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Cartoon vs Live Action bit rate
It seems to me like the answer to this question is obviously yes, but I’ll ask it anyway to make sure.
I have some flash cartoons I made a few years ago, I would like to convert them to AVIs. Do cartoons require lower bit rates than movies to produce the same quality since they have less variation in color?
Actually is there any kind of tool I can use to analyse the color variation and resolution in a video and would give me for each one some kind of score or number I could use to determine which bit rates would produce the same levels of accuracy (compared to the original) in those different videos?
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2 Replies
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Definitely: cartoons have large blocks of color that are generally easier to summarize and encode to lower bit rates.
I don’t know of a tool that would do what you want, but it’s a great idea. I’m imagining a Photoshop-esque Before/After window with a sample of the compression. I do know that there isn’t an objective way to generate quality scores. Even PQA techniques that involve pixel comparisons that do give you an objective score often generate numbers that are unrelated to subjective quality analysis. For example, even if individual frames look good, it may be that the video looks like crap in full motion.
One pointer, though: cartoons with flatter colors and sharper boundaries often look better with “sharpness” turned up (at the cost of smoother motion). Not all codecs have settings for this, but if you have that option, that’s probably what you’ll want.
And one thing to watch out for: While solid blocks of color are easier to encode, they also reveal noise and, especially annoying, encoding keyframes. So if you start seeing a periodic “pulsing” in solid areas (the area will look perfect, then gradually deteriorate for a dozen frames, then snap back to perfect, and so on…), that’s the keyframes. You can add keyframes (Keyframe every 6 instead of 12, for example), but this is tricky and unfun to deal with.
Sorry I don’t have a shorter, better “Do this” answer, but I’d love to hear/see how your experiments turn out.
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A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end…
but not necessarily in that order.
— Jean-Luc Godard
https://videopia.org -
So what about this Quality % option on most video converters (Vegas Included). Does the same %age usually yeild the same level of quality? Since it seems different types of video and even different specific videos need different bit rates to produce the same quality, I thought this might be a viable option. Is it? Does anyone use the %age option and get consistent results?
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