Still images from Camtasia to Premiere

[federomano]

Hi, ive searched this problem in the forum but havent found any answer to it. Maybe because its not a problem i could easily define, or because of my bad english, anyways, sorry about that.

The thing is ive recorded a Power Point presentation with Camtasia, and encoded it for re editing with Premiere, for adding some intro animation and other little stuff i cant do in Camtasia. The original mp4 (h264) video generated by Camtasia is 160mb aprox for 1hr video, and it looks very fine, but when i produce in Premiere, things get ugly. Ive used the same codec (h264-mp4) but if i want the video to have the same filesize (160mb) i have to lower the min bitrate to 0.3, and the video has constant blurry images each 1,5 sec, like heartbeats. You can see an example here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51216709/prueba.mp4 watch the image on top left, you will see what i say.

So this is my problem, of course i could increase the min bitrate but the filesize gets much bigger, i cant understand why i cant get the same quality with the same filesize. And i know i must be missing something, all the videos i need to produce are from Power Points presentations, so you could imagine that i dont need lots of keyframes because the video has mostly still images. But im also new to this software and i may be missing lots of things.

So thank you in advance for your answers.
Sorry again for the english and hope you can help me.

[budwzr]

The best approach would be to capture stills instead of video. Then animate the stills in Premiere.

Another option is to try and increase the capture quality.

[federomano]

Thanks for the reply!
The first option is not possible because there's also a mouse movement which i cant eliminate. The second sounds a good approach, what format do you recommend for encoding in Camtasia? i tried to use QuickTime but Camtasia generates a blank video...

[budwzr]

You can use a still image of a mouse pointer, and animate that around.

AFA Camtasia, I don't use it, but just try whatever better quality it has.

[_Al_]

The thing is you have to capture into lossless and that video you load into Premiere. I don't use Camtasia but CamStudio and I have choice to choose ffdshow and FFV1 , that's lossless.
Perhaps if you install some lossless codec into PC, Camtasia will see it and you can encode into that one, but I bet there is something lossless already with Camtasia. Files will be huge, make ready extra hardisk for it. But it is worthy, if quality is what you want.

[budwzr]

Another thing to consider is you might be able to export the PP Presentation from PowerPoint into whatever.

[Cornucopia]

What's happening in the PPT? There are a number of ways to export very-high-quality stills from PPT into PNG, etc that can then be animated. Do you NEED a mouse movement to be in there? It's quite possible to do both and then replace sections where things aren't moving in PPT with the higher-quality stills.

I agree with the previous posters' suggestions, as well.

Scott

[budwzr]

I would be remiss not to tell the OP that good workflows start at the very beginning in the acquisition phase. Failure to start without the best possible media can be fatal to the final output.

I would not consider "screen-captured video" to be viable at all.

[Cornucopia]

It can be, budwzr, if the PC is powerful enough to support BOTH the smooth running of the PPT and the smooth capture of the screen, AND at lossless bitrates. Otherwise, I suggest splitting it up into 2 machines: the PPT (player) machine and the video capture (recorder) machine, with HDMI as the pipeline in between. There are other ways, but those are the highest quality options (unless you have a new enough version of PPT that supports direct export to AVI/WMV/etc, and then I would still use lossless codecs if possible).

Scott

[budwzr]

Well, in that case, another option might be to set a camcorder facing an 80" flatscreen. Then the upscaling would be done by the TV, and save an extra step.

[Cornucopia]

Well put, smartass!

Yes, that is an option, though it would be my last resort.

Scott

[federomano]

Ok thanks for all your answers. Let me explain a little better.
I have Mac, but these videos are produced by chemestry professionals in theyr homes and sent to me (the original files, not encoded), and all of them use Windows. Camtasia for Mac is not compatible with Camtasia for Windows, so i run Camtasia on a Virtual Machine, and then send the video to Premiere in OSX. So the main thing is that i dont record these videos, other people do and they need the mouse movement.
Resolution is maintained across softwares (1280x800 30fps).
In these days i managed to finally produce a Quicktime Photo-JPEG codec video from Camtasia, wich is almost 22gb and looks great because its uncompressed. But when i produce the video in Premiere still generates a bad quality mp4 and those "heartbeats" i was talking about. Here you can see a new example https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51216709/prueba2.mp4 you can see the heartbeats from 0:13, the quality of the previous animation isnt important.
For this case i reduced the min bitrate to 0,19, the lower value Premiere allows, because i really want to reduce the filesize
Here you can see the settings https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51216709/premiere.jpg

Maybe you can help me to get a better image, or eliminate those annoying heartbeats
Thanks again for your answers

[poisondeathray]

Ok thanks for all your answers. Let me explain a little better.
I have Mac, but these videos are produced by chemestry professionals in theyr homes and sent to me (the original files, not encoded), and all of them use Windows. Camtasia for Mac is not compatible with Camtasia for Windows, so i run Camtasia on a Virtual Machine, and then send the video to Premiere in OSX. So the main thing is that i dont record these videos, other people do and they need the mouse movement.
Resolution is maintained across softwares (1280x800 30fps).
In these days i managed to finally produce a Quicktime Photo-JPEG codec video from Camtasia, wich is almost 22gb and looks great because its uncompressed. But when i produce the video in Premiere still generates a bad quality mp4 and those "heartbeats" i was talking about. Here you can see a new example https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51216709/prueba2.mp4 you can see the heartbeats from 0:13, the quality of the previous animation isnt important.
For this case i reduced the min bitrate to 0,19, the lower value Premiere allows, because i really want to reduce the filesize
Here you can see the settings https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51216709/premiere.jpg

Maybe you can help me to get a better image, or eliminate those annoying heartbeats
Thanks again for your answers

1) Photo-JPEG isn't lossless, but it should be "good enough" if you crank up the quality slider

2) Premiere's h264 encoder isn't that great, but you can get decent quality if you better settings. The "heartbeat" is from keyframe popping (low quality I frames) . In your render settings, set profile to "high" instead of "baseline". Baseline doesn't allow b-frames or CABAC, and the lack of those features will severely impair compression efficiency . Also uncheckmark "use previews" - this allows AME to use the low quality rendered previews used in premiere during editing

3) If you want even better quality, import lossless, export lossless (not photo jpeg), and use a better encoder like x264. You might use a GUI like handbrake, ripbot, megui, many more... x264 excels at low bitrates with the proper settings (long keyframe intervals, lots of b-frames) . Another way to improve even more is to use variable frame rates (frame rates will drop during static sequences, so you encode fewer frames)

[federomano]

Thank you a lot for this info, so i have handbrake here
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51216709/handbrake.jpg
what settings should i use? im really sorry for asking so directly but i dont really understand much of this and now dont have the enough time to study it, but i promise i will do as soon as i resolve this issue and have a little free time.

thanks a lot

[poisondeathray]

What do you need this for? What is the intended target or how is it going to be viewed ? That limits your options and may place restrictions on what settings you might use

[federomano]

The videos are viewed in online courses. The player is JWPlayer and the people who watches uses IE8+ or Chrome

[poisondeathray]

To clarify, I'm recommending you use a lossless codec, all the way until the end. So export out of camtasia lossless, out of premiere lossess, and into the final encoder (I guess handbrake) . I think quicktime animation codec (quality slider all the way up) will work with handbrake mac or pc as a lossless RGB codec

For the advanced settings, the higher the settings you use, the slower your encode will be (it might be 5-15x slower), but it will squeeze out more compression . This is important if you are using low bitrates (looks like you are using 200kb/s for 1280x800, which isn't a lot) . But there are exponentially diminishing returns the higher you go - so it's a trade off

Here are some settings that I would suggest for a slower encode, but not "glacially" slow . It should be tolerable

You need to checkmark "web optimized" in the output settings for immediate streaming (moov atom placed at beginning) . In handbrake, there is a preset "high profile" select it as a starting point . In the video tab, use variable frame rate

Advanced Tab:
Reference frames : 4-6 (it's unlikely the encoder will use more, even if you enter more)
Maximum b-frames : for slide show type content I would max it out (16)
Motion Estimation method : leave it as is or UME (the last 2 are drastically slower with limited benefit especially for this type of content)
Subpixel ME: 9-10
Deblocking 1,1 or 2,2


Note: the linux version of firefox had problems with weightp enabled in the past when streaming , and I don't know if this bug has been fixed . Uncheckmark "weighted p frames" if you want to be safe. The compression benefit isn't that large anyways

[federomano]

I just can say one word. AMAZING.
Thank you very very much, the quality has improved big time and the file is still small, i cant be more grateful, i promise i will read to understand what happened there.
thanks!!!

[poisondeathray]

I just can say one word. AMAZING.
Thank you very very much, the quality has improved big time and the file is still small, i cant be more grateful, i promise i will read to understand what happened there.
thanks!!!

Filesize = bitrate x running time.

So if you use the same bitrate it will be the same filesize. Note bitrate includes both audio & video bitrate (and also container overhead, but it's negligible for MP4)




The "take home" message is that bad settings (especially "baseline" profile), combined with "average" encoder (The "handicapped" version of Mainconcept AVC licensed by Adobe) produces poor results if you plan on using low bitrates (200kb/s for 1280x800p30 is fairly low, even for "slideshow" type content). But if you use plenty of bitrate, thus large filesizes, then everything will look fine

There is a lot to learn about how the settings are used in different circumstances, but you can read a very short explanation of some of the settings here
http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings

Cheers