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Best settings for archived PAL 25fps to MP4
Years ago I captured digital8 tapes to avi and as I didn’t have room I converted the captured files to mp4 using FreeMake – Probably a wrong move but that’s what I now have. I’m now editing them in vegas and chose Vegas 11 template ‘Internet HD 720p’ to put up to youtube.
The mp4 created was about 4 times the size of the original. I decided Youtube was a bad place to keep them (even unlisted) and as the originals were PAL 25fps 768×576 I thought I’d modify the template and change the frame size to 768×576 and the fps to 25 PAL to match the original to hopefully reduce to output BUT the rendered mp4 was more or less the same size. I tried template ‘Program Stream PAL’ which gave me an mpg that was 3.5 times the original.
I intend to put them on google drive or similar but the price is expensive for the quantity I have. Can anyone suggest a template I can use/modify to get an mp4 roughly the size as my original PAL mp4?
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3 Replies
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Hey Andy!
When you write that you used the “Internet HD 720p” template, I presume you mean the Sony AVC/MVC render format and then that template inside there?
When you’re in the “Customize” dialog, if you want to reduce the file size you probably want to be lowering the “Bit rate (bps)”. Lower bitrate will increase compression to fit the best image it can into a given size/bps. Your target resolution is essentially standard def (SD). DVD quality was no more than 6,000,000 bps as an MPEG2 file. MP4’s do better with compression so the same size image could likely be closer to 2 or 3,000,000 and look just as good. YMMV
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Hi Andy,
Time and time again, people have questions regarding mp4 conversion and fail to give any details of the CODEC contained within the mp4 container. Unfortunately, the container has very little bearing on what to do to fix your problem. It could just has easily have been an m4v, mkv, mov, avi container and the answer would be the same.
Firstly I would suggest you install a program such as MediaInfo or similar to have a look at the CODEC contained within your mp4 file. It will give you details on what FreeMake did when it encoded the video for you.
Once you have this, you can make an informed decision on what settings to choose for any re-encoding.
My advice is if you want to preserve the original quality of the encoded video, don’t use Vegas at all.
There is another high popular tool called FFMPEG which is actually used behind the scenes in nearly every piece of commercial software which will allow you to make modifications to both the CODEC and the container and if you are trying to preserve the quality of the content, it can also do frame-for-frame conversions which can actually repackage the video without touching the source.
As Red-Rob correctly suggested, once you know what your source material is encoded as, you then understand what benefits, or detriment, that re-encoding will do.
For example changing a lower bitrate to the higher one, has no benefit other than taking up more space.
Changing a CODEC from mpeg2 to h264 will essentially allow you encode and take up less space. Etc.
So while Vegas can do what you want to and do it well, you need to understand what your custom settings need to be within the render settings for Vegas, to get the best result without wasting disk space or further degrading the video quality.
Cheers,
Bernie.
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Hi chaps – thanks for reply
the “Internet HD 720p” template is under MainConcept AVC/AAC in my vegas 11
Bit rates. I tried Max 3,000,000 and Av 2,100,000 and thought it was a but muddy
Max 8,000,000 and Av 6,000,000 and it looked better but file size was 3 times original.As I say Max bps 16,000,000 and Av 8,000,000 gave acceptable quality but file size 4 time input.
MediaInfo gave the following – but its a bit much for me – I really don’t know where to start
General
Complete name : C:\Users\Turnbull\Videos\Actual Videos\dv mp4\20000616 DV2 mvale A original.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41)
File size : 7.97 MiB
Duration : 31 s 560 ms
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 2 119 kb/s
Writing application : Lavf58.29.100
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L3.1
Format settings : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 1 frame
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 31 s 560 ms
Bit rate : 1 959 kb/s
Width : 768 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.177
Stream size : 7.54 MiB (95%)
Writing library : x264 core 129
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x131 / me=dia / subme=2 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=4 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=abr / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1959 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.41 / aq=1:1.00
Codec configuration box : avcC
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : mp4a-40-2
Duration : 31 s 536 ms
Duration_FirstFrame : 96 ms
Duration_LastFrame : -16 ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 110 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 32.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 422 KiB (5%)
Default : Yes
Alternate group : 1
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