Oppinions on encode please, 960x600 30 fps to xvid or ?

[Fenlock]

Hi, first post long-time reader and all that

Can i just get some opinions and answers here on something that i did yesterday.

Ok i game at 1900x1200 60htz with vsync on (so 60fps capped). Yesterday i captured some videos with Fraps, and the settings i went with were "Half size capture, at 30FPS".

This gave me 960x600 videos @ 30FPS.

The result of the video quality was very good, still very high quality and very smooth, so no problems there.

Then i put the video in to Sony Vegas 8, and created a new project. I specified 960x600 30fps as my project media size.

Question 1) What pixel aspect ratio should i be using? i went with 1.00000 Square, but wasn't sure really. Square looked ok on the export, so no real problem here.

I made the changes to the video i wanted, and went to export. Ive got the latest CCCP pack installed, but xvid doesn't show up as an export option for the video compressor. So tonight i can install Xvid.

Question 2) Any idea why xvid as a compressor doesn't show up when CCCP is installed and i can view xvid fine? is some other codec doing the xvid playback?

Finally i exported it to Sony YUV codec. I kept the video sizes as mentioned above (960x600x30) and this produced a very clean smooth high quality video. Problem is the Video is 5 minutes long, and the File is 12GB.

Question 3) Any suggestions on how best to encode this? i don't want to loose the quality, im thinking xvid but im not 100% sure of the settings. Should i install whatever codec you suggest and try to encode it in vegas, or use something like virtual dub? Im not interested in playback on anything other than a PC and i may want to upload to youtube/streaming sites later (so happy with an avi at the end, doesn't have to be dvd/vcd or anything like that).

Many thanks guys/gals.

[Baldrick]

1) 960/600 is 1.6 and 1900/1200 is 1.58 so it's pretty close so you can use 1.0 square pixels.

2) Install koepis xvid codec. CCCP may use ffdshow or some other xvid decoder only.

3) You will lose quality but if you use high enough video bitrate it will look very good. You can also consider using h264 video. Don't know if you can output to it directly from vegas though. You can use other h264 converter like xvid4psp,ripbot264,megui,staxrip and convert your 12GB yuv to mp4 with h264 and aac audio.

[Fenlock]

Cheers Baldrick, any suggestions on what video bitrate to aim for? or is it a case of trial and error to see what looks best on this type of video. Would h264 compress it down well? id like to get it under 100MB if possible.

[Baldrick]

5 minutes video with 96kbit audio in 100MB would give you a bitrate of around 2700kbits and that should be well enough. You can try lower bitrate like 2000kbits and see how it looks like also. If you use H264 you can use even lower bitrate and get similiar quality.

Use a bitrate calculator to calculate the bitrate or/and output size, see https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/bitrate-calculators

[jman98]

Not that this matters a lot, but do note that your supposed "half size capture" is actually 1/4 (NOT 1/2) the size of the original file because both vertical and horizontal resolutions were cut in half and 2 x 2 = 4.

[jagabo]

Forget bitrate. Use Xvid in single pass Target Quantizer mode. This is a constant quality mode where the video will always come out with the quality you specify. The encoder will use whatever bitrate is necessary at each frame to deliver that quality.

Try a Quantizer of 3 for a good compromise of image quality vs file size. A quantizer of 2 will give slightly better quality but the file size will be quite large. Bigger quantizers will give lower quality and smaller files.

[Baldrick]

Yep, you can basicly forget bitrate and use the above settings if you don't need an exact size and have time to test encode.

[Fenlock]

Not that this matters a lot, but do note that your supposed "half size capture" is actually 1/4 (NOT 1/2) the size of the original file because both vertical and horizontal resolutions were cut in half and 2 x 2 = 4.

Cheers, the reason i said "half size" is because that is name of the setting in Fraps, and obviously is supposed to cut the video size in half of the actural gaming resolution.

But anyway, cheers for the suggestions, gonna give them a try now.

[jagabo]

Yep, you can basicly forget bitrate and use the above settings if you don't need an exact size and have time to test encode.

For the OP: you only have to run the tests once in your life on a short sample of video. A particular quantizer value delivers the same quality for all videos. In short:

A quantizer of 2 will be nearly indistinguishable from the source even if you look at enlarged still frames. The file size will be pretty big.

With a quantizer of 3 there will be a little macroblocking if you look at enlarged still frames but you won't notice them a normal playback speed. The quality will be better (and the files bigger) than almost all P2P downloads. I almost always use this setting.

At 4 the macroblocking is a little more noticeable. You might even notice it at normal playback speed on a big screen TV if you look closely. Quality is dropping to the level of the better P2P downloads.

h.264 encoders have similar constant quality modes but the quantizer values are different. x264's quantizer of 22 roughly correspends to Xvid's 3. 18 to 2, 26 to 4.

[jman98]

Not that this matters a lot, but do note that your supposed "half size capture" is actually 1/4 (NOT 1/2) the size of the original file because both vertical and horizontal resolutions were cut in half and 2 x 2 = 4.

Cheers, the reason i said "half size" is because that is name of the setting in Fraps, and obviously is supposed to cut the video size in half of the actural gaming resolution.

I know and my post wasn't meant to be interpreted as thinking you're stupid or anything like that. I just wanted to point out that their name is misleading because it's really 1/4 the size since they reduced both horizontal and vertical by 1/2 (1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4).

[edDV]

Not that this matters a lot, but do note that your supposed "half size capture" is actually 1/4 (NOT 1/2) the size of the original file because both vertical and horizontal resolutions were cut in half and 2 x 2 = 4.

Cheers, the reason i said "half size" is because that is name of the setting in Fraps, and obviously is supposed to cut the video size in half of the actural gaming resolution.

I know and my post wasn't meant to be interpreted as thinking you're stupid or anything like that. I just wanted to point out that their name is misleading because it's really 1/4 the size since they reduced both horizontal and vertical by 1/2 (1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4).

That and you cut the potential 1080i motion sample rate in half if the game rendered at 60fps.

[Fenlock]

Not that this matters a lot, but do note that your supposed "half size capture" is actually 1/4 (NOT 1/2) the size of the original file because both vertical and horizontal resolutions were cut in half and 2 x 2 = 4.

Cheers, the reason i said "half size" is because that is name of the setting in Fraps, and obviously is supposed to cut the video size in half of the actural gaming resolution.

I know and my post wasn't meant to be interpreted as thinking you're stupid or anything like that. I just wanted to point out that their name is misleading because it's really 1/4 the size since they reduced both horizontal and vertical by 1/2 (1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4).

That and you cut the potential 1080i motion sample rate in half if the game rendered at 60fps.

Yep, didnt take any offence jman98, no prob. Thanks for pointing it out,.

I used the xvid4psp tool that Baldrick recommended to convert to Xvid and H.264, and both files came out very well. The xvid using "extreme" settings came out at 260MB and the H.264 came in at about 280. Really pleased, with how they look.

Tomorrow i'll probably have a go at the Quantizer mode that Jagabo recommended to see if i can get it a bit smaller, but for now im happy. Cheers all.