Youtube quality advice

[Skysaberer]

Alright, so finished making a JKA movie.  Render it out uncompressed and then encode in X264 (vid) and AAC (audio) and it looks sweet with nice file size.

 

Now it seems to me like Youtube is raping the whole quality and making it look choppy.  I know Youtube reduces quality for everyone, but is this the 'normal reduction' or is my video just looking extra bad.

 

The first video uses X264 and AAC.  Basic encoding details for video are 1280x720, 59.94 fps, 2pass, 5000 bitrate and audio is constant bitrate 384 kbs and 48khz.  It does seem to end up darker than the source.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UU5yKJ8YwY

 

The second video uses WMV with the same encoding settings.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKG4eLtmZso

 

I can provide loads more technical info if needed.

[Raz0r]

Youtube only allows ~30fps videos, that'll be reducing the smoothness of it.

h.264 cuts off the lower 3 bits of colour values when using "tv colours" setting. Look around for that setting, or anything related to gamma. It's a common issue.

[Skysaberer]

Youtube only allows ~30fps videos, that'll be reducing the smoothness of it.

h.264 cuts off the lower 3 bits of colour values when using "tv colours" setting. Look around for that setting, or anything related to gamma. It's a common issue.

 

Did put in a script into avisynth to change to 'PC' colours it was pc.701 or something, but maybe that didn't work.

 

The original footage was shot at 120 fps, Premiere and export settings were 59.94 fps.  Idea being Premiere has more frames to work with for smoother slow-mo and camera angles.  I could do 29.97 instead, which is still a division of 120 and half of 59.94.  I'll give it a go.

[Skysaberer]

Exported at 29.97, still a bit choppy:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5c2EoTSy5I&feature=youtu.be

[h643]

I don't think it looks bad but maybe motion blur could help

c1=selectevery(last, 2, 0)
c2=selectevery(last, 2, 1)

Average(c1, 0.33333333333, c2, 0.66666666667)

[Skysaberer]

Wow.  When I embed the videos on here, they actually look pretty smooth most of the times I play back.  But on Youtube itself in windowed and full screen mode it gets noticeably choppier.

[Raz0r]

Are you playing them on a laptop or something? I get the same issue when trying to play back at 1080p on my external monitor.

[Skysaberer]

Are you playing them on a laptop or something? I get the same issue when trying to play back at 1080p on my external monitor.

 

I'm playing it on a high-end gaming computer, although the monitor is a Benq 22 inch monitor that's about 3 years old.  I have the same issue when trying it on a separate laptop, although the laptop isn't very good and the screen probably hasn't been colour optimised.

 

Someone else with a decent computer also watched the video and commented the same thing (way less choppy on embedded, on youtube itself and full screen it gets choppier particularly on the sideways camera pan of the corpses).

[Skysaberer]

X264 DARKNESS SOLVED:    Avisynth was crushing the blacks and brightening the whites.  This was because I had PC colour settings on using 'ConvertToYV12(matrix="pc.709")'.  The trouble is that recording jpegs in JKA means that the screenshots (and then obviously the avis made from them) were already PC colour settings.  PC colour settings are broader spectrum than TV colour, so Avisynth was telling Megui to add PC colour settings on top of PC colour settings, making the contrast way too high.  You have to use TV colours, so I now have 'ConvertToYV12(matrix="rec601")'.

 

CHOPPY FPS UNSOLVED:  Still running some more tests, any advice would be much appreciated.  Beautifully smooth when embedded, a little choppy in full screen 720p on Youtube itself, quite choppy on Youtube windowed.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsCKDiWAtM0&feature=youtu.be

[Skysaberer]

When I stream the Youtube video through VLC media player it's smooth.  It seems the problem is related to the browser, flash or Youtube itself.  Some people who have watched it find it smooth, others choppy.  Is there something I can do to make sure everyone sees it smooth?  A lot of work went into the video for it to be a poor watch for some.

[Circa]

It's probably their machine. Some computers play videos smoother than others.

 

I don't really know what's going on here.