All else being equal, the notion that VP9 retains better quality than x264 at the shamefully low bitrates YouTube serves has been tested and confirmed by others. But all else is not equal, is it?

What do you mean by this? Anyways, I screenshot the same frame from both streams (it was actually 1 frame off, so I readjusted), this is the result.

http://imgur.com/a/PPy7C

I also disabled image compression on imgur, so that wouldn't be a variable.

Edit: That looks... better. I lack the knowledge to name just "how" it is better, but it undeniably is.

If this is good enough for you, great. Otherwise please specify something, saying

I already know the methodology I would use because I've done it before, but it will be interesting to see what you come up with.

doesn't really help me prove my point. Sounds more like you don't want this to be true for whatever reason, or you find enjoyment in being purposely mysterious around the matter. I am very confused about your approach to this thread. I am genuinely just trying to comprehend and learn here, I find your responses a bit uncalled for, honestly. On the other hand, Nick's responses have been much more humane, if I may say so. If there is a better way to prove my point across please do tell, don't imply there is and then just omit it. I would prefer not having an answer at all, if what I do get is basically a (pardon the expression) mockery of my knowledge.

I mean no offense with my words by the way. I might not be expressing myself in such a way that would imply so, but I am trying my best to stay polite (much like I am trying my best to achieve good quality). My English dictionary is still limited, so excuse my lack of better terms for this type of reply.

Thank you.

So I went to my most recent video that was being delivered as an AVC stream by YouTube:

It's only 720p, as that was all I uploaded. In Google Chrome I went to the Enhancements tab and the video auto-played. I paused it, dragged the little circular blue "playhead" to the left (i.e. 00:00), and clicked Save. In other words, no edits. I then got the message "This might take a while. While edits are processed, users will continue to see the current version of your video." I clicked Save again and was returned to my "Videos" page where the thumbnail was overlaid with "Edit in progress". I played the video and at the top I got the message: "Sit tight! Your video edits are being processed. Come back to this page in a little while." A couple of hours later I returned to the video and found that it is now being delivered as VP9 and does in fact look "better" than it did before. Unfortunately I didn't screen-grab or download the AVC version for a comparison.

I will experiment with a couple more.

I suggest you try this trick on your video below and see if it works. Grab a still from a messed up portion before and see if it's improved after (if you get a VP9 stream).

As for "A/B testing", I'm not sure if I'm using the term correctly. I meant putting 2 versions of a file on different tracks on the Vegas timeline, lining them up frame-for-frame, and comparing them by muting/unmuting the upper track while monitoring at Best (full) preview setting.

That's exactly what's happened to that video! I am waiting for the codec change as I type this. Same things that popped up on your screen, you are a savior ahah. That beats any other method by far.

Yeah I thought about that when you talked about A/B testing, I wasn't too sure. I couldn't open the WebM video in Vegas though, so I had to do something more crude to compare (I firstly tried to use a normal video player and quickly switching in between, but that didn't cut it, so I had to pause and grab a screenshot of it, pasting in Photoshop, and quickly chaging visibility to see if there was any pixelation - I also picked the highest motion timeframe, this was the result from my previous post: http://imgur.com/a/PPy7C ).

Your video looks very good indeed, it's not even 60fps, I am quite impressed honestly.

By the time I finished writing this post... it is done! The video is now being delivered as VP9! I am trying to set your reply as "the solution" but it's not letting me*. I am sure any and every single one looking for this information would benefit from it. Thanks again for your amazing insight, Nick.

Indeed, the video looks much better now, just like in the testings.

*it let me now.

Strange. I did the trick on another one a few hours ago, after taking still frame grabs from the AVC version to compare, but no change to VP9 yet:

Anyway I may add this to the FAQ post about AVC rendering. Would like to try the alternative Google Drive trick first.

Clint, now you're thinking for yourself, instead of immersing yourself in Internet minutiae, and provoking that response from you was my only goal in being "mysterious." Forgive me, I'm a teacher.

Welcome to the forums! With your active mind and persistence with details, you will be a great addition to the discussions here as you learn about the spiders' nest called nonlinear editing. I'm certain Nick agrees with this; otherwise he would not be investing all of this time to help you find less destructive methods to reach your goals.

Now that Nick has shown it possible to invoke VP9 on Youtube, which is known to be better than avc, WITHOUT ALL THE HORRIBLE QUALITY LOSSES FROM PRE-EMPTIVE SOFTWARE UPSCALING, I am again on board with the discussion, and will watch carefully where it goes as you and Nick (who is my teacher) explore ways to use it consistently and effectively.

Until YouTube changes it again, that is...

Until I have time to take part in testing, I plan to just be a fly on the wall (American slang for "silent observer").

Now you should understand my quote better; what you read on the Internet is filled with garbage, speculation, fantasy, and just plain delusion, and it's all because everyone is too damn lazy to test their assumptions! However, if one of these storytellers can get just one other person to agree with them, they call it a "sensation."

Best Regards,

Streams   Video: 00:00:24,633, 60,000 fps progressive, 1920x1080x12, AVC   Audio: 00:00:24,650, 48.000 Hz; Stereo, AAC

Here's one for Magix; are both the Overwatch and OBS output being reported in Vegas as 4 bits per channel?

Which of course is ridiculous, but raises the question of whether such downgrading is actually taking place?

Histos, anyone?

@Musicvid I see ahah. I tend to be a bit lazy, not necessarily by nature, it's just my machine and internet connection are both quite outdated for modern standards, thus it takes me ages to test everything like I want to, so I try to optimize my tests. Glad that one is sorted out.

What does your last reply mean? Gosh I really know little about this.

By the way, just to make things better, I tried editing something where I used about 12 video tracks (they are all just stationary pngs with transparent background stacked on top of each other, but stacking them on a single video track doesn't show the one(s) below, if there's a better way please do tell), Vegas crashes mid render (actually, more like very early render - usually before the 5 minute mark).

Problem Description
   Application Name:    VEGAS Pro
   Application Version: Version 14.0 (Build 270) 64-bit
   Problem:             Unmanaged Exception (0xc0000005)
   Fault Module:        
   Fault Address:       0x000000002F5DD270
   Fault Offset:        0x000000002F5DD270

Fault Process Details
   Process Path:        C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 14.0\vegas140.exe
   Process Version:     Version 14.0 (Build 270) 64-bit
   Process Description: VEGAS Pro
   Process Image Date:  2017-06-12 (Mon Jun 12) 14:05:46

Googled unmanaged exception, but those were only startup errors, and the only one that had an actual render error fixed it by resetting settings. Didn't cut it for me.

I'm guessing it's the high video track number, so... how do I reduce that? How do I add multiple image files with transparent backgrounds in one video track? I need to add exactly 12 images, if that makes a difference.

1 video track is, well, the video itself, 6 images are sprites from a game, 6 other images are text from that same game (that need to be in video tracks because those might change mid-gameplay and thus I edit them on the fly), 1 video track for other random things I'd need to use (onscreen temporary messages using media generators, for example), plus 3 audio tracks.

That would total to 14 video tracks and 3 audio tracks. Is that too much for Vegas?

Not too much for Vegas; did you post your system specs? (tl;dr)

Not too much for Vegas; did you post your system specs? (tl;dr)

They are in the main post, but:

i5 3570k @ 4GHz

MSi 670 PE OC (2GB) (which shouldn't matter since CUDA rendering is disabled)

8GB 1600MHz Corsair ram

If you need anything else let me know :) I tried rebooting, or rebuilding the veg file from scratch, it hangs after a while.

There are guys here that can troubleshoot this kind of error better than me.

System may be a bit light, but shouldn't crash on that project. Got plenty of space left on your hard drive?

There are guys here that can troubleshoot this kind of error better than me.

System may be a bit light, but shouldn't crash on that project. Got plenty of space left on your hard drive?

Yeah it seems to be the program hanging, not my PC, which is weird. CPU usage is limited to 93±2% to prevent crashing / making the PC unusable. I have roughly 300GB available, which should be more than enough (~35 minutes 720p60 25Mb/s avg bitrate and 40Mb/s bitrate cap). Should I try lowering bitrates?

Also, what did you mean with the "bits per channel" reply? That's out of my grasp.

Streams   Video: 00:00:24,633, 60,000 fps progressive, 1920x1080x12, AVC   Audio: 00:00:24,650, 48.000 Hz; Stereo, AAC

Here's one for Magix; are both the Overwatch and OBS output being reported in Vegas as 4 bits per channel?

Which of course is ridiculous, but raises the question of whether such downgrading is actually taking place?

Histos, anyone?

 

This one. Sorry, on my phone and really limited.

It's a question for the Magix team. Your video is 8 bit.

No specific ideas on that crash I'm afraid but the general stability FAQ post is here: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-troubleshooting-crashing-and-stability--104785/

So overnight the video in my last comment converted over to VP9 after I did the "Enhancements" trick yesterday. I downloaded the before (AVC) and after (VP9) 1080p video-only streams from keepvid.com and remuxed them in ffmpeg so Vegas would accept them.

The AVC stream was 645MB. The VP9 stream is 602MB. This video is not the best example for comparing them, because the source was shot on all manner of dodgy devices and is not very clean. I would say the VP9 version has very slightly more detail and very slightly less pixellation than the AVC version, but I had to pixel-peep a lot to see it on this video. Anyway, it's certainly no worse overall, so I think this trick is probably worthwhile, especially on a cleaner source like a high-quality game-play or animation recording.

One thing I'm fairly certain of is that the new VP9 stream was rendered from my original upload, and not from YouTube's AVC version, which would of course be a bad thing due to an extra generation of quality loss.

No specific ideas on that crash I'm afraid but the general stability FAQ post is here: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-troubleshooting-crashing-and-stability--104785/

So overnight the video in my last comment converted over to VP9 after I did the "Enhancements" trick yesterday. I downloaded the before (AVC) and after (VP9) 1080p video-only streams from keepvid.com and remuxed them in ffmpeg so Vegas would accept them.

The AVC stream was 645MB. The VP9 stream is 602MB. This video is not the best example for comparing them, because the source was shot on all manner of dodgy devices and is not very clean. I would say the VP9 version has very slightly more detail and very slightly less pixellation than the AVC version, but I had to pixel-peep a lot to see it on this video. Anyway, it's certainly no worse overall, so I think this trick is probably worthwhile, especially on a cleaner source like a high-quality game-play or animation recording.

One thing I'm fairly certain of is that the new VP9 stream was rendered from my original upload, and not from YouTube's AVC version, which would of course be a bad thing due to an extra generation of quality loss.

Thank you for that link, but except scannow in CMD, I have done everything listed there. I will be able to try things out in roughly 13-14 hours.

Yeah I figured your video would take a bit more because it was over 20 minutes long, while my clip was ~24 seconds. I'm very glad to hear about more VP9 testing! I might have to learn ffmpeg and do my own tests that way, sounds way easier than what I was doing.

About my Vegas crash: it doesn't crash on shorter or less complex projects, at least when I tried yesterday.

Hey people, I have been very busy with IRL things and I completely abandoned editing for a bit, I just couldn't.

I tried to fix my problem on Vegas 14 to no avail.

Let me explain to you:

My project uses 12 "image" tracks (video tracks, obviously, but those are static, and there is probably a better way to do this), 1 main video track, 2 audio tracks, and eventually 1 or 2 more video tracks to have text on screen when needed (subtitles) or other random stuff that might be useful in some instances.

Issue is, Vegas 14 always hangs at around 1/10th of the render for "unmanaged exception"

I tried the new Vegas 15 (I'm in my 30 day trial at the moment, might buy it soon), and it, surprisingly, crashed too; after setting it up like my Vegas 14 though, it, even more surprisingly, didn't crash anymore.

Thing is, the render is nearing 7 hours now (!!) to complete. Which is admittedly, a bit absurd. https://i.imgur.com/87iVHwL.png?1

Now to my setup, which is probably something that could be resolved easily and I'm just too dumb to realize.

I am editing a Pokémon video. If any of you are unfamiliar with Pokémon, it's an RPG much like Final Fantasy, except you make little animals fight for you, and they gain experience (which translates to levels) and they might evolve in different forms. Why is this important? Because I have an overlay video track above the actual video, that shows my team of 6 Pokémon with their current level; meaning I have 6 video tracks with nothing but a transparent .png in the right spot to make the overlay of my team, and 6 more to show their respective levels, all of which can (and will, just not in this first episode) change randomly throughout the video, and I have to be able to edit them all singlehandedly.

Now, is there a way to put multiple .png files that cover different parts of the screen on the same video track? Because so far, if there is a way, I haven't figured it out. Either one goes "below" the other, and even though it should show anyway (because, well, transparency and all) one just disappears.

Am I missing something? Any help with this solution, or any solution that would work, would be very much appreciated.

Again, sorry for disappearing for a bit, but I don't think I could've done much else.

Do you think I should open a different thread, since my original problem is fixed? This isn't relevant to the OP anymore, but I guess it doesn't matter too much.

...Now, is there a way to put multiple .png files that cover different parts of the screen on the same video track?...

Not really. You can investigate nested projects.