Video rendering and YouTube wizardry

Ezkaton

Eats Squid
Ladies.

Anybody around here a video wizard? Can you perform magic?

I've been toying around with Sony Vegas for a few months now, and the last week or two, playing around with render settings to try reduce pixellation/artifacting once uploaded to YouTube. I noticed, for example, channels like GoPro always seem to have this nice, clear 1080p video.

Example:
[video=youtube;2liYwCFTgr4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2liYwCFTgr4[/video]

I render my videos with a high bitrate and best rendering quality. The videos themselves come out looking pretty good. Not as good as the original source, due to compression, but still a lot clearer than the upload turns out... YouTube just kills it.

Is this sort of thing out of my hands? Are we at the mercy of YouTube's transcoding?

Any tips or tricks worth trying?
Been reading lots of random forums and articles, watching videos etc. on rendering tips and people asking similar questions... but I've never really been able to find a definite solution.

Most of the stuff I have discovered that looks like it might be worth a shot is up to 5 years old and doesn't turn out that good either.
I assume YouTube has changed its codecs and what not since then so it likely just doesn't apply anymore.

IT'S MAKING ME SAD, GUYS!

SAD! :drama:

EDIT: I should note I'm rendering as .mp4 - though I've been reading .h264 is better for YouTube so that will be my next test...
 
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Minlak

custom titis
To make you feel better it is not your fault....

It is youtubes fault.

They have crystal clear videos as they pay to have the channel.

I have found setting the output to be 1080p HD display is about the best you can do.
 

Ezkaton

Eats Squid
Is Vimeo any clearer?
Apparently it is, but you're required to pay $70 a year for your account if you want to upload more than 500mb a week.
I'd have to assess my average file size and usage, but as summer rolls in I'll be out on the bike a lot more and will be wanting to get more videos up.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to upload the same video to Vimeo for direct comparison in the meantime.
 

DJninja

Likes Bikes and Dirt
This is a wild guess but could it be your going over the mb/gb limit of a video and youtube is compressing it further to meet the limit? I've had similar experiences with photographs and compressing them just under the mb limit helps.
 

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
Sounds like you need a theme...be the 45 second edit guy. Or whatever it is that keeps your files under the compression toll gate. Have you tried uploading a lower quality video to see if it runs clearer (due to being smaller in size)?
 

wesdadude

ウェスド アドゥーデ
I will confess that I've never used Vegas and it's been a while since I've delivered for YouTube. However, I am a video wizard.

Vimeo has some helpful encoding guidelines and it seems YouTube has their own too although it seems to be a bit old. Vimeo accepts higher bitrates but there are restrictions on uploads for free users.

Any web delivery should be encoded to h.264, which will end up with an .mp4 extension. Let me know if you want to know about codecs, I can go quite in depth. For video use VBR 2 pass encoding (variable bit rate, encodes it twice to get better quality for lower bandwidth). For 1080p set target bit rate to 8Mbps or 12Mbps for HFR.

I don't know what processing happens on the server end so I can't really talk about that. If you keep to the guidelines hopefully it should all end up sweet.
 

Ezkaton

Eats Squid
Awesome! Very informative.
I've got a .h264 uploading at the moment to compare with the .mp4 I uploaded previously... I followed some YouTube video for the settings.

The file size, however, is more than double...
I'll check it in the morning, if it's no good I'll go back for round 4!
 

ozzybmx

taking a shit with my boobs out
I use Vegas pro 12 for rendering GoPro vids, I found this tip a while back it and was gold.

When you have finished edit your vid, alt-click on all the video clips, then right click on one of them with them all highlighted, you will see a "switches" option, click on this and you will see "smart resample" is selected as default, select "Disable resample" This gets rid of all the ghosting/blurring between frames... maybe what you are calling artifacting.
 

Ezkaton

Eats Squid
I already disable resample.

The artifacting I'm talking about is when the whole screen goes blocky.
Also, turns out the .H264 came out worse than the original .mp4!

Back to the drawing board!
 
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Ezkaton

Eats Squid
I will confess that I've never used Vegas and it's been a while since I've delivered for YouTube. However, I am a video wizard.

Vimeo has some helpful encoding guidelines and it seems YouTube has their own too although it seems to be a bit old. Vimeo accepts higher bitrates but there are restrictions on uploads for free users.

Any web delivery should be encoded to h.264, which will end up with an .mp4 extension. Let me know if you want to know about codecs, I can go quite in depth. For video use VBR 2 pass encoding (variable bit rate, encodes it twice to get better quality for lower bandwidth). For 1080p set target bit rate to 8Mbps or 12Mbps for HFR.

I don't know what processing happens on the server end so I can't really talk about that. If you keep to the guidelines hopefully it should all end up sweet.
So I got a really nice render at ~9Mbps. It uploaded just as clear as the rendered video on my PC... but it still goes super blocky at specific parts of the video, and worse so than the original file I uploaded.
I'm a bit annoyed as it took a good 5 hours to upload.

Although, I think the h.264 codec is rendering to a .avi - does that matter?

I almost think I was getting better renders out of Windows Movie Maker...

Do you have a program preference for this sort of thing?
I'm only just scraping the surface of editing in Vegas, so it won't hurt too much if I try out a new program.
 

wesdadude

ウェスド アドゥーデ
So I got a really nice render at ~9Mbps. It uploaded just as clear as the rendered video on my PC... but it still goes super blocky at specific parts of the video, and worse so than the original file I uploaded.
I'm a bit annoyed as it took a good 5 hours to upload.
Have you got some screenshots so I can see the difference? Quick thought, it may be YouTube dynamically changing your viewing resolution to match bandwidth, that would cause the image to suddenly go to shit.
Although, I think the h.264 codec is rendering to a .avi - does that matter?
YouTube prefers the .mp4 container but it shouldn't really matter. The codec is more important than the wrapper. Think of video formats as a sandwich, the codec (h.264/DNxHD/ProRes etc...) is the filling, the container (.mov/.mp4/.avi) is the bread. A ham and cheese is a ham and cheese regardless of whether it's in wholemeal or white.
I'm only just scraping the surface of editing in Vegas, so it won't hurt too much if I try out a new program.
If your output looks fine but the upload's got issues I don't think it will be an issue with your encoder. I use Adobe CS6 so my renders are through Media Encoder or direct from Premiere Pro. The h.264 will give me a .mp4 unless I specify a different format such as quicktime (quirktime for those familiar with it) and then select h.264 as the codec.

FFMpeg is another way to encode an output, you could repackage a master output or have it do your encode while your software renders. It takes temp frames as they're delivered from the renderer and then packages them into the video stream.
 

Ezkaton

Eats Squid
Have you got some screenshots so I can see the difference? Quick thought, it may be YouTube dynamically changing your viewing resolution to match bandwidth, that would cause the image to suddenly go to shit.
I deleted the upload, unfortunately.
But it happens in the same spot in each video... YouTube resolution specifically set to 720/60 (was recorded in 720), I never leave it on auto.

Might just have to suck it up and leave it.
This is the best upload I've been able to get so far.

[video=youtube;m5AFGCVb7MA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5AFGCVb7MA[/video]
 
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wesdadude

ウェスド アドゥーデ
hmmm, I'm stumped. Stats for nerds showed that the codec was indeed h.264. The blockiness seems to appear quite uniformly and only for seconds at a time, it didn't seem to correspond to dropped frames either. Are you able to download the video from YouTube? Try layering that on top of your export and then apply a difference blending mode. That should show you any differences in the two videos.
 

Ideate

Senior Member
Your footage looks good (better than mine even?). I encoded with everything maxed out and YouTube still trashed it. I did notice over time though that certain frames have improved like it's been rendering in a queue of importance based on demand and views (maybe?). I'm definitely going to reduce the bitrate from now on and uncheck the double pass render as it hardly makes a difference after YouTube's had its way.

[video=youtube;pT7o5yfacD8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT7o5yfacD8[/video]
 

ozzybmx

taking a shit with my boobs out
I made a bit of a discovery last night, the blocky screen you have issues with can be rendered out with different frame rates.

I shot a series of short videos in 1080 x 24, when I was rendering it in different ways with the background noise at different levels, I accidentally left the render frame rate setting from my template at 23.976 (IVTC Film), shown in the left window, instead of changing it to 24 (film)... which is the project setting as per right window.

The 1080 x 24 is blocky in the fast moving parts, the 1080 x 23.976 render videos are flawless.
 

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Ezkaton

Eats Squid
Interesting. However a ride video at sub-24 frames isn't ideal... it's even hard to go back to watching 30fps after recording some at 50 frames.
I used the same render settings on video sourced from a GoPro which records at a significantly higher bitrate than my SJCAM, and was recorded in 1080p/50fps.

The quality transferred to YouTube quite well.

The video a few posts above was from a GoPro at 720p/60fps and it came up shit though.

It is a mystery.
 

ozzybmx

taking a shit with my boobs out
Here's the 23.976, better than watching blocky vid. 1080 avail.

[video=youtube_share;8Kopgkf48BM]https://youtu.be/8Kopgkf48BM[/video]
 
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