-
How do I get this level of quality from YouTube?
I’m shooting some interviews for Miss Universe locally and I want to achieve the highest quality possible.
I’ve tried various different styles and I can get close to but not quite to the level of detail in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cht5c1-xRzU
The detail is amazing, even when blown up at full res.
I’ve tried outputting from FCP at 8000kpbs (recommended by YouTube) as a H.264 and also through compressor as a JPEG. Both at 1280×720. Still I cannot get to this quality.
Any recommendations?
I’m shooting on an EX1.
Olly Lawer
Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
-
10 Replies
-
You should be able to get close to that with the EX1 and the data rates you’re encoding at.
A lot has to do with lighting as well as the initial noise levels in the video since compression tends to work as a noise amplifier.Two things I’d note are the skin exposure and the black levels. The well lit skin can ameliorate noise there. Deep blacks and ameliorate noise there as well. This skin is extremely bright and the blacks are solid.
Things like shooting Uncompressed or ProRes or other hight bit rate coded can help especially when grading in post and you need to push things a bit.
-
Thanks Craig.
I took a test shot with both an EX1 native and with a Letus Extreme which looked nicer, although softer, probably because the Letus tends to crush the blacks. I was planning to crush the blacks in the edit anyway though.
[Craig Seeman] “Things like shooting Uncompressed or ProRes or other hight bit rate coded can help especially when grading in post and you need to push things a bit.”
Thanks for this tip, but not sure what you mean?
Olly Lawer
-
Please explain what you don’t understand.
Better codec means you can make more radical changes in post production without introducing noise or banding. It may mean the initial recording has a bit less noise in it as well.
-
I’m obviously showing my naivety here, but I assumed the EX1 just shot in XDCAM and the only way to increase quality when shooting was to increase the resolution.
Olly Lawer
-
It seems as if you haven’t been following the XDCAM EX forum or many of the other camera related forums here on the COW. Many people are using HD-SDI out to external recorders. The number of these recorders on the market continue to grow as well. It depends on your clients and personal expectations but, these days, many camera reviews often talk of codec (usually AVCHD) vs HD-SDI output. Maybe I’m a geek about these things but it’s pretty pervasive.
My work doesn’t require it but I it seems I can’t read anything regarding cameras without bumping into commentary about HD-SDI recording devices.
IMHO, lossy compression is, FWIW, noise amplification and this includes camera’s built in codecs as well as compression for web, broadcast, disc, etc.
Lossy compression removes “repeated” data. Noise is random. Noise is less likely to be removed. Of course there’s technology to counter this but noise and lossy compression is a fundamental.
-
Hi,
No, I haven’t. Wish I had, sound intriguing although i’m guessing as the output is uncompressed the file sizes will be enormous?
Be interested to see the quality difference between standard XDCAM compression and out to HD-SDI
Kind regards,
Olly Lawer
-
Head over to the XDCAM EX forum and raise the question to the Convergent Designs Nano Flash and AJA KiPro users amongst others.
Yes the files are big. It’s the nature of the beast.
-
Cool. Will do.
Just out of interest and its way off topic, but what to you use to store your footage? Currently I offload everything to Blu-ray disks, but this is not cheap at £4 per 25GB disk.
Kind regards,
Olly Lawer
-
I store XDCAM EX BPAVs to Blu-ray as well. It’s much less expensive that having to re-shoot and re-edit after a failure. There’s also LTO tape drives. People back up because is less expensive than taking the business loss. Hard drives are not backups. They fail. All backup is playing the odds a bit. LTO seems to be proven reliable but even I have issues with that thinking. There’s no panacea.
-
Well at least Blu-Ray has come down in cost considerably. I remember paying the wrong side of £50 for 6 – 25GB disks two years ago. Just picked up 10 – 25GB disks from the same company, TDK, for £16.99.
However, that deal has disappeared and been replaced by one that is £32.99 for 10. Still less expensive then they were.
I always back my BPAV and MOVs to different HDs then back up to different BR disks. A little over cautious maybe 🙂
Olly Lawer
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up