[Challenge] Suggestion for a good HEVC/H.265 encoder

[devin]

Hi everyone, I am searching for a video encoder (prefer the new standard HEVC/H.265) that can convert this sample video attached (which is AVC/H.264) into a smaller file size (or even equal to the original) with the same quality. I have tried encoding to both formats using IFME, HandBrake, Premiere 2017 and none of them can seem to do the job well.

What interests me the most is Vegas 14 can't seem to do anything better either even though I think it's safe to assume that the original video clip is rendered in Vegas. Probably I haven't found the right settings yet so if anyone can give it a try and point it out for me, that would mean a lot.

Oh and I am using the first frame of the video to compare with the result file.

Thank you very much in advance.

[jagabo]

Lossy encoders can only make the quality worse than the source. If you want better quality than the h.264 video you uploaded you need to go back to the source for that file and encode it with an h.265 encoder.

[devin]

I'm not sure if I understand it right but I'm okay with the quality of the original video. I just want to figure out what exact profiles/settings did they make when rendering this video and from there I could readjust my custom preset because right now, it looks to me that they did a very good job in producing a good quality video even though the format is in old standard and the bitrate is super low too!

My goal is to remake videos with burned in subtitles so I would have to reencode almost every original video clips since these are my sources. I have been using Vegas for this purpose and the recommended average bitrate for an "Internet HD 1080p" preset is 12Mbps and the size is "okay-big" but I'm planning to do 4K so I would like to try out the new format to see if it helps a bit but haven't found a good way around it.

I'm willing to stick with AVC if there isn't a good HEVC encoder just yet but I just don't know how to make the most out of this H.264 format like what they did in the original video in this thread. Does anyone have any favorite converters and/or video editors with specific profiles/settings when exporting so I could try out?

[poisondeathray]

The encoding settings are listed in the metadata . They used x264 . You can use mediainfo (view=>text) . There are problems with the quality (some texture loss , dark macroblocking / posterization)

If you started with same source, you could probably get even smaller filesize and higher quality with x265 (HEVC encoder)

When using UHD, HEVC has a massive advantage over AVC

There are guides on this forum (and other sites) on how to use other 3rd party encoders with vegas (e.g. lossless intermediate vs. frameserving with debugmode)

[jagabo]

I just want to figure out what exact profiles/settings did they make when rendering this video

The x264 settings used are in the metadata of the file. You can see it with MediaInfo:

Encoding settings : cabac=0 / ref=5 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x1:0x111 / me=umh / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.15 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=18 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=150 / keyint_min=15 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=25.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=5000 / vbv_bufsize=2500 / crf_max=0.0 / nal_hrd=none / filler=0 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

That's basically the x264 "slow" preset with a few tweaks.

and from there I could readjust my custom preset because right now, it looks to me that they did a very good job in producing a good quality video even though the format is in old standard and the bitrate is super low too!

They get away with low bitrates because their video has no noise and little motion. So it was very easy to compress. If, for example, you have noisy, shaky, handheld camcorder video you will not be able to compress to low bitrates like that with any quality.

[devin]

@jagabo Thanks for pointing out the detailed settings but does this mean they used Vegas alone to render the video? If so, where would I find that slow preset? I only do music videos and sometimes songs with still background so I guess it won't be very complicated to handle like long movie files. That also means that the contents of my future videos would be very similar to what is in the original video in this post and since it takes only 5MB for a 1 minute 720p video, is it impossible to produce a 25MB for a 5 minutes song? I know the size doesn't seem that much but I will be doing higher resolution so if I can get this same quality around 100MB for a 4K video, that would be so great in terms of storage and site bandwidth.

@poisondeathray I did look into the file info before asking but I'm completely lost with the technical details that jagabo listed out above so sorry... what I meant was just the regular presets and settings for a normal user or "newbie" like me. What I find interesting is that you mentioned "intermediate file" and "frameserving" techniques. In my process, I will have to save my subtitle files to a lossless AVI first before importing into Vegas and combine with other sources so I guess that's what intermediate means but frameserving is a new concept to me. I took some time to read about it and I think it's quite helpful to eliminate a huge AVI file between but as in the context of this discussion, I still don't know if I can make use of it as I assume most video projects are exported using either Premiere or Vegas or something else but alone right? If there are good middle man programs that might do the encoding job better than the big names, does anyone know any?

I decided to upload the original video to YouTube and Vimeo to see how they are encoded and attached are the result files if anyone is interested in looking at them. The YouTube file's specs and file size is almost the same as the original but the quality (or the first frame of the video) is slightly decreased. The quality of the Vimeo version however is exactly the same to me but the cost is it has higher bitrates and so the file size is twice as big. I prefer to keep things simple and use only the built-in encoders within Vegas or something else that anyone may suggest but reencoding the result files using a standalone encoder is another route that I'm willing to take too so if anyone has any good experience with any software, please do suggest.

[jagabo]

@jagabo Thanks for pointing out the detailed settings but does this mean they used Vegas alone to render the video?

No, they either frame served to x264 or they exported to a low loss or lossless intermedate, then encoded with x264.

If so, where would I find that slow preset?

It's one of x264's command line options. An simple x264 command line will look like:

x264 --preset slow --crf 25 --output output.mp4 input.avi

I only do music videos

Music videos are usually hard to compress because they have lots of handheld shots with lots of motion, quick cuts, flickering lights (disco balls), etc.

and sometimes songs with still background

Even if the background isn't moving, any shot from a real camera will have noise. Unless you remove that noise the still background will eat up bitrate.

The quality of the Vimeo version however is exactly the same

No, it's not. If you A/B switch between the two you'll see differences, though minor. You will always get losses when re-encoding with a lossy codec -- that's why they're called "lossy". If you use enough bitrate the losses are not easily visible but there are still losses.

[poisondeathray]

@jagabo Thanks for pointing out the detailed settings but does this mean they used Vegas alone to render the video? If so, where would I find that slow preset? I only do music videos and sometimes songs with still background so I guess it won't be very complicated to handle like long movie files. That also means that the contents of my future videos would be very similar to what is in the original video in this post and since it takes only 5MB for a 1 minute 720p video, is it impossible to produce a 25MB for a 5 minutes song? I know the size doesn't seem that much but I will be doing higher resolution so if I can get this same quality around 100MB for a 4K video, that would be so great in terms of storage and site bandwidth.

If you're going to be using UHD , you're going to want to use HEVC for sure , not AVC , for compression efficiency . HEVC has the ability to use larger "block" sizes, the larger the resolution, the larger the advantage delta

But HEVC has it's own challenges right now in terms of things like device support, because it's still fairly early compared to AVC which has had many years to mature. For example you can play AVC on practically any modern device, smart phone etc... has HW acceleration on almost anything. But it's already becoming very mainstream right now; newer TV's , UHD BD players, newer GPU's all support it now

@poisondeathray I did look into the file info before asking but I'm completely lost with the technical details that jagabo listed out above so sorry... what I meant was just the regular presets and settings for a normal user or "newbie" like me. What I find interesting is that you mentioned "intermediate file" and "frameserving" techniques. In my process, I will have to save my subtitle files to a lossless AVI first before importing into Vegas and combine with other sources so I guess that's what intermediate means but frameserving is a new concept to me. I took some time to read about it and I think it's quite helpful to eliminate a huge AVI file between but as in the context of this discussion, I still don't know if I can make use of it as I assume most video projects are exported using either Premiere or Vegas or something else but alone right? If there are good middle man programs that might do the encoding job better than the big names, does anyone know any?

There are many GUI's for x264 and x265. For example, megui, staxrip, ripbot etc.... GUI's have simplified presets to make everything easier. There is always a balance between maximum compression efficiency (quality / filesize) and encoding time - there are severe diminishing returns the slower you go. You can frameserve with debugmode from vegas OUT to another program like megui . There are many detailed step by step guides with screenshots on how to do this, and video tutorials if you prefer to learn that way. It's a very common workflow for vegas

There are ways to frameserve INto vegas as well , but with added overhead (editing is not as fast or snappy) . For example, avisynth and avfs . It removes the need for massive intermediate files, I wouldn't want to do this if I had lots of editing to do.

[devin]

Thank you gentlemen, for all the info. I guess in short, the "challenge" in my first post is unreal and impossible after all.

I spent all day today reading and watching the tutorials about frameserving and I've tried a couple ways along with a bunch of HEVC encoders found in this link as well as how to make uncompressed intermediate file but there are just some problems that I encounter with such as not being able to connect to the FrameServer and AVI file cannot be greater than 2GB (the Lagarith codec can solve this problem but the result color somehow changes a lot) so... I guess I will better off sticking with the old plan which is using Vegas alone.

Thank you very much again for your help.

[poisondeathray]

I spent all day today reading and watching the tutorials about frameserving and I've tried a couple ways along with a bunch of HEVC encoders found in this link as well as how to make uncompressed intermediate file but there are just some problems that I encounter with such as not being able to connect to the FrameServer and AVI file cannot be greater than 2GB (the Lagarith codec can solve this problem but the result color somehow changes a lot) so... I guess I will better off sticking with the old plan which is using Vegas alone.

If you're referring to frameserving, the "dummy" AVI is a few kb only .

If you're referring to lagarith AVI being 2GB, there should be no problems using 100's of GB's of AVI's . It might be some filesystem issue (FAT32 ? ) , or you might be exporting an outdated form of AVI

For lagarith color issues, likely it's a studio vs computer RGB issue (if there is a brightness change) , or Rec 601 vs. 709 matrix issue when converting from lagarith RGB to your final distribution format (usually YV12 or YUV 4:2:0). Those are easily dealt with in an avs script (most of the GUI's I referenced have the ability to edit the avs script to specifically control the RGB<=>YUV conversions).

The bundled AVC encoders in vegas aren't very good, even Sony's own promotional video (the video you posted is identical to, and originally downloaded from their own website) chose to use x264 instead of their own encoders. That should tell you something. Basically you're going to need higher bitrates, larger filesizes for a given level of "quality" when using SonyAVC or MC AVC in vegas. There are many comparisons and tests posted in the past. But HEVC is a new ball game, so new sorts of testing.

If you have questions specific to one of the workflows (e.g. can't get frameserver to work, vs. lagarith "wrong" colors), it might be a good idea to start a new specific thread on that topic with more details and specific information on the error message.

[devin]

Thank you very much for trying to help and for your suggestions, poisondeathray. I will start some new threads if I ever feel comfortable trying again cause right now it just gives me so much headache and the whole thing didn't give me so much hope (probably I was expecting quite a bit from what they say about HEVC) so... anyway, I will definitely find my way to stick with this new format though.

In response to your recent post, I was referring to the AVI as an intermediate file because it gave me a file size limit error when I try to render in Vegas. I searched up and can get it going with the Lagarith codec but the color changed (the brightness decrease like you said) and I'm not even sure if it's working probably because the result file is only 600MB. As for frameserving, I got the plugin installed and running in Vegas (though it seems to be the only plugin available and out of date with audio bugs) but none of the encoders I tried (which include MeGUI and HandBrake, the only two available with tutorials) seems to be able to read from the dummy AVI file. Probably it has something to do with the script from AviSynth first but I had no experience at all with this seems to be very popular program so I just simply give up.

What I like from what I've experienced is that I think I'm more aware of the available options in these different encoders and I think a CRF of 20 is acceptable to me in both terms of quality and file size so that's something for me to start with when I'm back playing with these stuffs. I might have to raise the bit rate and deal with a bigger file size though since now I'm only planning to work with Vegas alone and from what you pointed out about using an external encoder for their own promotional video. I think that's a good catch and oh, now I know x264 is an external "library" (of codecs?) developed by VLC which is not Vegas so that's also something that I've learned as a newbie.