HD Encoding / Export Settings Collaboration

This is inherently subjective and guaranteed to produce disagreement - perhaps violent disagreement

- I think Youtube quality sucks giant donkey balls. Vimeo's quality is superior

- I encode H264 5000kbps. More often then not I encode 2400 to 3200 kbps. Skiing video below is 3200kbps. Biking video is encoded 5000kbps. Both are 3fps. Skiing video is GoPro HD. Biking video is GoPro HD and ContourHD

For both biking and skiing videos I find that quality more then "acceptable". Note the use of I - which is inherently subjective. Note too that my videos are generally in lower light as i bike and ski in BC.

Sample videos - embedding HD disabled so go to vimeo directly to see HD


Whistler Christmas ski 2009 from Lee Lau on Vimeo.


Whistler Christmas ski 2009 from Lee Lau on Vimeo.

Thanks Lee. Appreciate your sharing.

Not trying to debate just share. Not trying to say one is better. Just share what works for you and then the individual can decide.

I also ride in low light conditions.

I only recently noticed youtube quality being better.

But 60fps video newer hd youtube is looking quite nice.


Done any 60fps testing?

60fps is a tool to get 50% slow mo......nothing more. Why? Because nothing, NOTHING uses 60fps as a baseline presentation at the present time, not even HD sports. Even that is 60i, which is 60 fields per second, not frames....the net presentation wrapper is still 30fps. The normal accepted video/tv standard is still at 29.976fps, so I imagine most video hosting sites (and more importantly, your software) still expect this. I may be wrong because I never host my videos anywhere but that would be my guess. Your video editing software at most, probably has 30fps as the default, and MAYBE a setting for 24fps.

You could rip 60fps timeline files and just watch them on your computer though. But even then you need advanced enough software that allows you to define a 60fps timeline to edit in.

As far as artifacting goes, there are lots of things that contribute to it. Output compression/bitrates are only part of the equation. Artifacting occurs when software essentially doesn't know how to address a rearranging of pixels. This can come from resizing, color correcting, funky time shifting, and even something as simple as not enough light in the original camera scan. One good general rule of thumb to use is output at the same resolution as your source footage so that no resizing/interpolation is needed. Now if you're shooting at 1080p then you might not have the computer monitor or television to view that. In cases like that, go by even multiples (50%-540p, 25%-270p etc). That way you're not asking the program to extrapolate odd pixel ratios in conversion. A program can make much better sense out of 2:1 or 4:1 than it can with something other than whole numbers......which is essentially what you're asking it to do if you use some odd, non standard size that's not an even multiple of your original resolution size.

pro edge thanks for posting the example

Woo excellent info:thumbsup: Thanks alot.

Just trying to get the most out of my pos pov camera without compressing too much.

yeap I got basic of garbage in garbage out and you cant polish a turd.

Havent played with video that much. Have done some flash work with 100+_fps animations so know the player can handle it if you got the cpu power. (flash player is what is used for vimeo youtube etc)

Locally the video does play at 60fps.
When I import the videos into the video editor there at 60fps.
I can also export them and play them locally at 60fps. Not sure if quicktime and or windows media player supports 60fps.
(will have to test that or if someone can confirm on mac or pc)

Here is a screenshot of a pos video in video player. Plays smooth locally.
frame rate (60 frames per second)


Video editor (frame rate 60)

I can host the video and stream it via my browser at 60fps, going to test a flash video player and checkout the frame rate.

I found no matter what I encoded the video at (10mbit 2 pass 60fps or youtube 1280x720 60fps) youtube and still compressed it to the same size and 30fps.

thanks, time for more testing.

kidwoo said:

You could rip 60fps timeline files and just watch them on your computer though. But even then you need advanced enough software that allows you to define a 60fps timeline to edit in.

Click to expand...

Obviously your software allows you to do that.

What is that? kdenlive? I'd never heard of it before. Sounds pretty cool for free.

But yeah, like I said, if your editor can do it then your computer will play it. Something's getting messed up in the retranscode to vimeo/youtube. Are there any presets you have to check when you upload videos to those sites? Maybe you could look a little deeper and see if they're taking 30fps as a default. I remember a while back people were *****ing about vimeo not handling 24fps videos correctly.

I just got an hd camera myself so I haven't output much. I tend to sit on footage until I get enough to do a complete video. But when I'd output standard def stuff, 1800kb output was kind of the standard of diminishing returns for file size on web presentation. Obviously 1080 files get pretty huge pretty fast.

If you've got a host site/ftp site or something, you could make me a quick 5-10 raw uncompressed file I could mess around with in premiere pro. I'm guessing it has more leeway than what you might be using. Since it would be your footage, you'd have a comparison to what you've already tried. But as far as hosting at other places goes.......that's one of the many reasons, I just pay for my own site.

kidwoo said:

Obviously your software allows you to do that.

What is that? kdenlive? I'd never heard of it before. Sounds pretty cool for free.

But yeah, like I said, if your editor can do it then your computer will play it. Something's getting messed up in the retranscode to vimeo/youtube. Are there any presets you have to check when you upload videos to those sites? Maybe you could look a little deeper and see if they're taking 30fps as a default. I remember a while back people were *****ing about vimeo not handling 24fps videos correctly.

I just got an hd camera myself so I haven't output much. I tend to sit on footage until I get enough to do a complete video. But when I'd output standard def stuff, 1800kb output was kind of the standard of diminishing returns for file size on web presentation. Obviously 1080 files get pretty huge pretty fast.

If you've got a host site/ftp site or something, you could make me a quick 5-10 raw uncompressed file I could mess around with in premiere pro. I'm guessing it has more leeway than what you might be using. Since it would be your footage, you'd have a comparison to what you've already tried. But as far as hosting at other places goes.......that's one of the many reasons, I just pay for my own site.

Click to expand...

yes kdenline. http://www.kdenlive.org/

kinda basic but there improving it. easy to use. I am just learning to use it so I can play around with this cheapo hd cam.

premeire is really slick, thats for sure. Last time I used it was version 5.

I am using a linux system so different options available.
Commercial houses have there own custom software for rendering etc.

I did some tests today and found windows/mac can play a h.264 encoded video at close to 60fps.

I agree it is getting hosed by youtube or vimeo.

They have there encoding set and they do not compensate for fast motion vs a talking head. Then the frame rate also get chopped.

I think you nailed by hosting the video and allow users to download,. then you get the best quality.

Will put some clips together if you want to mess with it. (will have to upload some clips) All I have is some pov footage this far. (not nice 3ccd hd)

By the way. Your videos are excellent!

laup said:

Trying to understand why you want a 60fps video on youtube or other streaming site.
If you play back a 60fps video it plays (very closely) like a 30fps video just with 60 frames in a second instead of 30. So whats the advantage of streaming at 60?
Well the main advantage is to slow down the play back and retain smooth motion.
But none of the streaming sites I'm aware of offer an option to reduce/increase the playback speed.
Furthermore, 60 frames in a second will logically take twice the bandwidth of a 30fps video.As Youtube and Co have limit to the bitrate, one frame of of a 60fps video would be half as good as a frame of a 30fps.

So am I missing something? What other reasons would you want to stream a 60fps video for?

Click to expand...

I want the end user (person viewing the video via the web) to see what I see. I was also curious to see what is possible and what people have done.

Did some tests today. Quicktime player on Windows and mac supports 60frames per second. Still gotta test the mac frame rates.

I was averaging about 55-58fps when playing the file locally.
3 year old system not the latest and greatest. Windows XP pro 3.0 ghz p4 2GB ram

also possible to export a flash video player that will support 60fps

check this video (not mtb) flash video @ 60fps
http://www.provideocollective.com/videofiles/Rachel Williams.html