Video profile- Baseline

[shlosi]

Hi All,

I encoded a file a few times using baseline video profile and got a different result every time.
There were a few times that a particular part of the video was looking fair, and other times it was pixelated as hell.

What I thought is that baseline is an unstable algorithm, but found no place on the net to confirm my speculation.
Am I right?

[Baldrick]

What do you convert with? x264 encoder/frontend?

[shlosi]

Vidcoder

[LigH.de]

The Baseline profile of ... which codec, specifically? I would assume MPEG-4 AVC = H.264, but who knows.

You encoded the same clip with the same parameters, but the result was non-deterministic? So which software did you use, which parameters, any facts, details, log files?

[shlosi]

Hi,

You are right.
I did use h.264 AVC.

I rendered the file using Adobe Premiere/Encoder.
I tried it when I encoded it to 1.5Mbit files but I guess it will happen when I'll try it in other parameters.

[smrpix]

Did you use vidcoder or Adobe Media Encoder? You're contradicting yourself and getting further away from an answer. Details please.

[shlosi]

Oh sorry, it is Vidcoder.
I am using the Adobe Encoder for other stuff.

[_Al_]

Baseline setting should not be cause of different outcome.

Are you using 2pass VBR where those different outcomes are result of different video length?

[shlosi]

Yes, definitely.

[LigH.de]

It is not a surprise that different movies result in different file sizes, even though you set the same target bitrate. But the differences should not be severe.

Also it is no surprise that the same target size may result in different quality, because different movies can have different playing times and different complexity.

[shlosi]

I did not talk about file size at all.
I am talking about parts in the video that have lower quality, some of them could be very pixelated and some not.
I did not set a target size- it's not the issue....

[_Al_]

Inputs must differ at some point if you have video encoded differently (parts that have the same time). Or would vidcoder set some settings (for handbrake/its x264) on its own for some reason, hard to believe. Are you checking those videos always with the same player?

Hoping you are no talking about different parts (different time) in the same video, in that case use CRF encoding, not 1pass VBR aka ABR.

When troubleshooting a weird scenario (if it looks like that), you need to start to simplify whatever you are doing and then to make it more difficult all the way, step by step, then somewhere on the way it will start to give problems. It might be software, or it might be you. Just take your video, use basic x264 command line or different x264 encoder with baseline setting and you'd see that you'd get always the same result.