“blinking” pinstripe suits

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

This would suggest one of two (or both) easy possibilities, and could be a few less easy causes.
Sounds like an interlaced source. If you have access to the source, I’d go there vs dealing with a ProRes conversion.
Can you double the copy, offset by half a frame, set top to 50% opacity and have that cancel the effect? If it’s screwed up in the conversion, this won’t fix the problem, but that’s one of the first things I’d try.
Why are you editing MP4 conversion? Might be a resolution issue too.
Again…can you get your hands on the original source?

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Scott Mitchell]

Thanks for the response.

We were not in charge of the shoot. As far as I (we) know, this is the only source available. We were told that the camera used ProRes as codec for saving the file.

I am not editing the .MP4. I am editing in Vegas and rendering to .mp4

Here is a very short snip that demonstrates the issue (if you have the time to take a quick look – 750Kb)

https://drop.io/vegasfiles202/asset/cw2010-barneyfrank1-mp4

Password: vegasfiles202

[Scott Mitchell]

Thanks for the response. Apologies if this shows up twice — I am a new user and my first attempt did not post. Not sure if I was caught in moderation or if there was a tech error.

We were not in charge of the shoot. As far as I (we) know, ProRes is the best source available.

I am not editing the .MP4. I am editing in Vegas and rendering to .mp4 using MainConcept.

I am deinterlacing (at least as far as I know) under Project Settings. I’ve tried both “blend” and “interpolate”

Here is the file (if you have a moment to check it out)
https://drop.io/vegasfiles202/asset/cw2010-barneyfrank1-mp4

Thanks in advance!
Password is: vegasfiles202

[Scott Mitchell]

Oh…and I should have mentioned…this is ultimately destined to be streamed on the web at 500K. Is bit rate the problem here?

[Scott Mitchell]

OK. So boosting bitrate to 10,000K solves the problem … but not really because I need to get this to 500K.

Any expert opinions out there re: whether this will be possible?

[John Rofrano]

500K is the Internet setting for 3 years ago. Most YouTube videos are 2 – 3Mbps HD. Have you tried rendering to Sony AVC format with the Internet 4:3 SD 30p template. This defaults to 2.5Mbps.You can try lowering the bit-rate but for 500K I would also lower the resolution to 320×240 which is closer to the Memory Stick QVGA widescreen – 512 Kbps template.

Your other problem is that this wasn’t shot well for internet delivery. The textured blue background is stealing bits that could be used to render the details in the suit. This should have been shot on a solid background which can be compressed easier with less wasted bandwidth.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Scott Mitchell]

Based on the feedback and my tinkering, this seems like a bitrate issue.

Interestingly enough, if I use VBR with 500K ave / 500K max instead of CBR at 500K, the video looks MUCH better. This makes no sense (to me) other than the fact that the VBR seems to do a 2 pass encode.

Indeed, that background was not a good choice. Maybe next year we will have more input into the production instead of post, post, post production.

Re: 2-3M bitrate. For YouTube = yes. For viewing at home or a small business over a fat pipe / cable modem = yes.

However, large US based corporations often have limited “functional” bandwidth for their end users. The last 15 clients that I have worked with (all Fortune 500) used 500K as their MAX allowable threshold for RIA apps.

I’m sure that all of us would agree that best approach is to provide multiple levels of quality and, ideally, smooth streaming. Our current strategy, however, is to get the lowest bitrate looking as good as possible and bumping up bitrate from there.

While not new to enterprise software and network architecture, I am very new to video encoding. Does the above sound like a reasonable approach?

[John Rofrano]

Interestingly enough, if I use VBR with 500K ave / 500K max instead of CBR at 500K, the video looks MUCH better. This makes no sense (to me) other than the fact that the VBR seems to do a 2 pass encode.

Here is why: CBR will use the same bits on every frame even if the frame doesn’t need that many bits to represent it accurately. VBR will use less bits for frames that don’t need it and more bits for frames that do making sure that the average stays at 500K. For low bit rates you will get better encodings using 2-pass VBR.

However, large US based corporations often have limited “functional” bandwidth for their end users. The last 15 clients that I have worked with (all Fortune 500) used 500K as their MAX allowable threshold for RIA apps.

Then you might want to drop your resolution down to 320×240. This will give you a better encode at that low bit rate.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Scott Mitchell]

Thanks for the advice re: size.

I thought that 500K max made sure that it would never use more than that on any given frame. So, in essence, I thought that I was saying “if you don’t need 500K then, don’t use 500K … but never go ABOVE 500K”

To me, it would seem that this should yield the same (or worse) result than 500K CBR.

[John Rofrano]

You are correct in your thinking but if you got better results with VBR, I’m thinking that maybe they ignore the max if it’s the same as the average and just use the average. I don’t know this for a fact. Otherwise I agree, if Max and Avg were the same, it should be just like CBR.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com