jerky pans and zooms of stills in youtube video

ronhurt wrote on 4/6/2009, 3:04 PM

I apologize if anyone saw this post on the cow, but I didn't get a response there, so here goes:

Hi, Would someone take a look at this video in HQ

and perhaps suggest how I can smoothen the pans and zooms on my stills. I used large scans and lots of fast deep panning and zooming, as you can see. Did I overdo what youtube is capable of producing?

My project was
1920x1080
1.000 square pixel aspect ratio
frame rate 29.97
8-bit pixel format,
Gaussian blur
Blended fields.

Most of the stills are jpg scans, about 3000x2000.
I rendered to: Main Concept mp4
640x360
Variable bit rate (max 1,500,000, average 1,350,000 bps)
framerate 30 (allow source to adjust frame rate is checked)
1 reference frame
1.000 pixel aspect ratio)

The rendered mp4 file runs smoothly on my computer, so I can't be sure whether it's the project settings, .jpg sizes, bandwith, monitor or computer speed issue. Also, the regular youtube flv version runs much smoother.

Thanks in advance

Ron Hurtibise
Online Multimedia Editor
Daytona Beach News-Journal

ron.hurtibise@news-jrnl.com

Comments

farss wrote on 4/6/2009, 4:02 PM

Youtube and others use compression schemes that have interframe compression. If there's too many pixels different between frames the compression fails with the limited bandwidth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression

Fast zooms and pans are not a good thing to have in video anyway unless you want your audience to start heaving.

Bob.

ronhurt wrote on 4/6/2009, 4:58 PM

I'm not afraid of my audience heaving......no one who has seen the video complained about becoming dizzy :)
I see these fast pans and zooms all over television, so I believe viewers are used to it in certain situations.
I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on how I can produce it so it will look smoother in youtube.
Thanks
Ron

Jim H wrote on 4/6/2009, 5:51 PM

I think the video is very watchable even though you have those jerky sections at the beginning. I have the same problems with Youtube and HD stuff. That's why Vimeo is my main outlet for videos I care about.

musicvid10 wrote on 4/6/2009, 7:23 PM

Try rendering at 30fps instead of 29.970.
I think Youtube HQ is 30fps, and Standard Q is 15fps.

No promises, but if that smooths out the jumpy pan/zooms at the outset, the occasional drops on the 29.970 video will be a lot less noticeable.

Note: I have not tested this, it's just a hunch.