clip looks cool here but real bad on Vimeo...

Mindmatter wrote on 9/24/2012, 2:07 PM

Hi all

I just uploaded a short clip for a client that is made for his online catalogue, which after some initial trouble looks great on my PC. Original footage was a mix of Canon t2i and Sony EX3 1080p and 25fps. I first uploaded a rendered Vegas MP4 version which looked great on my PC, but really terrible on Vimeo. Jerky, stuttery pans, oversoft image and loss of contrast etc. I then followed musicvid's Vegas to YT tutorial by the word and created a second handbrake generated clip in 720p 25fps. This one is slighty better, but some pans are still very jerky ( even the ones generated by crop motion in Vegas) and have occasional weird horizontal artifacts, like a white line that looks like a short flash ( sorry no better way to describe it...).
I'm not sure how or where the client wants to embed the clip, but I feel like I cannot really recommend Vimeo as a platform. Am I missing something here or is that just the way it is with the heavy compression etc. that those sites use?
Thanks!

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 9/24/2012, 2:30 PM

30p is going to look best online, but I guess it's too late for that.

Can you post your link to Vimeo, and double-check your DNxHD render settings in the meantime? (should match your source exactly).

Mindmatter wrote on 9/24/2012, 2:57 PM

Hi musicvid

here it is . https://vimeo.com/50084822

password: villeroy

It's a rough mix of their catalogue porcelaine pieces expo mixed with a coupla workshops they had, but they insisted I cram it all into 1min30sec , so don't wonder why it's so fast paced.

I did a thorough check on all the settings, well as least I think so, even recreated a render preset from scratch to make sure, on both Vegas and Handbrake.
As I'm in PAL land, i mostly use 25p, but when you say that 30p resolves some issues, I'll change that. I might have made a mistake in the first transcoding process by using the 10bit template, but my normal Vegas render looks great on my PC.
The thing with the project settings is that I set them to match the transcoded DNxHD footage, but there's also Mpeg 2 longgop footage from the EX3 on the timeline. Boith look good here but terrible on Vimeo.

Laurence wrote on 9/24/2012, 3:07 PM

I think it actually looks very good. I see the jerkiness you are talking about, but it seems in line with the web delivery technology of today. No worse than what I see from everybody else.

One thing you might try is a SD render and upload. In NTSC that translates to 855 x 480. Since there is less data being transferred I find this to often have smoother motion.

Mindmatter wrote on 9/24/2012, 3:17 PM

Thanks for the hint musicvid!
actually you should really see the original file...looks like a hi gloss magazine in comparison. Knowing how nice the original looks when I watch the result online is really frustrating.
Besides the degradation in sharpness and contrast, I really don't get why so many pans and moves often get so jerky and stuttery, also in other vids I watched for comparison...

Laurence wrote on 9/24/2012, 3:36 PM

Hands down the best by far I've ever seen on any local video display is my own material encoded into 60i XDCAM .mxf and played back with the free Sony XDCAM player. Just spectacular. It does some sort of BOB deinterlacing and sRGB to cRGB color correction on the fly.

farss wrote on 9/24/2012, 4:11 PM

"don't wonder why it's so fast paced."

I suspect that's the problem. The "camera" is moving too quickly in many shots, where the camera is static and the subject is left to move in the frame it seems artifact free. Panning very wide shots so quickly such as the one that starts at around 00:15 is kind of inviting trouble. There also seems a lack of motion blur that'd smooth things out and create less stress on the encoder.

Bob.

Mindmatter wrote on 9/24/2012, 5:07 PM

Thanks Bob,
the first fast pan might be troublesome by its speed, but all the others play smoothly and fine on the original file, and are not that fast IMO, also the few pan / crop moves are rather discrete and should not be a problem I think. Thing is that the original file is way smoother.
How would I apply (more) motion blur, is that to be used like a plugin?

Tim20 wrote on 9/24/2012, 5:33 PM

The only thing that I saw that was really annoying was the intro zoom out. It wasn't smooth and had a sorta flash. Do you have enough of the footage to make the final wide the establishing shot? That would be cool because you then go straight into mediums.

The other pans jerk so little I don't think the casual observer would even notice.

As for motion blur look at the manual for how to use it. It might not work, because its not really meant for this type of shot. But who knows.

farss wrote on 9/24/2012, 6:29 PM

"Thing is that the original file is way smoother."

Sure but Vimeo is encoding your video at a much lower bitrate and "something" may have to give. Keep in mind that the codec being used can use such a low bitrate because it mostly encodes only the difference between frames and when you pan a wide shot there's a lot of difference between frames. Certainly the H.264 class of codecs are very smart but they're also a massive CPU hog both encoding and decoding. Both Vimeo and YT have to pay power bills.

Look at trailers for Hollywood Movies and how well they hold up on Vimeo and YT to get some clues on how to shoot video that will do the same.

"How would I apply (more) motion blur, is that to be used like a plugin?"

Motion blur in Vegas can be applied via an envelope in the Video Buss Master track, check the documentation for details. I'm yet to find an easy to use way of adding realistic motion blur in any application, neither Vegas or After Effects can produce anything like what happens in a camera. That's why I go a bit over the top about getting it right in the camera.

Bob.

musicvid10 wrote on 9/24/2012, 6:53 PM

I think the thing you are missing the most is 30p.

I downloaded your original Handbrake encode from Vimeo and there is nothing wrong with the settings. Could have used more bitrate and I generally disable b-pyramid (doesn't need it) but I don't think either of those are the problem.

I am in awe of your video and still technique. Terrific use of color and slightly shorter lenses for striking foregrounds in some spots.

VidMus wrote on 9/24/2012, 7:55 PM

I gave up on Vimeo. Same jerky motion in pans. There were a number of complaints about that a while back when they changed the way they recompress the videos.

And yes, I followed their tutorials for Vegas as well as what is here.

I got me an account with Host Monster (I am not affiliated with them) and upload my videos to my web site there and use StrobeMediaPlayback.swf (free) to play my videos on my website. Takes a tiny dab of html.

No more jerky re-compressed videos and the contrast and quality is what *I* want it to be!!!

Workflow to get my videos ready is much less involved and takes much less time!

They can have Vimeo and even YT for all I care!!!

Mindmatter wrote on 9/25/2012, 3:29 AM

Thanks a lot everyone for your input and explanations! ( and for the compliments, musicvid !)
There's a lot to reconsider on my next project, I'll certainly keep a lot of those advice in mind. I've been into filming for quite a while, but editing and all the technical intricacies around it are something I'm working my way into.
Tim20, I also think the intro zoomout is the worst, I'll see if I can replace it. VidMus, I'll also take a look at hostmonster, although I've just payed for a year's pro account on Vimeo...

VidMus wrote on 9/25/2012, 4:45 AM

"VidMus, I'll also take a look at hostmonster, although I've just payed for a year's pro account on Vimeo..."

When I gave-up on Vimeo I cancelled my pro account and got a full refund.

Something to consider...

Mindmatter wrote on 9/25/2012, 5:06 AM

Ok good to know, thanks!

paul_w wrote on 9/25/2012, 5:21 AM

Yes indeed, i had exactly the same issue with a 3 part shop promo i did recently. Looks fine and silky smooth locally but stutters on pans via Vimeo. :( No amount of re-encoding helps.

It was suggested at the time that the pans were too fast, but imho, they were just fine. And local playback confirms that.

Vimeo changed when they introduced 'New Vimeo', with its larger playback screen and couch mode thingy. Both of which i dont like! It was much better with old Vimeo and playback seemed to be so much better quality. Over twitter, i have had many talks with people complaining about new Vimeo and its jerky playback on pan/tilts. So its not just you. Vimeo seems to have gone down hill.

PS. and i also cancelled my Plus subscription a few months back.

Paul.

Arthur.S wrote on 9/25/2012, 12:03 PM

Yep, I agree. Vimeo playback now is poo. Used to be so much better than YT...now it's worse!

musicvid10 wrote on 9/25/2012, 1:02 PM

I can confirm that something is going on -- my 30p work uploaded to Vimeo over a year ago now plays like caca.

Latest Flash player, tried with HW acceleration on and off. Really bad.

By comparison, OP's original clip downloaded from Vimeo looks really good at home on VLC and streamed to WDTV Live.

I don't know how long this has been going on, but Vimeo is losing credibility and clientele every day this is allowed to continue.

VidMus wrote on 9/25/2012, 1:48 PM

For those who like YT, maybe there should now be a YT-Pro for videos without ads and allow for private only viewing plus the ability to click on a link and download the original non-recompressed video.

YT would surely make a lot of money from businesses that use it for their videos.

Maybe they already have something like this and I do-not know it yet?

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com/ccm

musicvid10 wrote on 9/25/2012, 2:00 PM

On a whim, I rolled back to Flash Player version 11.3.300.271.
No change that I can determine. Jerks even when not in full screen mode.

farss wrote on 9/25/2012, 5:13 PM

I had a look at the videos I'd uploaded years ago on Vimeo and didn't see any new problems with them but then again none of them push the envelope.
So spent a while looking at clips from others, mostly music videos, that should shake out any bugs and again, nothing. If there's a body of content not having issues and another that is, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out what the differential is.

Bob.

musicvid10 wrote on 9/25/2012, 11:12 PM

"it shouldn't be too hard to figure out what the differential is."

Quite possibly server configs and loads on various parts of the planet.

Mindmatter wrote on 9/26/2012, 12:45 PM

I just noticed a great inconsistency in the playback quality which is most likely related to peak usage and the time of day you actually view a clip. My clip played "relatively" fine last afternoon, and looked liked stuttercrap at night. ( I replaced the initial zoom btw, smoother now).
I suspect they just run out of bandwith at peak times..

farss wrote on 9/26/2012, 7:37 PM

Certainly watching some clips on Vimeo can require the patience of a saint.
That was what forced me to really stop using it in conjunction with my client's audience not having fast enough PCs to decode it properly.

I went back and watched the one of the clips that I'd watched yesterday several times. This time I did get into "pixel peeping" mode and it suffers from the same judder and cogging that is the norm with low FPS. I really didn't notice it before because of the production values, damn these creative people, not fair.

The other factor I suspect is this clip is B&W plus there's no overly sharp outlines i.e. no detail, it has that smooth, creamy look of film even though I'm certain it wasn't shot on film.

Watching the same clip on YT the judder is the same if not worse and some of the images don't hold up as well so I still feel Vimeo is better.

Clip in question on Vimeo: Tommy's Theme

On YouTube:

Bob.

Laurence wrote on 3/1/2013, 6:17 PM

Just bringing this back up because I have just finished a bike shop ad with some moving bike action shots in it. My master looks fine but on Vimeo the parts where the bikes are riding look jerky as hell!:

https://vimeo.com/60870073