Need to shave off 60 megs

CVM wrote on 11/14/2011, 9:16 PM

I have an 18 minute video that needs to be no larger than 500 MB for upload to Vimeo (currently, it is 560 megs). It was shot and edited in AVCHD 1080i, and rendered to MainConcept MP4 in Vegas Pro 10 at 720 10Mbps maximum (variable 2-pass) bitrate on Best video rendering quality.

I (stupidly) thought if I reduced the max bitrate, the size would go down. It didn't; it stayed exactly the same.

I really want the quality to be top notch with no artifacts. Do you have any suggestions for how I can reduce a bit more? I tried to render to MOV, but Vegas 10 has NEVER allowed me to. I go through the set-up and then click OK, and it does nothing (this is another problem I could use help on).

Thoughts about losing 60 megs?

Thanks,

Dave

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 11/14/2011, 9:36 PM

You will need 3.7 Mbps Average (not peak) bitrate in order to fit 18 minutes into 500 MB. Simple math.

I suggest rendering a DNxHD intermediate in Vegas and the final MP4 render in Handbrake. The tutorial below should get you started, but a 3790 Kbps 2-pass VBR render will get you close to the final size on the first try. You will be amazed at the quality.

amendegw wrote on 11/15/2011, 5:07 AM

"The tutorial below should get you started, but a 3790 Kbps 2-pass VBR render will get you close to the final size on the first try. You will be amazed at the quality. "fwiw, in HandBrake you'll need to set your bitrate in two places - the "Video" tab and the "Audio" tab. The sum of these two settings should equal the target total average bitrate for your final footage.

Or you could take the easy way out and set your HandBrake target size to 490MB.

Finally, just to add on more layer of obfuscation, Windows uses 1024 bytes/KB or 1024x1024 bytes/MB. Others (Vimeo?) may calculate this using the 1000 factor. I guess what I'm trying to say is - you may have to do some trial & error to get to the bleeding edge of Vimeo's maximum file size.

btw, I'm a huge proponent of musicvid's workflow for web video.

...Jerry

musicvid10 wrote on 11/15/2011, 9:02 AM

Thanks for adding to the thread Jerry.
You are absolutely correct that one must subtract the audio bitrate from the total to give the video bitrate, so perhaps my trial point was a bit too aggressive.

Looks like you have an older Handbrake, since the "Target Size" option was removed from the builds a few months back. The explanation was that it isn't very accurate.

BTW, the latest builds of Handbrake have two advantages for us, one being able to ingest 10-bit DNxHD and having some support for ProRes 422, the other to flag "Same as Source" frame rate as constant, not variable.

If finished file size wasn't a consideration, using "Constant Quality" would get the job done almost twice as fast. But for the bandwidth-conscious such as uploaders and web hosts, a calculated bitrate and 2-pass encode is going to be the most likely to succeed on first attempt, but even that can vary +/- 5% or so.

So my quick numbers may result in a first trial that is too large for Vimeo.

I believe that almost everybody except writable media and drive manufacturers are using 1 MB (technically MiB) = 1,048,576 bytes, including Windows, Google, and Vimeo.

amendegw wrote on 11/15/2011, 9:11 AM

"Looks like you have an older Handbrake..."First, I apologize for taking this thread off topic. If the discussion continues, I'll create a new thread.

I'm using the HandBrake "Release Version - 0.9.5" Is it a good idea to keep up with the nightly builds? I've been hesitant to do that - fearing bugs. Is there a particulary stable recent version. What is the best strategy for updates?

...Jerry

musicvid10 wrote on 11/15/2011, 9:56 AM

Jerry,
I only update to a nightly when there is something that interests me.
That being said, they have been very diligent about releasing only one change per svn, so if something goes awry it is usually fixed the next day. Some of the nightlies are there to keep up with changes in the x264 and ffmpeg code bases, and others are feature tweaks and minor bug fixes.

So although I'm far from compulsive about keeping up, I do keep my eyes open for things like improved DNxHD support, new audio options or x264 updates, etc.

There is an RSS feed of their "trac" timeline showing every little change in the main trunk that I check periodically. I am currently on svn 4311 which is now a few weeks old, but contains several cumulative improvements over the 0.9.5 release, including better support for certain formats.
https://trac.handbrake.fr/timeline?milestone=on&ticket=on&changeset=on&wiki=on&max=50&authors=&daysback=90&format=rss