PLEASE help with my Vimeo Question

[Tomhgriff1]

Hi everyone,

Im in a bit of a stressful situation I have spent several months creating an online video course. I have used a mixture of Screencast o matic and Camtasia to record my screen and edit etc. The videos look perfectly clear when i play them on my computer.

But when I upload the videos to Vimeo (my video host) they lose all quality. It says the data rate should be 5000 kbit (i think thats the right term) but my videos are only uploading at 235 kbit.

I have tried using some software such as Handbreak to try and upload the data rate and it makes zero difference once it is uploaded up to Vimeo

I dont know how to fix this. Vimeo are being very unhelpful, i just get one line answers about re export the project. But i only saved each project as a completed MP4 file. I dont know if thats what they mean? Just put that MP4 file into Camtasia and re export?

I have no idea if this is the right forum to discuss this but would appreciate any help

Thanks

Tom

[sum_guy]

The MP4 you created are the best quality it's going to be, I think you are confused about the term "upload", that refers to "uploading" the file to Vimeo. Not increasing bitrate which at this point it's too late to do. If there is some option to prevent Vimeo (*I don't know) from compressing the mp4 further, that is the only possible option when uploading to Vimeo.

[Tomhgriff1]

Thank you for the reply

Would it not work if I put the mp4 file back into a video editing platform such as camtasia etc and then exported it again as a new file at a higher bit rate?

Thanks

[Cornucopia]

No, it will have a larger filesize (due to the higher bitrate), but will retain ALL the lesser quality of the lower bitrate.

As a general rule, you start with the highest quality (mountaintop) and only go downhill from there. Each drop is quality is "baked-in", so even if you raise the bitrate again, you don't raise the quality. If that were true, you could start with something with crappy quality to begin with and just keep raising the bitrate until it looked good (aka "something for nothing").

Re-export your ORIGINAL screencaps (which MAY require re-capping and/or re-editing), but this time export to to fine lossless format (HuffYUV, Lagarith, etc) or nearly lossless format (ProRes, DNxHD, Cineform). Then upload.

You could try this with a 10-15 second test clip. If Vimeo does well with it, expand it to the whole title's length. If it doesn't, you haven't wasted to much effort.

The crux of this quality crapshoot is whether Vimeo (and/or any other streaming sites) will take your upload AS-IS, or whether it is going to be re-encoding it anyway. If as-is, you can use the appropriate (and compatible) codec to optimize the uploaded clip for both quality & size. If forced re-encode, you should ALMOST ALWAYS upload a lossless/near lossless master, and then just hope for the best.

Scott

[smrpix]

What dimensions and framerate are you using? Are you clicking the HD option when you play back? My experience with vimeo has been generally favorable, so I'm curious to see what's going on here.

Please post the link.

Also remember that vimeo dynamically changes the version it plays back based on platform, browser and connection bandwidth.