Sony Vegas - PROPER settings for YouTube

[Bucic]

Hello!
This is my first post on VideoHelp.com.

What I'd like to do (chit-chat later):
- learn if there is a method to mimic VirtualDUB's Direct Stream Copy mode in Sony Vegas *
- learn how to set up my project/output video settings as per YouTube's documentation (MP4 container, H264 codec)

* I know it smells like OT but simple cutting is the most simple and common video edit operation I can think of.

YouTube recommends:
container: MP4, FLV
codec: h.264

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=132460
http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=55744

The problem is that in SV there is no way to choose MP4 container AND custom codec. If I choose Sony AVC mp4 I will not be able to choose any other codec (Video format) than AVC or Memory stick. The other mp4 position makes the custom button inactive. The FLV container is not available at all.





Some babbling:
Some time ago I produced a video tutorial using almost exclusively VirtualDub. The effect is a perfect quality video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHgaVKEOjus ... and grey hair on my head. I told myself that the next time I will be preparing something for YouTube I will do so using some civilized piece of software like Pinacle Studio at least. I chose Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 and unfortunately getting a proper output for YouTube in it is nowhere near easy. First of all it has no Direct Stream Copy mode. Second - the whole container-codec selection is messed up. In primitive applications like VD user chooses container and then he chooses codec. It seems that SV authors decided it should not be that simple.

[poisondeathray]

I use vegas pro, and it seems to have a few more options

If your input format is camstudio, vegas won't smart render (ie. there is nothing like direct steam copy). Vegas will only smart render certain formats like DV, HDV

If you're doing cuts only editing, vdub in direct stream copy mode will work with camstudio, and be frame accurate (camstudio is I-frame only, not a long GOP format)

What other options in the movie studio version do you have for export? For youtube, you don't want an interlaced or non-square pixel format

[Bucic]

Thanks for such rapid response!

The thing is I would like to not start VirtualDUB ever again. Plus it's illogical to rely on such cumbersome piece of software while using such expensive suite like SV (I have Platiunum version now).

What other formats? Plenty but (call me stubborn if you want) I would like to go for MP4 container. If it is known that SV does not allow for choosing custom codec for MP4 container then the only thing I can do is just ask WTH?! Can you tell me there's no walkaround? What about in your version of SV?

If there's no solution that would allow choosing a custom codec for MP4 container in SV could you recommend other container/codec combination that will assure the YT video will be of top quality and that will not require using cumbersome external applications?

[poisondeathray]

what "custom codec" were you referring to ? MP4 container isn't compatible with some formats.

There was an earlier discussion a few days ago that the movie studio & platinum versions have the "custom" button greyed out, so you have limited control over custom dimensions for example

If you are using h.264/aac I think the sony AVC is "unlocked" (as opposed to Mainconcept AVC) and allows for more customizability

[Bucic]

h.264, as mentioned earlier. The "Custom" button is not greyed out in Platinum. It's available for many, many formats. Just, as I said before, there is no way I can select custom codec... naaaah, it will be best if I just show you on a video... (it's being processed, but should be ready in minutes)

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

(this video is to show what I see in SV, not any particular compression settings).

[aedipuss]

youtube likes the output from vegas's sony avc encoder. it is h264 already you don't have to select the codec. all you need to do to get nice HD youtube videos is make sure you upload 720p with at least 5 mbps as the bitrate. i always upload at 6mbps.

[Bucic]

youtube likes the output from vegas's sony avc encoder. it is h264 already you don't have to select the codec. all you need to do to get nice HD youtube videos is make sure you upload 720p with at least 5 mbps as the bitrate. i always upload at 6mbps.

I uploaded an AVC test video using the following settings and it looks very bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6JBaEHmsdQ

[poisondeathray]

It probably looks bad because you are using SD. Youtube uses very low bitrate for SD. If you upload HD content you will get higher bitrates and it will look better

Youtube is poor in quality in general

[Bucic]

It probably looks bad because you are using SD. Youtube uses very low bitrate for SD. If you upload HD content you will get higher bitrates and it will look better

Youtube is poor in quality in general

I strongly disagree
I see that you haven't bother to take a look at my 640x480 videos of insane quality. Here's an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGuV440y-I

Just make sure you use the new YouTube player, the bigger one, so that my video will be displayed 1:1 (don't use fullscreen).

Please help me out. I'd really like to sort this one out. I can provide you with whatever technical info you'll need e.g. GSpot information on selected movies. Here are the basic info on my test case:
source: CSCD 640x480 20.00fps [Video] (camstudio lossless codec)
SV output AVC *: MPEG4 Video (H264) 640x480 19.97fps [Video Media Handler (eng)]
* - ok in media players, terrible on YouTube

[poisondeathray]

Feel free to disagree. It will look better when uploaded HD. I am 100% certain. You can search the various forums, this is a fact.

You have access to higher bitrates, so even when viewing the lower resolution version it will be better. Hint: Youtube re-encodes everything to h.264

In your example, you uploaded an RGB (4:4:4) lossless source, not a YV12 compressed source. When you upload h.264 it's YV12 (4:2:0 subsampling) and highly compressed. Even the "lossless" mode of x264 isn't lossless, because it's subsampled. It's only lossless if your original source was YV12.

[Bucic]

I uploaded two videos - both 640x480 which is SD, right? The AVC one looks like crap. It looks like 320x240 resized up by YuouTube. The other one, the CamStudio lossless one, looks freaking perfect! Pixels-perfect, colors-perfect, not a single artifact. And yet you still claim that crappy AVC is caused by the resolution/SD.

OK, let it be your way. I'll use only HD test examples in my future posts to eliminate SD as a possible cause. What should I do next so we could move on with the subject. If you still have patience to do it, that is. I'm uploading a HD AVC test vid right now. Do you want me to do anything else?

[poisondeathray]

camstudio is RGB lossless (4:4:4 no subsampling), of course it will look better. h.264 is compressed and subsampled (4:2:0), it will never look as good.

If you uploaded an HD version of camstudio RGB lossless, it would look even better, because youtube will encode at higher bitrates. But you're uploading filesize is huge compared to a subsampled YV12 (4:2:0) h.264 version. Youtube re-encodes everything to YV12 anyways, with compression. But if you upload a higher quality video, you will get better quality in the end, if everything else is the same

The content matters also, you have a lot more motion in the h.264 version, so it will eat up more bitrate. (You're comparing apples to oranges and different videos). If you converted your camstudio video to h.264 using decent x264 settings, I doubt you will see any quality differences on youtube (the only difference would be much smaller file size to upload)

I think you should read up on some basics of video compression, and colorspaces. I posted some links in your other thread, and there are some links on wikipedia as well

[Bucic]

I'd like to continue the topic before I get into color spaces. I wouldn't want you to think that I chose to stay ignorant to color spaces differences. It's obviously a hard and time consuming topic this color spaces and I would be happy to get around it instead of studying to the core.

The way I see it now is YouTube recommends MP4 container and H.264 codec which Sony AVC profile from SV provides completely and there's just no better choice, so I should stick to it. I should also upload to YouTube a HD AVC test vid rendered in SV now to make it possible to investigate what went wrong.

[poisondeathray]

No, lossless will always get you better quality, but the difference is often imperceptible. Youtube is re-encoding everything anyways to h.264 YV12 (4:2:0 subsampled). If you upload RGB lossless, your filesize is many times bigger for similar quality. Youtube recommends h.264/mp4 because it offers the best quality/compression ratio. They don't want to be wasting bandwidth on uncompressed uploads - especially when the quality difference will be negligible.

The color and levels shifts are from vegas, and your settings used, plus Youtube's Rec.709 conversion. This is a different topic than the compression used

[aedipuss]

youtube only makes HD quality videos out of 720p material or higher with high bitrates. the rules change occasionally but that's the way it is now.

try 1280x720p at 6mbps

[Bucic]

youtube only makes HD quality videos out of 720p material or higher with high bitrates. the rules change occasionally but that's the way it is now.

try 1280x720p at 6mbps

OK, I'm at it right now. But could you at least take a look at the AVC I already uploaded and admit that it's not YouTube's SD fault? For the sake of this discussion compare it to this SD vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGuV440y-I and ask this question yourself.

[Bucic]

Damn it! I can't squeez a HD vid out of SV! It says "... The reason for the error could not be determined". I even used 1280x720 source vid (from camstudio like always) and 1280x720 project template (Internet HD). :/

EDIT:
OK, here are the results!

test_camstudio_1280_cs_codec_to_avc_5mbps.mp4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZAOOBLn6aM

it's fine but still looks worse than this 640x480 vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGuV440y-I#t=0m55s

Conclusion: SD vid can look perfect and better than any HD vid on youtube *
Question: I used AVC 5mbps. Is that all I can squeez? Lets say I have some FPS game recording. Do I need anything more than 5 mbps AVC?

* for desktop content for sure, for rich hollywood like content - I don't know.

[aedipuss]

the less movement the better any compressed video will look. it works by storing an "i" reference frame and then only storing the changes from the "i" frame or other changed frames.

i use 6mbps for uploading yt. it seems to be a good compromise for filesize and quality after yt conversion. you can use higher bitrates as long as the max filesize is under 2GB for youtube.

[poisondeathray]

Conclusion: SD vid can look perfect and better than any HD vid on youtube *

Horrible conclusion using faulty premises. You're not even comparing the same video. Apples to oranges. Different content will compress differently

Resolution is part of quality.

Watch your 640x360 video at full screen, and compare it to the 1280x720p video. To make it fair , use the SAME video for both (same content). The SD version upscaled will look like crap.

If you are making desktop tutorials, it's even MORE important for higher resolution. It sucks if you can only see part of the active window with low resolution.

I posted a screenshot comparison of the 480p version upscaled compared to 1280p version of the SAME video. No contest.

[Bucic]

@ aedipuss
So I get it that my quest is over - AVC ~6 Mbps and that's it. Right? And just out of curiosity - why are there plenty of "best settings for YouTube and Sony Vegas" tutorials showing WMV?

@ poisondeathray
I was comparing both types at 1 to 1 display i.e. SD in the bigger new YT player, not full-screen and HD as full-screen on my 1280x1024 monitor. I agree - small window sucks for most of tutorials but look how perfect it suited my CamStudio installation tutorial Also I made the both topics separate on purpose because when I get a confirmation that AVC 6 Mbps is a solid profile I'm done and happy but with screencasts (desktop tutorials) even color space conversion is ruining the quality.

[poisondeathray]

If you had recorded a 720p version of your tutorial instead, even when displayed in the smaller window will look better, because it uses >2x the bitrate than the SD version. This is a well known fact, visit the youtube forums. One "trick" that many people use is they upscale the SD video so they can access the HD encoding parameters by youtube.

Other tricks are stabilization (less movement means higher quality & compression) , adding intros and blank video (blank video intros and outros take up much less bitrate, so the bitrate can be redistributed to the active content)

I suggest you visit the youtube forums to learn about these tricks and others

[Bucic]

If you had recorded a 720p version of your tutorial instead, even when displayed in the smaller window will look better, because it uses >2x the bitrate than the SD version. This is a well known fact, visit the youtube forums. One "trick" that many people use is they upscale the SD video so they can access the HD encoding parameters by youtube.

Other tricks are stabilization (less movement means higher quality & compression) , adding intros and blank video (blank video intros and outros take up much less bitrate, so the bitrate can be redistributed to the active content)

I suggest you visit the youtube forums to learn about these tricks and others

First I have to get my head around essentials. It looks like I'm about to when it comes to a solid profile for YouTube as discussed in this topic (Sony AVC mp4) but in the other topic (about lossless or semi-lossless encoding) I feel I'm rather halfway there.