I'll try to keep it tight and information packed.
What I do: I record gameplay content with FRAPS (Uncompressed - so the video files are massive), and my own audio commentary using Audacity. All quality is at 1920x1080 native resolution aka 1080p. I take both the avi from FRAPS and MP3 from Audacity into Sony Vegas and render them at lossless quality. I then use MeGUI to encode them using the x264 Codec. I upload the multiplexed result (merged video and audio) to YouTube as a "Let's Play". The aim is to provide good audio and great picture quality at all quality levels. I nailed the quality and the size (250MB to 500MB for 13 to 15minute videos) at very good picture quality and clear audio.
The problem I have: The process of doing all this feels very long and ineffective. To give you realistic values:
What I'd like: Is to find some way to hopefully either skip a few of these steps, and go directly from Sony Vegas to the final Multiplexed Video (I use Sony Vegas Pro 10 btw) or to at least automate as much of this as is possible (for those of you familiar with Sony Vegas and MeGUI). Having to render each loop region individually and perform several tasks for each and every single video part is taxing my time quite a good bit!
- 2 hours of game footage and audio with FRAPS (great quality which I plan on sticking to) turn out to be 250GB of data (I work in a 1.5TB parition, about 1TB is allocated to this Let's Play activity of mine).
- Rendering this in lossless quality (adds my commentary from Audacity to it) using Lagarith Lossless Codec and retaining perfect 1080p quality raises this to about 275GB of data. (For some reason the Lagarith Lossless Configuration doesn't save the values I set it to be as, it always comes up untouched...)
- Encoding the above through MeGUI using the x264 preserves the great quality and crisp, clear audio but shrinks the size to no more than 4GB total (huge difference from 275Gig to 4Gig...).
- All in all, for 2 hours of gameplay I have:
- 250Gig of raw video game footage + 1Gig of Audio Commentary.
- + 275Gig of the Lagarith rendered footage
- + 4 Gig of the Encoded Files (Audio and Video Apart)
- + 4 Gig of the Multiplexed Videos (Audio and Video gets merged together) which is the final product that gets uploaded to YouTube. An example is the following: >Click<
I'd appreciate any and all suggestions. And as a final note, the two points I just don't want to negotiate are the final quality for the size I get (Unless they're both better or the give-take deal makes sense). The video files are in a Matroska format (MKV) and the average size is at 400MB (depending on how abruptly and often the picture changes). As such I'm assuming that the x264 Codec is amongst the best, but I can't figure out how to use it directly from Sony Vegas Pro 10. If I did, I'd be able to completely skip the 275Gig Lagarith Lossless rendering, as well as a ton of time and computer resources!)
Lupo =]
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vegas => debugmode frameserver => megui
debugmode will eliminate the need for large intermediate export file out of vegas . It makes a "dummy AVI", a signpost that is a few kb big, that the other application (in this case megui) can "see"
note that if you do multipass encodes, it still might be faster using a lossless render like lagarith. It will depend because effects etc... within vegas will have to be rendered twice instead of once. So if you are doing heavy filtering, it still might make sense to use a digital intermediate
debugmode only works in 8-bit mode (32-bit not compatible with vegas)
other option is to use x264vfw , which you can access directly in vegas .
http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/ -
Thank you very much for the reply!
Will the first option be unusable since I'm on Windows 7 64 bit, using Sony Vegas P10 64 bit or not?
Having launched the FrameServer it directed me to chosing where this AVI thingy is stored as well as indicate a Source IP and Port value. I'm unsure if I should be entering default values or not. Tried 127.0.0.1, 10.0.0.1 and my LAN address: 192.168.1.64 - It gave me the same "Unable to Connect to Source Machine, Please Check the Source Machine's Address and Port; Also check if the Source Machine has the FrameServer running". I didn't launch any frame server, and am completely clueless as to how I'd use this program.
Not 100% sure on what it does either, but I think I got the gist of it so if I can get it to work everything would be revealed. But once again, 64 Bit OS and Sony Vegas client for me, having my doubts if this thing would work at all.
Appreciate a bit more advice on the x264vfw if the above can't work for me.
Lupo
That was one hell of a swift reply, btw - I'm amazed! -
There are 64bit versions, but they are not completely stable or tested. You can experiment if you want
Here is a guide , you can scroll down to the 64-bit section
http://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-video/Vegas-YouTube-Vimeo.htm
x264vfw is a video-for-windows version of x264cli , you install it and it will show up in any application that uses vfw, including vdub, vegas etc... obviously you need a 64-bit version if you are using 64-bit vegas. You can find a link below for komisar's version
There is another gui that some other people like more (the options are laid out instead of presets), you can experiment if you want
http://komisar.gin.by/ -
Thanks for the reference links - I'm going to go over each and every one of them. Now to keep track of what I'm adding to avoid creating a lot of useless clutter. Once I am comfortable and sink in with what I go anything extra I'll remove. I'll most probably pop back in to request some assistance, because I get lost easily >.<
Lupo
P.S. You're awesome! -
I've been reading about and around, and honestly I'm overwhelmed. I just started out on all of this, and I plan on taking in as much as is possible, as fast as is possible. The link provided, http://www.bubblevision.com/underwater-video/Vegas-YouTube-Vimeo.htm - I've read through it, or rather - am reading through it and trying to follow along.
I have a few questions with which I'd appreciate assistance:
- My FRAPS recordings are not interlaced (progressive - analyzed by MeGUI a couple of times) and they need no resizing since I record at 1920x1080 natively, since that's the size of my monitor - Would I still require AviSynth script?
- During installation of the FrameServer, the author stated it's a bit annoying and creation of files are necessary even for 32 bit OS. My Sony Vegas wasn't installed on the default partition (It's at "E:\Tools\Sony Vegas Pro 10\"), I'm not sure what I should do to correctly integrate this software with Sony Vegas, I'm honestly unable to decipher what he meant by creation that file.
- My MeGUI installed is x86 and was a simple extraction of the files to "E:\Tools\MeGUI" (I specified the destination, of course). Is this fine? I didn't find an x86-64 version on Source Forge so I'm assuming the x86 is the one I'll have to be pleased with.
- When I installed MeGUI, I didn't import any presets, and the guide recommends to import at least a select few of these, what should I do?
- The guide mentions the whole "Create as many Workers as you have cores". I have a quad core (i7 950 @ 3.2Ghz when under load). I've noticed that during encoding, my CPU can occasionally hit 100% CPU usage, and I didn't mess with any worker setup things. Is there some sort of explanation for this? Or is the idea of setting multiple workers just so you can do multiple jobs at once, even though they'll all take quite long to complete, since they're limited to 1 worker only? Appreciate a bit more detail about this.
- This is a problem I'm having which is unrelated to the guide and I'd like some information about it: Lagarith Lossless Codec. I've attached two images once "Expected" which is what I set in the configuration option, and another one "Given" which is what I always get when I reopen it, even after setting them. I'm very positive the settings aren't being forced through - but to be honest I'm not sure what they do in the first place. I'm simply following a video I acquired from YouTube which has thus far served me well, even though it isn't being followed to the letter, considering not everything happens the way it should. Is this a 64bit problem? Sony Vegas 10 issue? I just know the video maker was on Windows 7, not sure if it was x86 or x86-64.
Lupo
Thanks for your support. -
No , but megui uses avisynth in the backend. If you use x264.exe, then you don't need avs script. If you don't know how to create scripts, megui will create a script for you
During installation of the FrameServer, the author stated it's a bit annoying and creation of files are necessary even for 32 bit OS. My Sony Vegas wasn't installed on the default partition (It's at "E:\Tools\Sony Vegas Pro 10\"), I'm not sure what I should do to correctly integrate this software with Sony Vegas, I'm honestly unable to decipher what he meant by creation that file.
My MeGUI installed is x86 and was a simple extraction of the files to "E:\Tools\MeGUI" (I specified the destination, of course). Is this fine? I didn't find an x86-64 version on Source Forge so I'm assuming the x86 is the one I'll have to be pleased with.
When I installed MeGUI, I didn't import any presets, and the guide recommends to import at least a select few of these, what should I do?
The guide mentions the whole "Create as many Workers as you have cores". I have a quad core (i7 950 @ 3.2Ghz when under load). I've noticed that during encoding, my CPU can occasionally hit 100% CPU usage, and I didn't mess with any worker setup things. Is there some sort of explanation for this? Or is the idea of setting multiple workers just so you can do multiple jobs at once, even though they'll all take quite long to complete, since they're limited to 1 worker only? Appreciate a bit more detail about this.
Vegas works in RGB, so when you export lagarith it will be RGB. If you force YV12 conversion in lagarith, it will use Rec601 (these are the wrong color coefficients for HD material, you should be using Rec709)
RGB file size will be a lot larger than YV12 (RGB is 4:4:4 unsampled , YV12 is subsampled 4:2:0)
By exporting RGB, you can then specify the proper matrix in avs script e.g
AVISource("lagarithexport.avi)
ConvertToYV12(matrix="rec709")
If you don't care about the shift in color , then go ahead and export YV12. If it's not working, it might be a lagarith issue (there was a new version listed today). I never export YV12 from NLE's, always RGB and do the conversion in avisynth
Another lossless option is ut video codec. It has 64-bit and 32-bit versions. It's multithreading is way faster. Easily the fastest lossless codec. Even your encodes will be faster (because lagarith decoding is often a bottleneck, especially with recent x264 versions which have a threaded lookahead)Last edited by poisondeathray; 5th Mar 2011 at 14:28.
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I've kept on trying to figure out how to get DebugMode FrameServer to run, but to no avail - it's been several hours now and I'm extremely tired. I've also checked out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyzlXnXoNrs user is "DMFSDemo" so I'm assuming that's the DMFS authors themselves showcasing how to use it.
It seems a few clicks and a ton of "Next" is all they needed on their system to get it up and running. I ain't as lucky though, seemingly - and I ain't too sure I even have the right, the executable I have is "FrameServer Network Client". The one demonstrated in the video is way different. It was uploaded a few months ago, so it should be quite relevant and up to date. What I downloaded was the latest from http://code.google.com/p/frame-server/downloads/list
This is the first time I'm hearing about "color coefficients" and the like. It's probably way too much to take in right now. I'm trying to, at least for the time being, get that silly DMFS up and running, although any interesting and informative reading material would be nice - it takes lower priority
If you don't care about the shift in color , then go ahead and export YV12. If it's not working, it might be a lagarith issue (there was a new version listed today). I never export YV12 from NLE's, always RGB and do the conversion in avisynth
Another lossless option is ut video codec. It has 64-bit and 32-bit versions. It's multithreading is way faster. Easily the fastest lossless codec. Even your encodes will be faster (because lagarith decoding is often a bottleneck, especially with recent x264 versions which have a threaded lookahead)
Thanks for your support.
Lupo -
Well there is no offical 64-bit support for debugmode, so you're on shaky territory there
There will be no difference in end file size (encoded by x264 using same settings) if you use lagarith vs. UT . They are both lossless if you use the same colorspace
Are you measuring x264 encoding or rendering speed out of vegas? Vegas is very slow and it might be the bottleneck. I'm talking about rendering in other applications. It's going to depend on the specific scenario, filters used etc.., but I find the render times are significantly faster with UT when using x264. If there are other bottleneck in your setup your results may vary. I personally don't care about temp HDD space, they are dirt cheap these days ,but of course your requirements might be different
UT is very fast with low decoding latency. It's about 5-10x faster than lagarith. It's even faster than huffyuv-mt. It's more useful for lossless editing (like importing into vegas or premiere). It's impossible to use lagarith for editing scenarios because the latency is too high. Scrubbing is too slow
If you meant tiny intermediate file size, then FFV1 offers even higher compression than lagarith in YV12 about 1-2%, but it's even slower than lagarith -
So I decided to rewrite this post because way too much changed, and all those edits (3 of 'em + this one) were really getting out of hand.
I got DMFS working (I originally installed it in the Shared Plugins, as opposed to the proper Sony Vegas directory for the IO plugins) and didn't need to mod any files or do anything special.
I had trouble with it crashing at the start which was fixed by going into File -> Properties -> Audio and turned it to 16 bit, down from 24, and a sample rate of 48kHz down from 96kHz. "Render As..." and launched it in, the feed was up and running. The video sampling was working pretty good (I'll provide statistics to compare DMFS with UT Video Codec soonish) but the audio sampling wasn't doing anything at all.
I decided to tick "Write Audio as PCM samples in signpost AVI" and the audio was working too. I finished a full render of a single 15 minute region and I'm currently working on the same exact region, instead of rendering it with DMFS, I'm giving the UT Video Codec a shot, which will then, obviously be encoded with MeGUI using the x264 codec. Same region being rendered, same configurations being used, same programs being run on the system (Activated Turbo mode through TuneUp Utilities 2011 which numbs out several minor processes running.
Once I'm done presenting the data in a neat format I'll post it here as an edit or as a reply, for the heck of it. What I can say is that DMFS is looking like a clear winner in the race of time, ease of use AND (obviously) Drive Disk Space used!
Lupo
Bottom Line... Holy shit poison... mate, you're the man!Last edited by Luponius; 6th Mar 2011 at 08:36.
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LOL I didn't do anything . I've never used the 64-bit version of debugmode
Once I'm done presenting the data in a neat format
BTW - There's still another option - the vfw version of x264 integrates directly with vegas as well. You're not limited to AVI exports with komisar's version (rawavc, mkv, mp4 wrappers are possible) -
Another individual is using that method at this moment, and is considering shifting to this DMFS method having pointed it out. I'll add a little Installation Procedure for DMFS. Should I post it in this thread (maybe first post) or start a new one titled as such in some other, more-relevant board?
Thanks for your assistance and recommendations, I'm loving the fact both rendering and encoding happen faster than just encoding with DMFS as opposed to UT Video codec!
Lupo -
It's up to you, but if you post it here, change the thread title name, otherwise users using search terms like "debugmode" or "x64" etc... won't find it very easily
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I've decided to post it in the Guide Forum and hopefully did a decent job at it. The link to it: ClickMe
You can close this topic if that's the procedure, my issue was most definitely solved and I'm one hell of a happy man :PLast edited by Luponius; 6th Mar 2011 at 15:55.
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I wrote that guide and have just found this thread.
During installation of the FrameServer, the author stated it's a bit annoying and creation of files are necessary even for 32 bit OS. My Sony Vegas wasn't installed on the default partition (It's at "E:\Tools\Sony Vegas Pro 10\"), I'm not sure what I should do to correctly integrate this software with Sony Vegas, I'm honestly unable to decipher what he meant by creation that file.
When I installed MeGUI, I didn't import any presets, and the guide recommends to import at least a select few of these, what should I do?
The guide mentions the whole "Create as many Workers as you have cores".
Poisondeathray, you are everywhere... I appreciate your feedback that helps me refine my guide. Thanks for the link to komisar's x264vfw build that can output mp4 and mkv. I'll check it out. It may be great for times when you want to keep everything within Vegas.
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I can't find a way to get it to output mp4 directly from Vegas. The codec has to be chosen under "Video for Windows (*.avi)" and output gets muxed by Vegas as .avi even if I put --muxer mp4 in the x264vfw "Extra options:" field and specify a .mp4 filename so it looks like I would have to remux with Avidemux etc.. Can VirtualDub output mp4 with it directly?
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you need to specify the directory path and filename in the extra commandline options box
e.g.
-o E:\outputfile.mp4
It will also produce a "dummy" avi along with the mp4 . Supported options are rawavc/avi/mkv/flv/mp4
But depending on how you have vegas set up , and you import file characteristics, you might not want to use it or have to adjust your workflow (because you don't have control over the RGB=>YV12 conversion like you do when exporting RGB or frameserving RGB out)Last edited by poisondeathray; 13th Mar 2011 at 10:28.
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Oh, OK. Got that working now. Can't seem to get it to mux any audio in though, and the choice of codecs under the "Video for Windows" list is pretty poor anyway. No aac for example. I think I'm going to pass on this one, but it was interesting diversion.
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Thanks for the reply, I have been quite successful with DMFS over the past week or so, in fact the videos in this playlist, from 13 onwards have been done with DMFS. It all happens about twice as fast than the older method and thanks to the improved conversion (appending matrix="PC.709" in the script) I've been able to correct my color quality as well, avoiding as much color loss.
Overall I'm very happy with the results, the only thing I'd want to improve would be to somehow make DMFS provide multiple feeds, one for each region. Since right now I have to manually highlight each region and serve it through DMFS, create the script and let MeGUI complete the job. And then select another region, so on and so forth. I wish I could just have DMFS smartly change regions to be fed to MeGUI by allowing me to setup several signpost AVI files at once.
There probably is a way, but it's not something I have so far found nothing that details any such thing.
Lupo -
You can open more than one instance of Vegas Pro and frameserve from them independently. Give each signpost file a different name and create multiple AviSynth scripts with different AviSource names. Then you can just queue up the jobs in MeGUI. I haven't tried it but it sounds plausible. If you try it, please let us know if it works.
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If it does indeed allow me to open the same project multiple times with multiple instances it would be the solution to the problem :O
I'll first have to edit this next 4 hours session, add commentary and whatnot. I'll be giving it a shot after that =]
EDIT: Sampled two sections from my content and put them both up, ran a script for both of them and even though when trying to sample the second Sony Instance it crashed on me, having relaunched it, it worked just fine without much problems. MeGUI was able to take both at once, but I'm assuming there would be some level of problem with having multiple instance open, even though this is all speculation:
For one thing, even though processing power is not required considered DMFS only samples what's being requested by MeGUI, I'm assuming that Sony Vegas will put some level of strain on the RAM, unless it can be configured to solve the problem? Especially considering the footage I have is about 530GB (give or take), even though only a fraction of it is loaded into the RAM, this might overall impact my system negatively. Whether this leads to instability and a high frequency to crashes or not is something I can't quite prove right now since I only did a quick dummy attempt!
It's most definitely going to be fairly hectic to launch ... say, 10 instances of Sony Vegas to feed each of the 10 slots. I just wish DMFS would natively support multiple sections to be fed, or allow DMFS to be run multiple times in the same instance of Sony Vegas, even though that would most definitely conflict with a lot of things, mainly the fact that Sony Vegas only really renders one feed at a time. Hmm =/Last edited by Luponius; 13th Mar 2011 at 17:46.
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Yeah, it's a complex way of doing things and will likely lead to instability. It sounds like you might have more success rendering one big AVC file and then splitting it losslessly into sections afterwards. What you need is a tool that can split the file with "smart rendering" (= no recompression). I don't know what the best tool for that would be, so I'll throw a bunch of words at you that might be way off the mark or might give you a clue: mp4box, Yamb (= mp4box GUI), mkvtools, Videoredo, Boilsoft, TMPGEnc. Some of those ain't free. I bet poisondeathray knows more.
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If rendering one big AVC file means somehow re-rendering 550GB of data into another 600GB of Data and waiting on it to finish, that's going to prove very troublesome due to HDD limitations. It would greatly limit me, and the positive points of DMFS, which have so far greatly pleased me would all go. The fact I can run multiple instances is still something I actually don't mind at all, this means I can produce more work while I'm asleep. And yes, crashing or lockup problems would most definitely screw me up and put me back quite a bit, but I'll have to experience that myself with my own system to know for sure - it's most probably worth giving it a shot (multiple SV instances, that is).
Thanks,
Lupo
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