Hi everyone,

For several weeks now I have been spending my time on trying to solve a render problem… in vain. I badly need a piece of professional advice. Thanks a lot in advance.

The problem concerns a music video that I was asked to create. Although I am not a professional moviemaker I love editing, so I accepted the job with pleasure.

The editing was finished last month, both the artistic and technical quality was nice on my pc… but as soon as the video was uploaded on youtube, some parts of it became blurry & pixelated. (Actually only the fades are ugly, i.e. the fade-ins, fade-outs and cross-fades; all the rest is good.)

The music video cannot be made public yet, I have to get rid of the "phantoming" first but don’t know how, and time is of the essence.

Technical details: Video camera Sony HDR-PJ810, footage AVCHD shot in 1920x1080p, at 25fps (and also a few 50fps takes for slow motions). Edited with Sony Vegas Pro 12, a few effects added such as colour correction or smooth stabilizer. Rendered at 25fps, 6Mbps and higher… rendered through the famous x264 codec which is said to be a great codec to deliver in h.264 for the web (youtu.be/lWFFCusRp7g). Project properties matching footage properties, render settings matching project properties… short, it should be working fine on youtube.

I have watched heaps of video tutorials on the subject, read a big number of forum threads, disabled the “smart resample”, made changes in the x264 configuration, raised the bit rate, lowered the bit rate, exported again, and again and again… with no improvement. I have even borrowed a friend's pc which has Sony vegas Pro 14 installed, and a stronger CPU, but the result is the same: the fades stay blurry and pixelated. It is like banging my head against a brick wall.

Is there something I’m missing, or a step I skipped? How come other videos are so perfect on youtube? I have watched vids made by complete beginners, and the quality is way better. Maybe, for my next music videos, I should buy some professional second-hand video camera which would shoot in a better format than AVCHD? I don’t know. I was told that AVCHD was a good format for Sony Vegas Pro, and that I would have amazing results on youtube (that’s why I bought it in the first place). Yet today I have read that is not a very good format for rendering and uploading to youtube. *sigh*… Too much info on the net, one doesn't know what to believe and what not to.

Vegascreativesoftware forum seems to be a serious page. Could you help me please? Any suggestion will be very appreciated. Many thanks.

DS