Need Help Encoding Quality Web Vid

[MAtkins]

I wanted to say THANK YOU especially to PoisonDeathRay for all your help in my video production endeavors.

I was in trouble there for a bit. My vids are coming out much better now.

Thanks again

[poisondeathray]

I don't want to sound too harsh, but I think the quality is a bit low; for example you can see compression artifacts and your "logo" in the corner is barely visible. It doesn't appear very crisp

While the audio is decent, you could have used better compression both for audio & video. I would have used h.264 video, aac audio

[MAtkins]

Hehe, OK thanks. I do value your opinion. I'll try it again. I did notice that my logo is off a bit. I'll have to clean that up too.
When I get my next revision I'll show it to you again. Don't worry about hurting my feelings, I really do want it right

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

Did you know you picked just about the worst compression possible for streaming That would barely have passed even a few years ago

I've seen your unprocessed video and it's fairly clean. That suggests all that noise was from your compression

If you need .flv container (you shouldn't) you could still use the instructions back on page 1 for re-wrapping and inserting metadata to stream. I know with 100% certainty that .mp4 container works with jw player

[MAtkins]

This is actually GOOD news because I was kind of wishing I could get it just a little better.
I'm not crazy about the JW Player for this application (besides it's about $75.00 for commercial use).
I don't know if the player I'm using will play MP4 or not. I'll try it and see.
Otherwise, I'll just compress as you suggest and see if I can follow instructions on page one & wrap it in an FLV.

[MAtkins]

How would you run the postprod avs file?
I don't see your recommendations in either vdub or xvid4psp.

[poisondeathray]

Another thing, you're 2 windows are unevenly sized, I don't know if that was on purpose?

What format did you export? I noticed your video had 1/2 the fps as well - was that on purpose as well?

xvid4psp will generate basic .avs scripts for you, you can open your lossless exported .avi directly if there is no other filtering

[MAtkins]

Yes, I know the windows aren't the same size. I'm OK with that. In fact I might just blow the left side up a bit.

I did it in xvid4psp and used the FLV format: FLV HQ2 Ultra video encoding & MP3 96k CBR audio encoding.

I don't see any ability to encode to h.264 & aac in xvid4psp.
In vdub I found a few versions of aac but not h.264. There are a few versions of x264.

[poisondeathray]

xvid4psp can encode h.264/aac in .mp4 container

you could also try handbrake, or ripbot

those are all pretty easy to use GUI's

[MAtkins]

Ack - I'm lost. I tried looking @ that and just looked again. I see what look like 'versions' of h.264 & aac.
Will this work?
video encoding: x264 Q21 Ultra
audio encoding: AAC-LC ABR96k

Quality of both vid & sound are important but filesize is also a pretty major factor.
I've got probably a couple hundred short vids like this that the customer will have to download.

[poisondeathray]

configure the options for 2pass video if filesize is important (you can specify a bitrate because filesize=bitrate x running time)

i would fix your logo too, since this is for commercial purpose it's even more important

[MAtkins]

OK, what do you think of this?

[poisondeathray]

It looks improved, but there's still a bit of aliasing (line buzzing) , and it might be from your resize in adobe, but probably mostly leftover from deinterlacing. You might have to resort to TempGaussMC to get rid of it, or , preferably shoot native progressive instead

You could add a 1/2 pixel vertical blur, and it will get rid of some of the buzz. Blur(0,0.5)

Your encoding settings could be improved; you're basically using low compression settings. (i.e. you could get better quality at the same bitrate, or , use a smaller bitrate (filesize) and get the same quality) if you used better settings. In flash for higher resolutions you have to be more careful with encoding settings which may negatively impact smooth playback performance, but since yours is so small, you can almost use anything

I would use avc high profile, analyze all, subme 9, lower psy-rd value (or even disable it), increase reference frames to 3-5, enable 3 b-frames

Can I ask why the small dimensions? I know you're doing this in flash, but even low quality youtube has way bigger dimensions that 368x272

[MAtkins]

OK, I've added the line for Blur. I found at least some semblance of most of the settings but couldn't find anything for 'analyze all' or 'subme 9'. I set the psy-rd to 0, increased the reference frames to 4 and set b-frames to 3.

It's a whole lot better than what I started with
I'm using the MP4 now. It turns out that the player plays it just fine.

This is what I've got now:

[poisondeathray]

Yes, it definitely looks cleaner than that .flv you uploaded

You're still using avc main profile (not high profile), so some of the options like I8x8 will not be available

other changes I would make:

avc profile: high

subpixel me: 9

on the motion analysis tab, make sure all the partitions are checked (e.g. I8x8 , I4x4 etc...) you have to enable high for some of them to be accessible

I would change me algorithm back to multihex (exhaustive and satd are diminishing returns - very slow to render, but very small gains for compression)

[MAtkins]

Hmm, I must be missing something. I did find subpixel me 9. Thanks.

Here are my settings and the latest.
So far, render time is under a minute.

[poisondeathray]

you got it, subpixel me is already 9 in those screenshots

i would only use 2-pass (3-pass is a waste , no additional benefit)

me algorithm is exhuastive - that's a waste too - i would lower it to multihex as suggested earlier

I would checkmark mixed reference frames

For additional efficiency I would normally use b-pyramid (b-frame references), and more b-frames (maybe 4-5 or even more depending on content), slightly more reference frames, but at higher HD resolutions it can bog down flash playback (normal software decoders in media players are fine). For your tiny resolution you can enable it for slightly more efficiency

The different settings can be adjusted in different scenarios for tweaking. One "set" isn't necessarily best for all types of content. If you want to learn what they do, you can do some encoding => adjust settings => examine encode

You can also read
http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/X264_Settings

There are lots of changes to x264 encoder frequently there are multiple commits. For example the latest as of today is r1471, but you are using r999. If you want to use the latest versions, you will either have to learn commandline or use a gui that is updated more frequently

Also when you get to batch encoding these, there are avisynth batch scripters available; you may also find for the actual encoding that parallel encoding will make use of more CPU and overall faster than serial (low resolutions cannot max out the encoder and all threads)

Anyways, good luck , have fun learning & experimenting

Cheers

[MAtkins]

OK, I think I've got everything set as you recommend. Thanks.
I can hardly believe the difference between this one and the first one.
This is *so* much better.

[lordsmurf]

Thanks for the useful posts poison.

[poisondeathray]

Finally there's no fixed rules. YMMV . Basically, every source is different and may require different filtering, different encoding settings, different treatment, etc... every program/filter has quirks/idosyncracies (like premiere )

If you have no fades or dark scenes, activating mb-tree is very beneficial (i don't see it available in your screenshots, it might be your x264 version is too old.) If your content is basically the same (like just guitar playing, or computer tutorials screen captured ) , I highly recommend turning it on. But warning: It treats P-frames before the fade very poorly, so if you have fades, dark scenes I wouldn't use it at all.

I knew ahead of time your content would benefit from more b-frames because a lot of it is static or similar type scene. If you look at the analysis below (the green are b-frames) , you have strings of 4-5. Things like tutorials, some types of anime, and guitar playing usually benefit from even more. Most types of content like live action and hollywood movies can only make good use of 2-3. If you learn to read your encode logs, you can use that information to optimize your encodes (it will tell you percentages of frametype distribution)

You have to make trade offs too, because there are diminishing returns for a lot of the settings. 10x slower for 1% compression gain isn't worth it for most people

[MAtkins]

Clearly I've still got a lot to learn. For now I think this will do. I'll study the docs you referenced above and try to learn more clearly what settings I've got.

I really appreciate all your help. I'm sure as I go through this I'll learn a lot and I'll have more questions.