Why Handbrake?

OldSmoke wrote on 6/12/2013, 5:55 PM

I hope I am not touching something that is old but I have been trying to figure out why so many users are going the Handbrake route to get their footage onto the Internet. I have made myself a small test project with 10sec. of the "Bell Nuite HD Testchart" which I rendered out to three different formats: MC-AVC for Internet, Sony AVC for Internet and DNxHD for Handbrake. When I process the mov file with Handbrake, following the well know tutorial, and bring all clips back on top of each into an empty Vegas project, I find that the DNxHD-Handbrake result is actually the worst.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39278380/handbrake.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39278380/mc-cuda.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39278380/testchart.tif

The MC image is very close to the actual chart but the other seems to blend the lines in area "1".

Maybe I am missing something but I played with this or quite a while and I am certain I followed the tutorial precisely. I also notice that the handbrake mp4 file seems a bit shorter on the timeline then all other files. The DNxHD mov file however has the same length.

Am I missing something or is my test wrong? I also rendered a short 2:30min clip from the last figure skating event out via DNxHD and Handbrake to see if there is any noticeable difference but I just can't see it. Also the files size of MC AVC and Sony AVC are actually smaller then Handbrake one.
My source footage is HDV from a Z5U if that makes any difference.

Here is a link to the whole project if someone is interested: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/17x60zx07c5ti13/mrA0XnHzWj

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Comments

MikeLV wrote on 2/15/2014, 12:47 PM

As I understand at a very basic level, the reason to use Handbrake is when you need to resize a video for the final encode. If you use Vegas to do the resizing, then the quality is not good. If you use the Handbrake tutorial, then the resizing is much better quality. My question is if there's a plugin for Vegas that improves its resizing quality? Maybe not AS good as Handbrake but at least close? In the near future, I'm going to be producing a lot of long-content videos which will be sold for commercial download (not streaming) and I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about it..

Marc S wrote on 2/15/2014, 5:28 PM

Another reason Sony needs to address this is because many times you have multiple camera sources some of which are in 1080i and others in 1080p and you need quality deinterlacing directly on the interlaced clips. My current workaround is you use the yadif free plugin someone ported to Vegas but Vegas should be able to do this in program at the same quality.

musicvid10 wrote on 2/15/2014, 5:56 PM

Sony doesn't use open source libraries natively. Its a potential COI situation.
There are no "affordable" commercial libraries that approach Handbrake decomb or Lanczos sizing algorithms for quality and speed.

That being said, the Vegas SDK is readily available. Open source libraries can be written into Vegas plugins, as was done with Yadif. All it takes is someone with the time and initiative to write them .
;?)

Laurence wrote on 2/18/2014, 7:55 AM

I just want to mention here that I now use XDcam mp4 at 35Mbps to feed Handbrake. I was getting occasional audio glitches with DNxHD and with XDcam mxf I was only getting one of the two stereo audio channels. XDcam mp4 works really well and in spite of being far more compact than DNxHD, I don't see a difference in my Handbrake renders.

musicvid10 wrote on 2/18/2014, 9:30 AM

Just curious, how do Xdcam render times compare with DNxHD?

Laurence wrote on 2/18/2014, 9:44 AM

Another thing about Handbrake is that if you use a constant quality of about 15 and an audio bitrate of 320 for your Youtube and Vimeo uploads, you will get really amazing quality. I don't think it would look or sound noticeably better online if you uploaded uncompressed.

Another thing about XDcam mp4 is that if space and time is no object and your project is progressive, or your project is very short, you can upload the XDcam format just fine. I usually go through Handbrake at a high bitrate just to knock the size down to 720p which is far more likely to play back smoothly on the majority of systems than 1080p.

MikeLV wrote on 2/18/2014, 11:40 AM

Laurence, thanks for the info. One other question - Do you do the levels correction step when using the XDCAM mp4 as the intermediate before handbrake? Or does anything other than what you mentioned about the constant quality change regarding the tutorial?

Laurence wrote on 2/18/2014, 7:01 PM

XDcam mp4 format gets the levels right without any extra effort. Just encode with levels in the standard 16-235 range.

MikeLV wrote on 2/19/2014, 12:02 PM

That's what I meant, the levels correction step in the tutorial that caps blacks at 16 and whites at 235. If it's MP4 format, and you use HB to go to MP4 format again, that won't cause any issues with playback on VLC or WMP?