Uploaded video looks worse then original....by far

[Marc Dunham]

I'm going to post side by side screen caps of what I'm describing, just can't at the moment and figured I'd at least get the question out there.

I'm having some issues with my video going from CS6 to Vimeo. The exported video file (which is h.264 mp4 as vimeo suggests) when I play it from my computer retains its crispness and colors pretty well, even compressed down to 200mb. However when I play it over vimeo it looks highly degraded, edges are much softer, there seems to be some mudding or aliasing that isn't there in the source file. Obviously vimeo encodes the video to a smaller bit rate. However I've definitely seen videos on vimeo as simple as test shots that look better then this, so I know it can handle better quality.

What would I be doing wrong perhaps? I understand thats a possibly vague question, so let me know whatever Info you'd need to better help diagnose my problem, because this seems to keep happening everytime I upload something.

Thanks

[Brian Iannone]

What encoding settings are you using when exporting from CS6 (preset [if applicable], data rate, H.264 profile and level, etc.)?

[Marc Dunham]

Its the from Adobe Media Encoder, and It was the 1080p H.264 Broadcast Preset. Made sure everything was 100% or Best.


Heres a quick cap I did, 1st one is the source file, second is from vimeo.




They are like a frame off, but it shouldn't matter you can still see kind of what I'm talking about

[Brian Iannone]

Any chance you could post a full-resolution frame from the source file? The one you uploaded is 180x113, so it's a little hard to compare the loss of quality between the two.

[Marc Dunham]

hmmm weird, tried a different host




Uploaded with ImageShack.us




Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I just did a Preview Screen shot of my laptop screen so I could just show exactly what I'm seeing and comparing.

[Greg Barley]

Mark,

If you're using CS6, there is a Vimeo preset under the H.264 section (make sure you're not choosing Legacy H.264). It basically encodes 2-pass VBR with the min and max bit rates set to 5 Mbps, which is what Vimeo wants (http://vimeo.com/help/compression).

I know it's a pain, but you'll also get better results if you first scale your footage to 1280x720 (or 1920x1080 if you want), and THEN add any sharpening in your workflow. Then output that using the Vimeo preset. Again, adds an extra rendering step, but if you want super sharp Vimeo footage, that's the way to go.

I'm sure others can chime in with more/better info on this... and I know there are past threads covering this as well, I just don't have time at the moment to search for them!

[Alexander Mejia]

I've told clients in the past that you will never get a perfect output from your NLE to a video sharing site because the bitrates they use are so low that your video will always end up slightly different. Even if I told you to export a 100 Megabit per second video stream that was transparent to the original, it would still compress down to mush.


That being said, there are ways to pre-process your image so that it performs best on video sharing sites. For maximum bitrate efficiency I usually scrub all of the noise from the cB and cR channels, and leave a little in the Y channel, so that skin doesn't look too plastic. After that banding starts to occur in smooth gradients like the sky because there is nothing to break up your now 4:2:0 signal. At that compression the color channel is a quarter of the size of your original image which makes the situation even more tricky to fix. To counteract banding I add smart dithering back into the cR channel only on gradients to break that up.

This all happens before the video even touches the encoder. The result ends up being slightly different, but arguebly better than sending the video un-processed to a video sharing site.

I'm also seeing a color shift in your footage! Is your video playback color managed? It could explain why you're seeing something different from the local video playback vs what you're grabbing in the browser.

If this is for a paid client, I would hire a compression expert if you want maximum quality from this kind of sharing service.

[Troy Smith]

Mark,

If you're using CS6, there is a Vimeo preset under the H.264 section (make sure you're not choosing Legacy H.264). It basically encodes 2-pass VBR with the min and max bit rates set to 5 Mbps, which is what Vimeo wants (http://vimeo.com/help/compression).

I know it's a pain, but you'll also get better results if you first scale your footage to 1280x720 (or 1920x1080 if you want), and THEN add any sharpening in your workflow. Then output that using the Vimeo preset. Again, adds an extra rendering step, but if you want super sharp Vimeo footage, that's the way to go.

I'm sure others can chime in with more/better info on this... and I know there are past threads covering this as well, I just don't have time at the moment to search for them!

Interesting, doing it this way vimeo probably doesn't reencode the video i presume?

[Alexander Mejia]

Interesting, doing it this way vimeo probably doesn't reencode the video i presume?

Vimeo and Youtube will always re-encode your source no matter what. It helps to deal with encoder bugs in weird and old encoders that could cause issues on flash player, or hardware h.264 players. I would recommend encoding the highest bitrate you possibly can so that the least amount of detail is lost when it hits a second generation encoding.

[Doug Beatty]

FWIW, with a Vimeo 'Pro' account your videos have a 1080p option and are encoded in 2-passes, so you'll get better looking uploads if you decide to subscribe.