate Settings JAN 30th Mock up

Regards Gaz SpitfireCGI

Gid, yes in default my Vegas Pro setting are exactly the same as your screenshot.If thats the case could it be my monitor giving my eyes wrong information (my monitor is a hp Compaq la2306x quite old by today standards )but if that was true why does the video look great on Vegas but not so good You Tube ...?

Yeah sorry, it looks like Youtube is doing an equally horrid job with all attempts. I really wish I had a better answer for you but my Youtube experience with complex source was equally disappointing. 😐

If you want to look beyond subjective visual comparisons, which are a moving target, look into what is called "Quality Metrics Tools," or QMT. They are scientific, perceptually-weighted benchmarks used for quantitative comparisons.

There are two QMT tools created by members of this forum.

• https://tools4vegas.com/render-quality-metrics-2/
• https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/ffmetrics-yet-another-program-for-quality-metrics-calculation--122246/?page=1

I think i need some definitive settings in Voukoder (animate ) and i'll just go with that because out of the three vid clips i feel that one is the best .My vids have always been punished by you tube ..check this one about a WW2 Lancaster landing in the fog before i knew about Voukoder (which i only discovered yesterday thanks to this community here ) ,You Tube absolutely demolished this vid !!!

I think after all is said and done i'm going to upload it in 4k (never done that before i've always used 1080p ) to you tube and whack the constant bit rate up to 135000 from my normal 50000 and take my chances and hope that you tube hits me with less compression.. I'll use Mainconcept AVC H264_CBR ..and what will be will be. Thank you all again for your help. Gaz - SpitfireCGI

Thank you mark-y,i will try this ,a last chance saloon fix ,really appreciate all the help i have had here,a great community ! .The full 6min vid will be out this week now on you tube for better or worse .:) cheers again Gaz - SpitfireCGI