Adobe Premiere H.264 Encoding

[creamyhorror]

Can you do a frame comparison and tell me if one is better?

Here is the raw MTS file on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuzcUMfXOhg&fmt=22
Here is a premiere duplication file on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec2_l5poYiI&fmt=22

I downloaded both files. The MTS file has been reencoded by Youtube to 14fps, but it's ~2x as long. In other words, the two videos have same number of frames. However, Youtube encoded both to around the same bitrate (2250 for Premiere vs 1900 for MTS). If the MTS video were sped up to match the Premiere video, this would double the bitrate of the MTS. This alone explains the difference in frame quality between the two.

Premiere video


MTS video


Premiere video


MTS video


Look at the grass and white hairs in all the shots. It's clear that the MTS version retains somewhat more detail. But as I said earlier, it's not a fair comparison since Youtube messed up the conversion.

I think if you upload a video with a decent bitrate (e.g. 6-8Mbps), that's all you need for Youtube. Youtube smushes it down to 2Mbps, so all the detail is lost anyway.

[aedipuss]

Or maybe, ive been encoding videos all evening, so my computer is boiling hot and slowing down. Could you do me a favor and read this thread from start to finish first? I dont see how your suggestion is an improvement on what we've already spent 3 hours doing. If I missed something obvious like the fact that premiere has presets, please let me know, but I thought we hit that in the first 4 posts.

none of the h264 presets you used are the one i did. check the screenshot of the preset i used and try it - just change the framerate to 29.97fps.

to play the video files use media player classic - mpc . light on resources and very good.

[Priapism]

Also, are you using Premiere CS4 ?

I have no "youTube Widescreen HD" option on mine ....

Here are mine:

[Priapism]

the MTS file has been reencoded by Youtube to 14fps. That's half the frames of the Premiere version. I'll do some screenshots.

Why on earth would YouTube take a higher quality file (MTS) and re-encode it to 14 frames per second, which is also lower than the lower quality file (Premiere) started with? Now im really confused.

[creamyhorror]

Why on earth would YouTube take a higher quality file (MTS) and re-encode it to 14 frames per second, which is also lower than the lower quality file (Premiere) started with? Now im really confused.

I guess it couldn't handle the input file. Isn't that what some people have observed when they tried uploading raw footage - Youtube choked on it?

See my previous post, which I've updated with screenshots and an explanation for the difference..

[Priapism]

phew.

my head hurts.

Those clips you show above are kind of blurry all over. There weren't any clear shots to compare?

Thank you for the effort though - i really do appreciate it.

[Priapism]

Hey Cream -

Check out this HD video shot with my same camera.

Pop it onto HD and then pop it into full screen and leg it go for awhile.

Do you think its equivilent in quality to my clips?

Or better? I dont trust my eyes anymore!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2e3JRbFz54

-P-

[aedipuss]

Also, are you using Premiere CS4 ?

I have no "youTube Widescreen HD" option on mine ....

Here are mine:

yes i am using pp cs4 and here are my choices-

[aedipuss]

have you checked for updates lately? the current version is 4.1.0

[creamyhorror]

Those clips you show above are kind of blurry all over. There weren't any clear shots to compare?

Both are pretty bad quality so most shots are blurry. I compare by zooming in 2x and flipping back and forth between images, and it's quite clear from there.

I'm looking at that HD vid now. Looks good, definitely better than the ones you uploaded. I'm trying to download it to check out the internals now.

edit: The download is crawling along, but from what I can tell, the scenes are mostly still shots with a few short, steady pans. Every second of still shot saves a lot of bitrate, which can be spent on making whatever movement there is look good. Once you go handheld shaky footage, all bets are off.

You can try it - put your HF-S10 on a steady surface and film a nice flower up close. Export it via Premiere. I bet when you upload it to Youtube, it'll look all nice and high-def.

[creamyhorror]

Yeah, I watched the HD video. Bitrate is ~1950Mbps, fps 25. It's full of still shots, especially at the end. These save enough bitrate for the motion scenes to look good. Even then, you can see that it looks smoothed overall, rather than detailed.

As I said, you can achieve the same effect if you use a tripod and film scenes without too much movement. Your export method doesn't won't make as much of a difference as using a tripod/steadicam will.