Vegas to Youtube, Vimeo, Web -- A New Look

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 1/14/2011, 9:18 AM
The Youtube site has an excellent Help library and many video tutorials that address basic uploading questions . . .
;?)

Marco. wrote on 1/14/2011, 10:15 AM
Youtube will always rerender but it usually does not touch the frame rate in cases where it is 24p, 25p, 29,97p or 30p.

Marco
VMP wrote on 1/14/2011, 12:57 PM
Thanks for that info!

I have uploaded two identical H.264 AVC/AAC test clips:

640x480 25 fps PAL

720x550 25 fps PAL

Just to see which one gets the '480p' view option.

Recenlty my videos are not getting that '480p' view option, they are all stuck at '360p' or below.

The last video that has got the '480p' option was an uploaded Mpeg-2 CBR 8000 MBPS clip (DVD setting) two months ago.

The others which are still 360P are AVC/AAC MP4 clips.
Maybe that has something to do with that.
It seems that it takes a long time for Youtube to release the 480P version so I do not know how long to wait.

VMP
musicvid10 wrote on 1/14/2011, 3:06 PM
Hi v_gts,
Would you perhaps like to start a separate thread for these questions?

I think you will get more responses that way, because your uploading questions might get lost or overlooked in this thread, which is less general and more about DNxHD and Handbrake x264 encoding. We'd be glad to respond to your questions under their own topic, where they will get the attention they deserve.

I can see where my choice of title wording may have seemed like it was a general discussion thread, and I apologize for that.
musicvid10 wrote on 1/14/2011, 3:16 PM
For comparison to the DNxHD / Handbrake version, I uploaded the same project rendered to Mainconcept AVC, 8Mbs VBR (2-pass), 720p, Interpolate, Best, in Vegas 8.0c.

[EDIT] It should be noted that newer versions of Vegas use an updated version of the Mainconcept encoder. Nick has indicated he will upload a similar render using Vegas Pro 10 at some point.



Not "everyone" may agree that the Handbrake version is better, but while comparing both at 720p, one should look for overall sharpness, static detail, motion detail, purity in subtle as well as saturated colors, and the indefinable "pop" factor.

Please understand that differences you see are not due to the codecs alone! Vegas uses blend or interpolate to deinterlace, while Handbrake uses modified yadif. Vegas uses bicubic resize, and Handbrake uses lanczos3.
NickHope wrote on 1/15/2011, 3:41 AM
The Sony AVC version's really not so bad, and definitely the way to go for churning out "information" videos as opposed to something you want to look as perfect as possible. Great project Mark, and I'm looking forward to your full tutorial. It's going to get a lot of traffic! I hope to get around to doing more tests and a comparative tutorial for my Frameserver/AVISynth/TDeint/Lanczos/Mergui/x264/YouTube method at some point. Will be interesting to see how it compares. I must admit this colorspace stuff feels like doing A-level maths all over again!
musicvid10 wrote on 1/15/2011, 10:41 AM
Nick, without your input (re PC levels in AVISynth) I never would have started investigating these colorspace issues in depth. So you are already a valuable contributor to this discussion.
musicvid10 wrote on 1/15/2011, 10:48 AM
Here is a new set of Advanced settings in Handbrake that accomplishes a number of things:

-- Gets rid of some garbage that was only there for slight compression reasons
-- ENABLES THE HANDBRAKE FILES TO BE OPENED IN VEGAS
-- Better conforms the 709 levels in the output (b-frame spillover is reduced)
-- "Might" eliminate the frame corruption with HB discussed in another thread

I will add this to the previous tutorial once we are sure it's optimal [done]. Also note that these settings are optimized for quality, not necessarily compression.

NickHope wrote on 1/16/2011, 2:26 AM
Mark, where is the "previous" tutorial you mention? What default values have you changed those red-circled values away from?

FYI, Megui has a lot of templates that the developer works really hard on perfecting as the x264 codec evolves. The current one that I would probably base YouTube uploads on is called "x264: Unrestricted (DXVA) Very High Quality". (Edit: Actually it's from an old version of MeGUI and has been superseded). From what I can tell, that template's comparative settings to the ones you've changed in Handbrake are:

P-frame Weighted Prediction: "Smart" (as opposed to "Disabled" or "Blind")
B-Pyramid: "Disabled"
Deblocking Strength: 0
Deblocking Threshold: 0

The full x264 command line that template invokes is pretty short, so it's not far from x264 defaults. Note that it's quality-based (which I would change to bitrate-based for YT uploads):

program --crf 20.0 --b-pyramid none --trellis 0 --output "output" "input" 


(Edit: I later remembered that this command line is only for the first pass of a 2-pass VBR. Up to date settings are further down the thread.)

I can upload screenshots of the x264 settings in this template if it would help.

The last Megui template I used for a YouTube HD upload was based on an older Megui template from a year or two ago (and older x264 codec). It had a little deblocking, along with some other mysterious differences that you can see in the x264 command line that it invokes:

P-frame Weighted Prediction: "Smart"
B-Pyramid: "Disabled"
Deblocking Strength: -1
Deblocking Threshold: -1

program --level 4.1 --pass 2 --bitrate 5000 --stats ".stats" --deblock -1:-1 --b-adapt 2 --b-pyramid none --ref 4 --vbv-bufsize 50000 --vbv-maxrate 50000 --me umh --direct auto --subme 6 --trellis 2 --output "output" "input" 


From what I remember, the videos in this playlist were based on this, but they're not very useful as references since I'm fairly sure I would have uploaded levels outside of sRGB in them.

Edit: Adding those useful bookmarks from the other thread in here so I can find them again later (lol can no longer find anything in my own browser bookmarks)...
Tutorial: x264 presets/tunes and HandBrake
X264 Settings
musicvid10 wrote on 1/16/2011, 5:20 PM
Nick,
The original link to my HB settings got buried halfway up the thread. Here it is as revised.

Use the Normal profile as your starting point.

http://ovationplayers.com/yttut/Thumbnails.html

It will take me a while to get through your last post, but I'm sure I'll have some questions. Thanks as always!
musicvid10 wrote on 1/16/2011, 5:29 PM
Nick,
Two quick observations on your settings. Although p-weighting is supposed to help fades especially, having it "on" garbles lots of decoders, including Vegas, Apple, VLC, and even Youtube occasionally as Jerry found out, especially at higher bitrates. So it is "off" in my latest preset. I like to be able to bring x264 encodes back into Vegas to check levels and frame-by-frame comparisons and play them in VLC.

I agree with the choice to leave b-pyramid out of the soup. What it does is allow b-frames to become reference frames for new b-frames, and I think inbreeding is probably unhealthy even in this context. Removing them stopped some of the chroma spillage in my test renders.

One thing that Handbrake is doing differently than MeGUI is the decomb filter. It's using yadif, McDeint, and EED12 in some rather complicated way. I'm pretty much at a loss to find interlace artifacting with the default setting in 0.9.5

My big takeaway from the last week of tests is that so many of the x264 options are just for the sake of small compression gains, and do nothing for quality, save to compromise it in some cases.

I have run some tests today with the deblocking loop disabled (no-deblock=1 in Handbrake), and I can see no difference, even in near-threshold FTB, but having it off seems to give a slight sharpness increase. Note that every piece of literature written about x264 says turning off deblocking is "not recommended" (0,0 Deblocking is not zero, but the default level).
NickHope wrote on 1/16/2011, 8:37 PM
So the thing that fixed amendegw's garbled frames was turning off 'Weighted P Frames' and 'Pyramidal B Frames' as opposed to a change in the deblocking? (i.e. those values were ON in the previous iteration of your tutorial?) Sorry to be pedantic. Just making sure I understand because I missed the original settings.

Re deblocking, have you noticed any difference between 0,0 and -2,-1?

The Handbrake decomb filter does sound advanced, but I bet it could be more or less approximated in an AVIsynth script. I do like frameserving as opposed to rendering a DNxHD intermediate, so I'll be interested to put Handbrake's decomb filter up against TDeint etc. and see if there are any differences in output.
musicvid10 wrote on 1/16/2011, 9:01 PM
So the thing that fixed amendegw's garbled frames was turning off 'Weighted P Frames' and 'Pyramidal B Frames' as opposed to a change in the deblocking?
Yes, as well as being able to view in Vegas and VLC on my modest notebook.

Re deblocking, have you noticed any difference between 0,0 and -2,-1?
Yes, -2,-1 (which I kept from an earlier version) is slightly sharper. The higher numbers (3,3) are used for x264 animation preset and CG with solid colors.

The renewed interest in decombing since Donald Graft's work over a decade ago is going to benefit everyone, and the fact that the most progress is being made in open-source projects is encouraging.
NickHope wrote on 1/16/2011, 9:17 PM
Ah, I've just clicked that -2,-1 is LESS deblocking and therefore sharper (duh... what's a couple of little minus signs between friends anyway... need more coffee!)
musicvid10 wrote on 1/16/2011, 9:37 PM
Enjoy your coffee, I'm going to bed now (14 hours behind you).
;?)
amendegw wrote on 1/17/2011, 2:55 AM
"So the thing that fixed amendegw's garbled frames was turning off 'Weighted P Frames' and 'Pyramidal B Frames' as opposed to a change in the deblocking? (i.e. those values were ON in the previous iteration of your tutorial?) Sorry to be pedantic. Just making sure I understand because I missed the original settings."The answer to that question is "yes", those were the only two settings that were changed to fix the garbling (is that a word?).

If it helps at all, here is the MediaInfo data for each render:
Garbled
Fixed

I used WinMerge to compare the settings; here's the changed items:
Garbled: Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Fixed: Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames

Garbled: Encoding settings : b_pyramid=2 /weightp=2 /keyint_min=30 /
Fixed: Encoding settings : b_pyramid=0 /weightp=0 /keyint_min=29 /

Does this help?
...Jerry

System Model:     Alienware M18 R1
System:           Windows 11 Pro
Processor:        13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13980HX, 2200 Mhz, 24 Core(s), 32 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Memory: 64.0 GB
Display Adapter:  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU (16GB), Nvidia Studio Driver 566.14 Nov 2024
Overclock Off

Display:          1920x1200 240 hertz
Storage (8TB Total):
    OS Drive:       NVMe KIOXIA 4096GB
        Data Drive:     NVMe Samsung SSD 990 PRO 4TB
        Data Drive:     Glyph Blackbox Pro 14TB

Vegas Pro 22 Build 194

Cameras:
Canon R5 Mark II
Canon R3
Sony A9

musicvid10 wrote on 1/17/2011, 9:08 AM
Thanks for documenting this, Jerry. It's valuable information.

"garbling (is that a word?)"
Sure, Jerry. Along with "garbleness" and "garblement."

We seem to be trying to balance quality, compression, and of course playability in different situations. For instance, iPod users will have to dumb down the settings even more. Although my interest is maximizing quality for upstream services, your goal of maximizing compression for site playback will have a different sweet spot, and please post your findings here. The documentation linked above and the presets that come with HB provide some salient starting points for individual situations.

On your settings -- umh rather than hex Motion Estimation might give a theoretical advantage in motion detail without adding much to the render time. I don't know if it's anything one could actually see, as my first uploads were done with hex.
musicvid10 wrote on 1/17/2011, 10:22 AM
"I'll be interested to put Handbrake's decomb filter up against TDeint etc. and see if there are any differences in output. "

A search over at Handbrake indicates their is lots of interest among the developers about using TDeint/TIVTC instead of EED12 (which is by the same author). Perhaps this is going to be part of the much-awaited Decomb3. Will keep an eye on it and let you know.
musicvid10 wrote on 1/20/2011, 8:51 AM
Well, Jerry (amendegw) has done us all proud.

http://www.jazzythedog.com/testing/dnxhd/getvideo.aspx

He is hosting the DNxHD Intermediate (1.9GB Zipped) used in this project, as well as links to the Vimeo version, his own Low Bit version (which isn't bad!), and my Handbrake settings tutorial.

RE the DNxHD -- it's less than an hour download on my "pretty fast" connection, and I would love to see others' best efforts for comparison, along with your methods and settings. To be fair, make it 720p, and around 8Mbs, plus or minus.

I am especially interested in seeng a MeGUI encode -- got time Nick?

amendegw wrote on 1/20/2011, 10:22 AM
"Well, Jerry (amendegw) has done us all proud."Thanks, musicvid, but as I mentioned in our personal emails, you did all the creative stuff - my contribution was just to spend a couple hours whipping up a webpage.

That said, I have a question for the group. On this page, I could not embed musicvid's Vimeo video in HD. I Googled the issue and could not readily find a solution. Does anyone know how to embed a Vimeo video in HD?

...Jerry

System Model:     Alienware M18 R1
System:           Windows 11 Pro
Processor:        13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13980HX, 2200 Mhz, 24 Core(s), 32 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Memory: 64.0 GB
Display Adapter:  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU (16GB), Nvidia Studio Driver 566.14 Nov 2024
Overclock Off

Display:          1920x1200 240 hertz
Storage (8TB Total):
    OS Drive:       NVMe KIOXIA 4096GB
        Data Drive:     NVMe Samsung SSD 990 PRO 4TB
        Data Drive:     Glyph Blackbox Pro 14TB

Vegas Pro 22 Build 194

Cameras:
Canon R5 Mark II
Canon R3
Sony A9

TeetimeNC wrote on 1/20/2011, 4:46 PM
That said, I have a question for the group. On this page, I could not embed musicvid's Vimeo video in HD. I Googled the issue and could not readily find a solution. Does anyone know how to embed a Vimeo video in HD?

I think embedded HD is only supported for pro Vimeo accounts. Is musicvid's account standard or pro?

/jerry

musicvid10 wrote on 1/20/2011, 5:10 PM
It's a standard account, and I'm not able to upgrade at this time. However, the original video is available for download, and I have no objection to someone hosting it on their Vimeo "Plus" account.
NickHope wrote on 1/20/2011, 10:50 PM
>> I am especially interested in seeng a MeGUI encode -- got time Nick? <<

Nope, but when has that ever stopped me from procrastinating...

Downloading the zip file now. 6 hours to go (I'm in Bangkok). I have no idea if AviSynth will open the DNxHD file. Would be interested in frameserving off the Vegas timeline from the original footage. How did you get all of those clips and how could they be got to me? (I get the feeling I missed a thread where you asked for them... could you link me pls so I know how the project was born).
amendegw wrote on 1/21/2011, 2:45 AM
@Nick Hope:" How did you get all of those clips and how could they be got to me?"musicvid,

If you could do a "Save Project with Media", zip it up and ftp it to the account I gave you; I'd be happy to put a download link on the webpage. That's gotta be much smaller than the DNxHD render.

...Jerry

System Model:     Alienware M18 R1
System:           Windows 11 Pro
Processor:        13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13980HX, 2200 Mhz, 24 Core(s), 32 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Memory: 64.0 GB
Display Adapter:  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU (16GB), Nvidia Studio Driver 566.14 Nov 2024
Overclock Off

Display:          1920x1200 240 hertz
Storage (8TB Total):
    OS Drive:       NVMe KIOXIA 4096GB
        Data Drive:     NVMe Samsung SSD 990 PRO 4TB
        Data Drive:     Glyph Blackbox Pro 14TB

Vegas Pro 22 Build 194

Cameras:
Canon R5 Mark II
Canon R3
Sony A9