Could somebody PLEASE help me.

Brad C. wrote on 1/20/2009, 5:36 AM
Ok, as I have posted several times...I just got done with my first wedding video which is also my first "big" project with Vegas. I'm still learning quite a bit, but I knew enough to complete a video that implemented AVCHD, HDV, jpegs, music, Magic Bullet, and transitions. 15min. long

I rendered 4 separate sections so the final video would render easier. With this first render process, each section was rendered from 1080 down to 720p since that will be my final output for (again) easier final render, internet, and disc.

There are some issues popping up that I didn't catch at first but my eye is catching on to more and more things. Here is a sample video of the first render down. Its at YouTube in HD, so its higher res but nothing like the full 720 (obviously).


(I had posted the hyperlink but it was posting the videos HERE. No good)

That render isn't TOO bad although if you look close at the last picture of the little girl in the red shirt, the pixelation on her right shoulder is starting. Not enough to alarm me.
Saved as: AVC, 720p, 2ref.frames, deblocking on, CBR 20Mbps (I've tried 14, and 10 too)

This is the second "final" render to put the whole video together. Basically a 720 render on a 720 render. THIS is the video that I have a problem with and its what the customer would receive.


(I had posted the hyperlink but it was posting the videos HERE. No good)

The areas pointed out in the video are the areas that look h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e in full 720p on the computer.
Saved as: AVC, 720p, 2ref.frames, deblocking on, CBR 14Mbps
(I've tried just about every different configuration I can think of and they all come out like crap in certain areas especially red for some reason)

I'm open to suggestions or an all out schooling on what I'm doing wrong. I would really appreciate some help with this. I'm at my wits end and I don't want this going out like this.

Thanks guys,
-Brad

Comments

farss wrote on 1/20/2009, 5:49 AM
To be blunt the whole thing is incredibly soft and it's hard to sort out any defects!

More information would REALLY help. I assume this was shot it HD??

Did you render at Best?
Did you specify a de-interlace method in your project properties?

You footage should look WAY, WAY better than this, even on Youtube. To be blunt I've seen better from a mobile phone camera!

Does your AVC look this bad before Youtube got to it?
You can play it back using VLC at full fps.

Which is another question, what fps was it shot at and what fps did you encode at.

Bob.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/20/2009, 6:00 AM
did you try not rendering a lower quality 720 & just try the original @ 1080?
Brad C. wrote on 1/20/2009, 6:03 AM
To be blunt the whole thing is incredibly soft and it's hard to sort out any defects!
I know its soft, but you are looking at it at a very small resolution compared to the full 720.

More information would REALLY help. I assume this was shot it HD??
Yes. I understand that its not crystal clear "you can see their pores" HD that everyone is used to seeing. There is a lot of bullet applied which includes diffusion, etc.

Did you render at Best?
yes

Did you specify a de-interlace method in your project properties?
This is where I admit I'm a noob for sure Bob. Sorry. This is what I've got:
Upper field, PAR-1.0, 29.97fps, PF- 8bit, Full Res Render Quality-best, MBT- Gaussian, Deinterlace Method- none.

You footage should look WAY, WAY better than this, even on Youtube. To be blunt I've seen better from a mobile phone camera!
Did you see the vids that at first were posted here or did you go to the "HD" ones at youtube? If you are complaining about the ones AT youtube in "HD", there is a lot of magic bullet on top of those videos and it's done on purpose.

Does your AVC look this bad before Youtube got to it?
Of course not. Just about all the final video looks great, just certain areas that have pixelation/artifacting.

Which is another question, what fps was it shot at and what fps did you encode at?
It was shot on a Canon HF10 AVCHD at the feaux 30p (60i wrapper) and I set it to render at 29.97.
Brad C. wrote on 1/20/2009, 6:07 AM
did you try not rendering a lower quality 720 & just try the original @ 1080?

I have yet to be successful rendering any clip thats loaded with the AVCHD, HDV, Bullet, Transitions, Music, and JPEGS at the full 1080. Most of the sub renders are the length of a typical song about 4min. The jpegs I got from my friend were FULL RES Jpegs (3XXX x 2XXX), and so I'm just now resizing them @50% to cut back on the memory usage and I might try to send them through at 1080 after that.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/20/2009, 6:15 AM
convert the jpg's to png's & that should solve most problems you'd have with them.
farss wrote on 1/20/2009, 6:25 AM
"I know its soft, but you are looking at it at a very small resolution compared to the full 720"[/]

Change this it Blend. You are rescaling and without either Blend or Interpolate bad things will happen.

I've got 720p footage on Vimeo and Youtube that I uploaded as 720p, all done with Vegas and minimal processing. It doesn't look too bad at all. The low res versions on Youtube look pretty horrid but the HD is MUCH better. Vimeo all looks pristine.

If all of the above fails get rid of all your FXs and try a short section and see how it looks and then add the FXs back in to diagnose your problem.

Red is always a problematic colour. The red to black crossover around the jumper could explain some of your problem but I really can't see enough detail to see for sure what is going wrong.

Bob.
Brad C. wrote on 1/20/2009, 6:38 AM
I looked at the HD version full screen, still soft. Did you not upload it to Youtube at 720p?
Yes, I did. Looking at "full screen" anything on Youtube is a joke. It never displays properly and blows images out. No video ever posted on Youtube OR Vimeo is meant to be viewed in "full screen". This is precisely why Vimeo gives the uploader the choice of letting the watchers download the content for proper playback at full 720p. Not arguing, just saying.

Change this it Blend. You are rescaling and without either Blend or Interpolate bad things will happen.
Ok. Thanks.

I've got 720p footage on Vimeo and Youtube that I uploaded as 720p, all done with Vegas and minimal processing. It doesn't look too bad at all. The low res versions on Youtube look pretty horrid but the HD is MUCH better. Vimeo all looks pristine.
Again, I'm not arguing with you about that. My videos would probably look very crisp without the effects. Super detailed video is not what I'm going for. I don't want pixelation/artifacting though. If its showing through heavy Bullet, then its pretty bad.

If all of the above fails get rid of all your FXs and try a short section and see how it looks and then add the FXs back in to diagnose your problem.
That sounds like a good plan too. I'll give it a shot.

Red is always a problematic colour.
More knowledge gained. I didn't know that. Thanks.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/20/2009, 7:06 AM
I don't want pixelation/artifacting though. If its showing through heavy Bullet, then its pretty bad.

Not necessarily. You're doing a lot of destructive processes to your clips: from original to 720, adding several FX, another render, then youtube convert. Plus, like you said, youtube isn't the best, so there's actually no way for us to know if it's all the editing you're doing or the tube we're seeing, we could be seeing different then what you're seeing. I'd put up a clip that's not uploaded to youtube on a website: have it consist of a few seconds of that section for each stage in your editing process (original, rescale, one FX, second FX, etc). Then it could be really easy to spot.

From what you've shown I don't see anything that wouldn't be expected: you have a bright red to a very dark grey/black right next to each other, with motion. From what I can see, there's more pixeliation on the distance shots but you don't seem worried about them. That's the nature of recording/capturing/editing compressed: colors get mixed a little sometimes. That's why better then 8-bit video is desired: you have much less, if any, of issues like that. Most video codec's use a jpeg-similar approach in compression which is why you get issues like this some times.

Have you previewed the footage on a TV yet? Very well dissapear when viewed on a TV vs a monitor because of the gamma difference. Have you shown it to someone else w/o pointing it out? They may not even notice.
farss wrote on 1/20/2009, 12:15 PM
When I said "full screen" I meant at native resolution, 1:1 pixels. On my 17" PC monitors the 720p material shot, processed and encoded well looks pretty sharp and clean.


What I noticed happening on your video is the encoder is being starved of bandwith and not coping with cuts well at all. I encode to H.264 to the bggest file size I can as both Vimeo and Youtube limit you to 10mins of video, that works out at around 4Mbps avg, 8 Mbps Max using 2 pass VBR encoding.

Even so at your bitrates it shouldn't look so bad. You haven't by any chance tried to add Grain or film scratches as part of the 'film look' have you?

If so that would be a big mistake. Grain and noise are your worst enemy with high compression, low bandwidth encoding. All the bandwidth gets sucked up by the noise.

Bob.
Brad C. wrote on 1/20/2009, 1:54 PM
Little bit of an update:

I finally got the first segment to go through at 1920x1080 but only at 10Mbps. 14Mbps crashed at 88%. I never changed the pictures to .png's yet because that's going to be a chore. (not to say that I won't do it). So if this first segment is still 1080@10Mbps now, what settings do you recommend I render to on the back end for delivery @ 720p?

Bob- "You haven't by any chance tried to add Grain or film scratches as part of the 'film look' have you?"
Well, I went into the effects chain and opened Bullet up. The preset that I used for the entire first segment is one slightly tweaked from a premade. This preset has no grain, but a TON of diffusion. I was toggling this selection on and off while looking at the preview and wow. I am losing significant detail, but it doesn't matter to me with THIS particular video. Now, if you're implying that this heavy diffusion (loss of detail) is causing problems for rendering then I can look into things. One thing to note though, I have done nothing to the pictures but resize, make them rotate, and add a border.

Thanks for the help thus far guys. You have no idea.
Terry Esslinger wrote on 1/20/2009, 2:05 PM
I never changed the pictures to .png's yet because that's going to be a chore.
Not so much a chore if you use a batch converter such as Irfanview (free)
Brad C. wrote on 1/20/2009, 5:30 PM
"I never changed the pictures to .png's yet because that's going to be a chore."
"Not so much a chore if you use a batch converter such as Irfanview (free)"

Hahahaha wow. This is one of those moments I should probably just keep my mouth shut, but I will go ahead an admit that I feel and must seem like a tool. I've been an Irfanview user for a long time, but never even thought of using it for batch conversion. I just use it for resizing/red eye correcting etc. Great little program.

Jeez. Idiot. haha

I did notice in Irfanview that when I wanted to save as png that you get a quality (compression) choice from 0 to 9. I didnt notice a difference between the two that I saved. Quality seemed the same on both. One was just a larger file size. So the most compressed shouldn't cause any problems should it?

I guess what I initially meant was the whole process of changing to png, then insert the new pictures in place of the old and re-apply the effects/pan/zoom. Any other shortcuts I should be aware of?
farss wrote on 1/20/2009, 10:24 PM
Move the current images to another folder. Move the new ones into the original folder. Restart your project. Vegas will say it cannot find the files. Tell Vegas abot the first file, it'll say there's other missing ones in the same place. Something like that, you get the idea.

However replacing JPGs with PNGs might stop Vegas crashing or not. Very hard to see how it will affect image quality unless the jpegs were very compressed and you went back to say the tiff originals and converted them to png.

Bob.
Brad C. wrote on 1/21/2009, 1:50 AM
Yeah, I knew about the replacing of pictures of the same format, going to png from jpeg will take awhile.

Actually the next time I work with this particular photographer (who shoots in RAW), I will ask him to simply convert the pics we like for the video to pngs at the same time he makes jpegs after he does his photoshop thang. Then resize them to 50% and its just about perfect.