Exporting AF100 from Premiere Pro for Vimeo, not liking the quality...

Rick Burnett

Rick Burnett

Section Moderator
So in this thread you can see the best file I could get out of premiere for vimeo, which introduces A LOT of artifacts even before I upload it

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?240014-AF100-VBR-(slomo)-tests-and-settings-test.

I started with the Vimeo HD preset is CS5 and then changed the type to 5.0 and set the resolution to 1920x1080. I set the VBR up to 12 and the max VBR to 30. From everything I read, this should be sufficient. However, it's not.

The artifacts I am seeing are blocky noise in the blacks, banding, and blockiness in some of the out of focus water moving at the beginning. The original footage on the timeline is SO MUCH better. I see no banding in the same area.

I've seen other AF100 videos on here and they are fantastic. In similar exposures and content, I don't see any of this. Also, this footage is ungraded as well.

Thoughts?
 
I have compared them both side to side, that is HDTV 1080p vs Vimeo HD presets, and the HDTV 1080p is far superior. There are definite issues for some reason with the Vimeo HD preset, mine was a clear gamma shift.

For Vimeo, I simply use the HDTV 1080p preset and turn the bitrate down to between 8 and 11. It creates a larger file but ~5 minute videoes will still upload to Vimeo just fine.

If it is still too big, have you considered downrezzing to 720p?
 
I will try that and look at the results, thanks! The video is short, and the reason I want it at 1080p is that I want to see the detail at 1080p for other people to look at. I have no doubt the 720p footage would look good :)
 
Judging from the size of your downloadable Vimeo MP4 file (322Mb at 3:12 duration) your average bitrate is less than 2Mbps. That's simply not enough bits for a 1080p video with a lot of random movement. To squeeze this kind of material into very few bits you may need something more elaborate than the prosumer codecs bundled with Adobe CS5.
 
lpowell said:
Judging from the size of your downloadable Vimeo MP4 file (322Mb at 3:12 duration) your average bitrate is less than 2Mbps. That's simply not enough bits for a 1080p video with a lot of random movement. To squeeze this kind of material into very few bits you may need something more elaborate than the prosumer codecs bundled with Adobe CS5.
Click to expand...

I think your math might be a bit off..

Assuming 192kbps audio, that would be about 13-14Mbps (as in megabits per second) . The filesize is ~322 megabytes


But I agree the Mainconcept encoder bundled with PP isn't that great
 
The audio was 128kbps as I didn't want to waste too much on the audio :)

What other options are there for encoding? I guess I could always write out with something else and use an encoder in Final Cut to see if it works better.
 
Try x264 . It's easily the best h.264 encoder , but a bit of a learning curve to use it properly. It's more difficult to use on a Mac, but there are ports and different cross platform front ends you can use like handbrake. PC has a vfw version that exports directly out of AME, but Mac doesn't have something similar to my knowledge. I think there is something you can install to access it out of quicktime

Specifically, adaptive quantization is what helps in your scenario (noise in dark areas, banding on gradients like shadows). Most h.264 encoders will raise quantizer along shadows, gradients - this leads to those artifacts. You see it in the native footage in AVCCAM as well

But I hope you do realize, even if you pre-process (i.e. dither) and encode it properly before uploading to vimeo, there is a high chance vimeo will "destroy" it when it re-encodes it


I think this is old link, but search for newer versions of x264 for quicktime
http://www.streaminglearningcenter....cktimecompressor-you-gotta-checkout-x264.html
 
Yes, I am aware of what vimeo will do :) Of course, I'd just like to get to that point where Vimeo is the problem and not my files out. I had looked at x264 awhile ago, I will revisit! Thanks!
 
PDR said:
I think your math might be a bit off..

Assuming 192kbps audio, that would be about 13-14Mbps (as in megabits per second) . The filesize is ~322 megabytes
Click to expand...
Oops, you're right, probably shouldn't have skipped coffee this morning. However, 13Mbps is still pretty marginal if it's 1080p @ 60fps?

MainConcept makes an excellent H.264 broadcast encoder, but the scaled-down consumer version bundled in Adobe CS5 lacks the detailed bitrate optimizations of their Codec Suite 5.1 plugin for Premiere Pro. The license is pretty steep though, so rendering to Cineform and exporting to FCP may be a more practical option.
 
lpowell said:
Oops, you're right, probably shouldn't have skipped coffee this morning. However, 13Mbps is still pretty marginal if it's 1080p @ 60fps?

MainConcept makes an excellent H.264 broadcast encoder, but the scaled-down consumer version bundled in Adobe CS5 lacks the detailed bitrate optimizations of their Codec Suite 5.1 plugin for Premiere Pro. The license is pretty steep though, so rendering to Cineform and exporting to FCP may be a more practical option.
Click to expand...

Well it's originally 60fps, but now is being shown at 24fps. Most things I saw online said 12Mbps was good for Vimeo, but clearly not in this case with this encoder! :)

I'm going to try the FCP method and also the x264 method and see how they compare.
 
Rick,

You can try to use the h.264 encoder in After Effects. The following instructions are based on CS4.

Step 1 Go to file export and choose MPEG-4
Step 2 You will be prompted with warning box (this is not the preferred way to export most compositions) select okay
step 3 File Format drop down select MP4
step 4 Video Format drop down select h.264
step 5 Data Rate Box ( I usually use 2048)
step 6 Change your Frame Rate leave everything else at default

I have gotten pretty decent results in the past, but usually use elemental accelerator & FX5800 with Media Encoder.
 
After choosing File, then Export, try checking the box: "match sequence settings". Then upload. Last time I checked which was 2 weeks ago, Vimeo re-encodes all videos, so you are at the mercy of their encoder.
 
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