YouTube upload badly distorts high-quality rendering – tips?

[Ole Kristiansen]

Okay ! Try this !

Absolutely the Best Render Settings in Sony Vegas Pro 13 for Every Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gmHGzuRyjs

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[Michael Leibson]

Thanks for this extra suggestion, Ole — you are very kind!

I took a good look at the video, and I see that the majority of the settings are the same as, or very close to, the ones that you and George had recommended yesterday — and that, unfortunately, didn’t have much effect on YouTube’s distorting things.

The rest of the suggestions in this video have to do with applying some Fx, but I am hesitant to use them, because — well: I have at least 75 tracks in my animated video, and many of these each have a number of specific effects — effects which I very carefully calibrated to achieve the results I wanted. I’m afraid that applying any more effects — especially globally — will create many unintended consequences.

If you take a look at my video, you’ll see that YouTube has distorted things most where there are complex — and quietly moving and shifting — colours. It seems as tho’ this is too much ‘info’ to survive YouTube’s compression methods. . .

But I really appreciate the time that you and George took to help — thanks!

[Michael Leibson]

If this is of any interest to those following this thread:

Here is a small section of the same video, uploaded to Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/317794704

This section corresponds to what begins at the 2:45 point in the YouTube video (above). While there is still some distortion, it is nowhere as bad as on YouTube.

Any thoughts on this would be very welcome!

Thanks again!

[Dimitrios Papadimitriou]

Youtubes compression kind of sucks for things that are moving a lot and are a similar color. So things like sky or water can come out looking very blocky. It’s also something mp4’s in general can have some trouble with.

[Michael Leibson]

It certainly seems that way! Thanks for your input, Dimitrio.

[George Dean]

Hi Michael, I was out of town yesterday and this morning, and it looks like Dimitrios has helped a lot with your project. I have just a couple more suggestions.

1. As for not wanting to mess up your project trying different Fx’s, etc., you can load up your project and before you do anything, save it to a different name with maybe the suffix ‘Test’. I have done this many times when I wanted to try something. Some of the things I tried didn’t work and my project got way out of wack. I just deleted the project that project .veg file with the ‘Test’ suffix, then the only thing I have lost is the time investment. Often I have come out something good and then keep the Project .veg file.

2. If bandwidth is not an issue with you, I would try rendering your project in the appropriate Sony XAVC Intra format template, or under Video for Windows format., select Sony 10 bit YUV which will render a lossless file in the ‘.avi’ container. Then feed those into Handbrake and try it’s x265 codec in high quality. The end result will make an overkill quality physically large file, but YouTube may not destroy it as bad during their tricky conversion as much as they do to an h.264 mp4. It may take a bit of tinkering trial and error to get the best render out of Handbrake, but if you want to pursue this, I would do a bit of the tinkering and provide some steps to help get past the Handbrake learning curve with some step by steps. If you can come up with something, we can set it up so in the future it will be a very painless 2 click process to render it out of Vegas Pro 13 using a frameserver script. Which would be worth it if you were going to make similar films in the future, otherwise setting up the framesever part would be waste.

Best Regards……George

[Michael Leibson]

Hi, George — thank-you very much for your kind help!

you can load up your project and before you do anything, save it to a different name with maybe the suffix ‘Test’.

Not to worry! I always do that.????

If bandwidth is not an issue with you . . .

If you mean in terms of uploading, no, it’s not an issue. Even tho’ I have very slow upload capability where I live, I have patience too. . .

I would try rendering your project in the appropriate Sony XAVC Intra format template, or under Video for Windows format., select Sony 10 bit YUV which will render a lossless file in the ‘.avi’ container. . .

I would certainly be up for trying this, if you think that there’s a substantial chance that the result will be as good as what Vimeo (see above) seems to provide. If it’s more a matter of trying to do the best available for YouTube, so as not to have to go the Vimeo route — but not necessarily expecting Vimeo quality, I think I would have to pass for now – despite your very kind and generous offer – because I’ve tried about eight different renderings — at 2 hours a rendering, and then another hour or so to upload — and I’m a bit whacked by it. ????

I realize it’s probably hard to predict, but I’ll go with whatever makes the most sense to you.

Again, thanks so much for your kind help!

[George Dean]

Hi Michael,

My last number 2 would probably be rather long with absolutely no geuarntee of success.

However I have another that would be much quicker to test, if you think it would work.

You state you still photographs in this project are high quality. Are they also higher resolution than 1080 HD? If they have enough resolution for 2K or even 4K. I would take the short section that shows the most problems, render it out to 4K, then upload that to Youtube and see if anything improves for the HD and 4K versions.

The only reason I suggest this is, Youtube does tricky conversions and from time to time it is difficult for anyone to hack their process and know exactly what they have changed and when. But they used to handle 4K stuff different than HD. Making the changes in your Project and your render from HD to 4K should take about 1 minute and rendering out a 2 minute region and posting it shouldn’t take that long. Again, no warranty with this idea, it may not be worth any more than you paid for it!!! I feel you are getting tired and I would be also, perhaps Vimeo is your best alternative at this point.

Best Regards……George

[Michael Leibson]

Hi, George;

However I have another that would be much quicker to test, if you think it would work.

As it turns out, 4K was one of the renderings I did, over the past couple of days. I was hoping it would work, but all it seemed to do was make the distortion more “defined” — for example, it made what looked like pixelation more ‘crisp’!

I really appreciate your kind help, George, and I’ll be happy to try any other ideas if you think they are worth it.

I realize that, although the Vimeo route seems to offer better results, it’s quite possible that that route may also mean slower loading times for viewers. . .

If no other ideas come to mind by morning, I’ll pay Vimeo to let me upload the entire video, and then see what kinds of loading times it presents.

What a great community this is — thanks, again, for all your help!

Best,

Michael

[George Dean]

Thank You Michael for the reply. I wish at least one of my ideas would have made an improvement. You certainly have jumped through hoops on this project. If I think of anything else I will reply, as for now….well, I’m flat out of any other thoughts. Best of Luck.

Best Regards……George