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  • Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

    FCP7 H.264 export looking great on desktop but awful in Vimeo and Youtube?

    Posted by Hugh Phelan on February 26, 2015 at 1:45 pm

    Hi guys,

    I’ve been having a problem which seems to have been a problem for many people regarding uploading HD to Youtube (and in my case Vimeo as well). I’ve read through the numerous threads along with youtube & Vimeo’s own guidelines in relation to uploading and the best settings, codecs etc but each new effort and amendment either results in no change/or a fix of one problem in exchange for another one.

    So here’s my situation: I’m trying to upload a trailer for a documentary I worked on which was recorded on standard Panasonic camcorders (Panasonic HDC TM 700 and another similar but slightly cheaper Panasonic version) both recorded in 1080. The files were MTS which aren’t compatible with FCP7 which I was using to edit so I uploaded to Premier Pro CC and exported as ProRes422 if I recall (it was a long time ago) in any event on the timeline in FCP they are certainly all ProRes422 LT. Something I do remember is that when they exported from PremPro and I brought them into FCP they seemed to be interlaced so I deinterlaced each clip individually in the timeline and got on with the task of editing. There has been a lot of work done (colour correction, changing frame size & cropping, adding a bit of motion to aspect ratio etc) on these files in terms of cleaning up image and sound but nothing wildly excessive as my laptop is a fairly basic 2nd hand 2007 Macbook and as it’s a documentary I’ve been liberal in terms of allowing camera shake to remain so that I haven’t used much (or any) stabilisation/smooth cam or other.

    I read up on youtube preferences before exporting and duly exported as follows:
    Quicktime Conversion>>
    Quicktime Movie
    H.264 Linier PCM (tried a later export with AAC but no difference)
    1920 x 1080
    25fps
    203.3MB
    Colour Profile HD (1-1-1)
    (total bitrate: 10,332)

    The file exported without issue and plays without issue on my desktop but when I uploaded to youtube it played absolutely terribly, image quality was awful and it was dropping frames all over the place. Now once I bumped the settings on youtube up to 1080 (it plays at 360 by default) the image was massively improved but the dropped frames were still as bad if not worse. I’ve checked on 3 different laptops and the dropped frames occur on each one. I’ve tried numerous ways and exports to fix this but as mentioned above there is always some problem, I even tried uploading onto Vimeo and whilst the dropped frame issue isn’t obvious there it’s been exchanged for some odd colouring issues around dissolves (colour dropping or darkening).

    I know youtube compresses videos on upload so i’d consider it soley a youtube problem except that I’ve watched other HD videos on both youtube and vimeo without issue and I’m having the colour drop problem with vimeo which i think is usually a fairly solid choice so I can’t believe it’s either of those sites so it must be something I’m doing wrong.

    I’ve been trying to sort this for over a week now and I’m overdue in getting it out there for the people waiting to view it so I’d be massively, massively grateful if anyone could give me some pointers or advice here.

    Here are the links to Youtube and Vimeo videos:
    VIMEO: https://vimeo.com/120531603
    Colour drops suddenly around 39 & 2.22
    And interviews around 1.11 & 1.44 are incredibly dark
    Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Y1o2hICys
    Colouring is fine but video is dropping frames all over the place especially when viewed at 1080!

    Thanks in advance

    Hugh Phelan replied 11 years, 6 months ago 1 Member · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply

  • Hugh Phelan

    February 26, 2015 at 10:43 pm

    Also just to say the compressor settings (direct from FCP7)
    Compression Type: H.264
    Data Rate: Automatic
    Motion: Frame Rate: Current, Key Frames: Every 24 Frames (Frame Reordering:ticked)
    Compressor: Quality ‘Best’
    Encoding: Best Quality (Multi-pass)

    Size: For size I chose 1920 x 1080 which is the size of the original files but I chose 1920 x 1080 HD from the drop down as apposed to HD 1920 x 1080 16:9
    Prepare for Internet Streaming: Fast Start

    If anyone needs more information just let me know and if i think of anything else I’ll post it up.

    Thanks.

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