Does it make any sense to use a higher bitrate when the original is lower?

[-Alex-]

For example, I've captured video game footage at a bitrate of 4000. The recorder (OBS) only records in FLV format, so there's that.

For my final production I have 14 hours of video. I've chosen MP4 @ 8000kbps. I just chose 8,000 because I can't choose something really high, and 8,000 is exactly double the original, so I wasn't sure if that might have a mathematical advantage of some kind or not but it was my choice.

Anyway, I chose MP4 in the end because MKV was having problems when I tried it. In all honesty, I find MKV to be good for videos up to 3 hours long but when you're getting into really long and large videos I find MP4 to be more stable in general. Furthermore, my justification is that I believe YouTube is just going to convert it to MP4 after uploading anyway because I don't think MKV is a streamable format, so it would've made using MKV pointless I guess.

My original production was MKV at 20,000kbps. After 14 hours of rendering (the ratio of video length to rendering time for my computer appears to be pretty much 1:1 with H.264), only the beginning of the video worked and the rest after 4 hours was broken (trying to play that section would cause the video player to stop). So, frustrated, I decided to try MP4 and at a significantly lower bitrate. Doing the calculations, my 20,000kbps video was 111GB large and would have taken almost 48 hours to upload. So, this choice was also one to downsize that as well.

So do you think this was sound logic? Should I use a higher bitrate? I dunno, I just thought it might be wise to leave some "padding" of some kind in case of irregularities and stuff since they're two different formats. If I could just produce as FLV I would choose the same settings for sure, but Cyberlink PowerDirector doesn't produce in FLV and I find that very few editors will.

I'll list all my raw data now. Thanks for any input.

<!--Original Game Info--!>
Game: Tales of Symphonia (GC)
Platform: Dolphin Emulator
Video: OGL and D3D
Video Enhancements: 2x Internal Resolution, Per-Pixel Lighting
Audio: XAudio2, DSP HLE Emulation

<!--Original Recording Method--!>
Tool: OBS (Open Broadcasting Software) x64
Container: FLV
Resolution: 1920x1080
Bitrate: 4000
Frame Rate: 60
Audio Codec: AAC
Audio Format: 48Khz
Audio Bitrate: 320
Audio Channel: Stereo
x264 Preset: Veryfast
Encoding Profile: High
(except in Flanoir where I get bad lag because of the snow, I had to use the "Ultrafast" x264 preset for the big scene in Flanoir, you'll notice the quality bump down a bit there)

<!-- Final Video Production--!>
Tool: Cyberlink PowerDirector 13
Container: MP4
Resolution: 1920x1080
Frame Rate: 60
Frame Type: Progressive
Profile Type: High
Entropy Encoding: CADAC
Average Bitrate: 8000
Speed/Quality Indicator: Quality Mode
Use Deblocking: Yes
Audio Compression: Dolby Digital
Audio Channel: Stereo
Audio Compression Rate: 384


Also my first post to here. I dunno if this is an active community or anything but yeah, figured I'd try.

[jagabo]

With lossy codecs each time decompress/recompress a video you will get a loss of quality. The higher the bitrate you use the less damage you will get. So yes, it makes sense to use a higher bitrate. And different codecs require different bitrates to deliver similar quality. So if you were going from h.264 to MPEG 2 for DVD you definitely want to use a higher bitrate because MPEG 2 is much less efficient than h.264. And lastly, even the same codec with different settings will deliver different quality.

[-Alex-]

So I made a good judgement, yes?

Also, double the original should be more than enough I hope? Or should I go for even higher?

And I was right to use MP4 since I'm uploading to YouTube right? I figure they'd just end up converting it again anyway, which would be bad. Plus for whatever reason MKV seems to have errors with really large sizes.

Lastly, are there lossless video codecs you can record with? I couldn't find good free capture software for gaming other than OBS, and it's so easy to use and does everything I've wanted so far that I've just kept to it. But... I figure lossless would be far too large anyway, I wouldn't be looking forward to having a week to render and a month to upload. Let alone the fact that I don't think I have the storage capacity either.

I'd love to use H.265 but I'll have to do that when I have a higher end modern computer. This computer takes forever to produce in 265. I only get 1:1 ratio of recording size to production time with .264 as it is. 14 hours of video = 14 hours of my computer running with it's fans on full blast and essentially becoming a room heater.

Thanks.

[-Alex-]

Actually, follow-up, is there any software that can produce in FLV? That'd probably help me a lot.

All I really wanted to do was stitch a bunch of videos together for a final production. It'd be best if I don't have to change format at all.

Thanks.

[gonca]

He's starting with AVC, hence the x264 settings, in FLV container.
Why encode? Just remux from FLV to MP4

[-Alex-]

I'm kind-of a newb about video work. Basically PowerDirector always tells me it has to be "Produced/Rendered" or whatever else.

I'm guessing when you say "Remux" it means I don't need to do a render. Unfortunately it seems that PowerDirector has no such options.

As I said, all I wanted to do was stitch a bunch of FLVs together for a final production. THAT SAID, I do have two MKV files in the mix as well that were other projects that I already stitched together where I converted the FLVs into MKV with maxed-out settings (48,500 Bitrate) because I can't produce in FLV. Though I suppose I could try reshooting those scenes.

If there's any software that would be especially helpful for my situation, free or not, feel free to shoot them to me. I'll uh, find a way to get them...

[jagabo]

So I made a good judgement, yes?

Also, double the original should be more than enough I hope? Or should I go for even higher?

There's no single answer to that question. You have to look at the results and see for yourself.

And I was right to use MP4 since I'm uploading to YouTube right? I figure they'd just end up converting it again anyway, which would be bad.

As I understand it, youtube recompresses everything you upload. So it doesn't really matter what codec and container you use -- as long as they're supported.

Lastly, are there lossless video codecs you can record with?

Several. ut video codec, huffyuv, lagarith... even x264 has a lossless mode. Most video doesn't compress much with lossless codecs though. You will probably files several times larger than you are now. I don't know which are supported by youtube.

[gonca]

https://www.videohelp.com/software/My-MP4Box-GUI

[-Alex-]

https://www.videohelp.com/software/My-MP4Box-GUI

Will MP4 Box be able to remux FLV and MKV files into one final output?

If so, I guess I can cancel my current production process and use it to stitch them all together and produce a file that's all the clips in one video, right?

[ezcapper]

I'm kind-of a newb about video work. Basically PowerDirector always tells me it has to be "Produced/Rendered" or whatever else.

I'm guessing when you say "Remux" it means I don't need to do a render. Unfortunately it seems that PowerDirector has no such options.

As I said, all I wanted to do was stitch a bunch of FLVs together for a final production. THAT SAID, I do have two MKV files in the mix as well that were other projects that I already stitched together where I converted the FLVs into MKV with maxed-out settings (48,500 Bitrate) because I can't produce in FLV. Though I suppose I could try reshooting those scenes.

If there's any software that would be especially helpful for my situation, free or not, feel free to shoot them to me. I'll uh, find a way to get them...

Hi Alex, if I understand your situation right, all these formats you mention are interchangable without reincoding, changing the bitrate, or making the filesize bigger or smaller, etc.

This is what the other poster meant by remuxing, he gave good advice. Your recordings use the h.264 codec. Mp4, flv, etc, are all different "containers" that hold this codec. You can change the container and keep the exact same file information using many programs, a fairly easy, free one to use is avidemux.

You will want to use a youtube tutorial to learn how to use it. You want to set the audio and video options to "copy" and it will not change a single thing about your file except the container. The file will be the same quality, size, bitrate, etc as the original files. The one thing I am aware of with containers is that if you have a really long file and want the mp4 container, use the mp4 version 2 muxer. I think version one has problems with very long file.

One container is not going to have better quality than another when uploaded to youtube. Hope this helps some, good luck!

when you look up how to stitch files together with avidemux, search for the term "joining". Briefly, you drag one file into the program, and drag the other one next and it will stitch or join them together when you press the blue disk button to save the file. You can also split files

[-Alex-]

Okay, thank you.

I just cancelled my rendering process, tired of my computer overworking itself. It's probably terrible on my laptop.

Yes, my situation is I want to stitch over 100 FLV clips and a few MKV clips into one final video together. I shot the scenes in the game so that all non-cutscenes and boss fights were omitted. I named the files "(01).flv, (02).flv, (03).flv", etc in order.

It's worth noting that the two MKV clips are at a HUGE bitrate much much higher than the rest of the videos.

According to PowerDirector - MP4, MKV, and M2TS are all listed under "AVC H.264". FLV isn't listed, but I figure that's because PowerDirector simply doesn't support that.

All I want is basically to drag and drop them into one line and wham bam, stitch them all together.

Will this work? I will downright Avidemux.

[jagabo]

You'll never be able to append 100 files in avidemux. The program will crash long before you get there. It's full of bugs.

[-Alex-]

So what should I use then? I need something very stable I figure.

[-Alex-]

Hmm... I just had an idea. I could record my recordings playing all side-by-side in my media player. Doesn't seem too conventional but should work yes? Just improvising.

However I would like to find an easier way to just stitch them all together real quick.

[-Alex-]

Perhaps I should make a new thread about this since it's kind-of gone off topic a bit?

[-Alex-]

Heh, it looks like what I'm trying to do causes most programs to crash. At least PowerDirector doesn't crash I guess. I find that pretty wild, I thought plenty of professionals must do bigger jobs than anything I could come up with.

To be precise, I have 166 files and 40GB of video to put together.

Wonder what can remux that much.

[jagabo]

With 166 files it may be best to work in groups. Append 1 to 10 into one file, then 11 to20 into another. Then append the appended files 1to10 + 11to20 + 21to30, etc. It wouldn't surprise me if you end up with A/V sync errors though. It's probably best to do this with a command line tool like mp4box or ffmpeg. Are all the files the same frame size, frame rate, etc? If not you'll run into problems.

[-Alex-]

That's kinda what I thought too. I thought I could knock maybe 30 out at once and then move on to the next 30, then stitch the results together.

Like I said, a few of these are MKV in different bitrate. I did that because a few files needed special editing, and I just produced in the highest quality H.264 that I could for use later. That means I went for MKV with maxed-out settings.

Maybe I should try to just do what I thought of before first and see if it works without an error.

That said, I could probably just re-shoot the scenes so that they can all be FLV at same bitrate.

[jagabo]

You can use MkvExtractGUI to extract the video and audio streams them mux them into an FLV container. Or ffmpeg can do it from a command line. Something like:

ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.flv

How to concatenate with ffmpeg: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate

[-Alex-]

Ahahaha, as it turns out PowerDirector 13 can just produce then upload my work directly to YouTube...silly me.

It also knew that it can only upload so much to YouTube at a time, which I didn't know, and is going to make a playlist and stuff. Pretty neat really.

That said, for security reasons, soon as it's done producing I'll be unlinking their app from my account.

[-Alex-]

Oh wait, nevermind, ETA 168 hours. F*ck that noise I can encode and upload it separately for that much time.

It's gotten too complicated. I've decided to produce this as two separate videos and hope everything works out fine. I'll probably be able to use MKV instead of MP4 too thanks to this.

The game is a two-disc game so I can just make sense of it by separating them where the game asks for you to insert disc 2.