I used to do a bit of video/audio encoding. Xvid reminds me of the late 90s, and DivX is okay but is kind of late to the 1080/720/HD bandwagon. I prefer x264, but to each their own.
You may need to install the xvid/divx codecs. For Xvid, you can find it bundled along with other codecs, when you install the K-Lite Codec Pack (google it). For some reason, DivX isn’t bundled. Well it is, but it’s an ancient, unsupported version. If you must use DivX, you can get the free version of their codec from DivX.com.
Another thing, is that these codecs still might not show up in Adobe Premiere’s export window. I think this is because these codecs are 32bit, and if you use the 64bit version of Premiere, it won’t be able to use them. All the more reason to use x264 instead.
Alright…so im going to have to basically start teaching myself how to perform video editing in premiere. It’ll take me a while. But I appreciate your advice.
I like to export from PPro into .mp4 shell using h.264 codec. I’ll see if I can maybe screenshot or write-up my PPro settings for you to maybe reference. I remember nailing some pretty good settings for YouTube that kept YouTube from garbling the video, which it loves to do.
i could’ve sworn that there was an article or thread somewhere about which settings would result in no conversion upon uploading to youtube, but i can’t find it.
anyway, seconding mpeg4-avc (h264) video inside .mp4 container cuz that’s what i remember. or mpeg4-asp (xvid/divx) inside .avi. i wish i had premiere so i could just say exactly which settings to use, maybe niji can help there. i don’t know what framerates youtube likes, but i’m guessing 29.97 is safe, which is good cuz it looks like you’re capturing interlaced anyway. leave the resolution alone, probably.
Youtube converts everything, but some formats receive very little of a hit. Also, each specific resolution is bitrate limited by youtube, which means that upscaling a video before you upload it can result in youtube giving it a much better quality across the board. If you upload it at 360p resolution it’ll kill bitrate to like 500kbps on the source video when it re-encodes it. Idk if they’ve changed it since I last checked a year or so ago, but generally speaking it’s better to encode a video at around 2000kbps with 128kbps audio at 1080p/720p resolution in a .mp4 or .avi shell with the h.264 codec. That’ll typically yield the best video results in 360/480/720/1080 sizes. If you can encode it at 1000kbps with 128kbps audio it should look ok even in 240p/360p, but PPro doesn’t do that well. You typically gotta work avidemux to really rock the 1000kbps/128kbps uploads.
Framerate is your call and won’t actually change much once YouTube gets ahold of your video file. Just make sure it’s over 20 or the video will be outright slaughtered. 29.97 is just fine, though, yah. As for the rest, it somewhat depends on your source video.
Is catering to Youtube’s demands really that necessary? With a high enough resolution, your video will look good enough. You can always distribute the non-youtube-encoded copy instead.
bah… i did more googling and it looks like there’s conflicting info now compared to the last time i researched this. it looks like they used to not reencode if the file was in a specific format (http://goo.gl/TdSnA), but i thought h264 in .mp4 was one of those formats…
anyway, if it’s the case now that they always reencode, then everything we’ve already said still holds, just export it at a higher bitrate, like 3Mbps for standard def and 6-8 for 720p. and it would help if you deinterlaced first
Generally speaking you can decrease encoding time by encoding at a bitrate that’s closer to whatever YouTube will re-encode it into. Essentially it’s less wasted time encoding into a bitrate that YouTube is just going to shave off anyway. 500kbps for 360p, 1250kbps for 720p, and 2000kbps for 1080p is good. You should still see gains in video quality if you increase the bitrate, but it generally won’t be a big gain. It depends on the source video, though. The bitrates I’m speaking of only apply to a .mp4 container with h.264 codec using PPro. Different containers/codecs will need different bitrates to really optimize encode time/quality. Some programs like avidemux can lower the bitrate even more while yielding ridiculous results when using their x.264 codecs. Another trick to save time encoding without lowering the videos general quality is to set it to single pass constant bitrate encoding and not multi-pass variable bitrate.
Upscaling videos to 1080p so you can have access to the 2000kbps source video storage is a matter of choice, though. I don’t bother with it. I tend to roll around 1500kbps with 720p. The reason I mentioned it is because some people like to force YouTube to give them the highest possible quality they can get without drastically increasing encoding times on the user’s computer. In the case that you’re trying to push quality, though, you’ll want to also set it to multi-pass variable bitrate encoding. Something like 1500kbps target rate for a 1080p video with a 2500kbps cap. The only thing you gain from this is a slightly smaller file in most cases with slightly better picture though. It can also double encode times, which kinda sucks.
If you’re unsure of your video settings the safest thing to do is just turn up all your settings real high. Almost gauranteed good quality video, but your encoding time will probably skyrocket. After that just start to turn them down a bit while you re-encode the same source video till you find a quality/encode time you like. It’ll save you a good bit a time if you plan on uploading lots of videos. It’s also best to generally leave framerate to whatever the original source video’s framerate was. I also don’t suggest encoding videos to resolutions above 1080p as that can really kick a computer pretty hard, especially if the other settings are turned up.
Just invest in a quad core cpu like the Core i5 2500k. Then overclock it. That should take care of any sort of slow encoding problems, unless you are encoding really long videos lol.
fastest would be single pass constant quant… although if you go the bitrate route, i’m not sure that lower bitrates mean faster encoding. just strike a balance somewhere cuz higher bitrates mean larger files so you’ll be spending more time uploading. i would just try different settings on a 10-second clip that has a lot of action going on, see what settings look good, then try uploading that 10-second clip to youtube, see if it looks good, and adjust from there.
my videos from now on have to be 640x360 or 1280x720 (my HP DV7 may not be able to handle the 1280x720 well but we’ll see when i get my new capture device. All my videos are for now 640x360 starting from now)
so using adobe premiere, how do I resize the video if i didnt capture some videos properly? Thanks
I use CS4, so things may be slightly different on your version. You go to File -> Export -> Media then you switch to the Video tab on the right side and set your *Frame Width/Height *to whatever resolution you may need. You may need to change the Level of the encode down first, though. It’s under Frame Width/Height. I recommend setting it to 3.2.
If you want to crop the video because you got some extra edges in it or something you don’t want, you can do that in the same page as where you set the output resolution. On the left side in that same menu you should have a Source and Output tab that both show still frame shots of the video. Just switch to the Source tab and you can drag the white lines on the edge to set a cropped area in the video.
If, however, you need to crop the video before you encode (say you want to put two different sources of video up at once in the end product) you need to use the Effects tab in the bottom left of the PPro main screen. It should be to the left of your video timeline. Look under Video Effects -> Transform. Drag and drop the effect you want (I’m assuming Crop.) onto the video in the timeline, then click once on that video in the timeline, look up at the top center box and click the Effect Controls tab there, and then change the Crop settings for the video there. You can also change the opacity of the video or even the size/position of the video in the Motion and Opacity sections under Effect Controls. Once you’ve resized/cropped your video there, you can drag it around in the actual preview window in the top right of your screen to put it in a position you like.
I wasn’t 100% sure if you just wanted to know how to resize the end video output or crop stuff and other stuff, so sorry if the post had more info than you actually needed. Haha. Anyway, hope that helps a bit.
Thanks for the vids C-Royd I learned a few things. Might be moving to Toronto within a year so maybe I’ll have the chance to get stomped by you sometime.
