Trying to encode video to H264, getting crappy results... Any Input? [Mac]

I

imaginator

New member
Hi all.  I'm trying to encode some footage of the Wishes fireworks I took in HD back in Dec 2006.  The problem is that I keep getting a ton of video noise no matter what I do.  I know the MPEG-4 codecs are sensitive to video noise, but this is really bad.  It doesn't seem to appear in the source video.

Anybody have any ideas?  Here's a clip of what I'm talking about:
http://www.badongo.com/vid/594175

- Imaginator
 
First of all... you bitrate is way too high.  Lots of people think the best solution is to pour data into the video stream to improve quality... this isn't true.  It's more important to process the video quality.  I have often said that, in my opinion, most of the videos posted to this site have a bitrate that is far too high.

There are actually good reasons why you would not want a high bitrate.  For one, large files are bigger to download and bigger/costlier to store, if you intend to share it.  Second, a higher bitrate requires greater computational power to render, which will prohibit more and more computers from playback as you go up.  Also related to this, higher bitrates reduce playback time on mobile devices.  So it's important to strike an appropriate balance between bitrate and quality.  But I digress...

When I play your video, I get terrible errors in the playback.  This might be because my computer is nowhere near capable of playing it properly.

In general, I would suggest you not use .mov for h.264.  QuickTime forces you to use a very basic profile that offers the minimum benefits of h.264.  There are lots others that are ideal.

My personal favorite codec is x264, which is free and yields very good quality.

Have a look at this file I made.  A couple months back I ran a seies of tests for my own purposes.  Here I am compressing raw HDV into a variety of codecs and then several quality settings within each codec.

http://www.mousebits.com/sirlamers_stuff/render_tests.zip
 
clintobean said:
what app are you using? imovie? final cut? quicktime? try mpegstreamclip, or any of those.  try alternate settings.
Click to expand...

I am using Final Cut to edit and convert the video from 1080i to 720p, and MPEG Stream Clip to compress.

SirLamer said:
In general, I would suggest you not use .mov for h.264.  QuickTime forces you to use a very basic profile that offers the minimum benefits of h.264.  There are lots others that are ideal.

My personal favorite codec is x264, which is free and yields very good quality.
Click to expand...

Ironically, the video I posted was from an x264 Quicktime Component, so I *was* using x264...
I understand the bitrate issue, and I do agree that it was a bit high.  As you said, I was throwing bitrate at the clip, but it was so that I could eliminate it as a factor.

What is your workflow SL?  How do you get it from camera -> editor -> internet?

I will take the info I have gathered from your sample clips and make another attempt at it here...

UPDATE

I dusted off my CLI version of x264 and encoding scripts and gave it a shot using CQ rather than bitrate and it came out great!  Much smaller files as well!

http://www.badongo.com/vid/594304

SL, Are there any issues playing the encoded file?
 
I use Compressor for all of my compressions, typically directly out of Final Cut Pro. Since I'm not doing HD, this is the basic level 1.3 version of h.264 that sirlamer is talking about that apple makes use of.

Something funny i've noticed. If you're using quicktime to compress to h.264, it typically comes out better with less noise if you do single pass rather than multi-pass. I'm not sure why this is. With Compressor that's not an issue and it does multipass by default anyways.
 
for me wmv had the best video quality .. for some reason divx/xvid and x264 hab some limited colorspace that resulted in color halos (like games with 16bit color .. if you know what I mean) .. daja also tried it and had the same problem
 
I'm pretty sure the color space on all three are the same.

Also, understand that x264 is just an open-source encoder for generic MPEG-4 video.  There are a wide variety of features available that can be turned on and off.  For whatever reason, QuickTime is only capable of decoding the most simple, basic version of MPEG-4 videos.  Since you are using QuickTime to encode, naturally it's going to utilize the same minimal features even though it is encoding with the rather robust x264 encoder.

Another important note is that you don't need an "x264" decoder to watch the videos.  There are a variety of generic MPEG-4 decoders that will work, so long as the particular device supports the features used during encoding.  For example, iPod supports the same narrow features set that QuickTime does, but Playstation 3 and the ffdshow codec support pretty much anything.  Similarly, you don't need a DivX codec to watch DivX video - even a .divx can be renamed to .avi and it'll play normally with the xvid or ffdshow codec as long as there is no menu system in the .divx file.

I use StaxRip for encoding.  It's nice because you download this program that automates using all the different programs involved in encoding a video even to the extent of assisting with downloading and installing the specific programs you need for your particular encode job.  It is by no means the easiest encoder to use, but because it works by utilizing a library of separate programs each developed to perform a specific narrow task, you can get the very best quality out of it.

StaxRip also includes pre-configured profiles to gain support for a variety of devices.  I always encode for QuickTime support for videos posted to this site, but videos I encode for my own use I turn on all the extra features so that I can squeeze down the file size.

If you downloaded those videos in the zip file that I made, the x264 videos were all encoded with StaxRip (I used another program for DivX, WMV and xvid).
 
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