Help with video Rendering (1080p) (youtube) (Sony Vegas)

[palladish]

I've recently started recording my reform guilds boss kills and getting familiar with Youtube and video editing for our kills in WoD.

I'm currently recording with Shadowplay the Nvidia recording software in 1080p @30fps and the raw footage looks exactly like ingame it's really good. Anyway I've been messing around with Sony Vegas with different settings for Render qualities but it always comes out no where near as good as I would like I've looked up tutorials etc but still can't get it quite right I guess it's an experience thing.


Here's a test render I did of our guilds first Mythic kill only ~2minutes of footage (the video is unlisted so hopefully you can see it) and you can see it starts out very clear but then as soon as we pull ~20 seconds in or anything happens it turns to shit, it slowly recovers but never fully. I can link the full video if you need more footage. (1080p full screen it) also my UI is not quite finished. Almost there :P



Any advice? I've tried tutorials for different settings but I'm not quite sure what it is. Could the fact that I have shit internet be the problem with how it uploads? I assume it's mostly rendering issue.
Cheers

- - - Updated - - -

My current render settings on Sony Vegas

[FatLer]

If you capture at 30 frames per second - never change frame rate.
Also never:
change aspect
change pixel size (which changes aspect)
dont use "field order" if you didnt record with it and\or you have no idea what is that

so just use render settings that mirror properties of original footage (if its 640*480@30, then put in settings for exactly this number), dont use deinterlace and this should make field order option greyed out (thats and old thing for TV to make single frame size smaller). Also dont change color space, iirc all the standard capturing goes with RGB, and you have set YUV.

Simply put - all you have to experiment with is codec (xvid, mpeg4, divx, etc etc...) and its settings (like quality vs. file size).

[palladish]

If you capture at 30 frames per second - never change frame rate.
Also never:
change aspect
change pixel size (which changes aspect)
dont use "field order" if you didnt record with it and\or you have no idea what is that

so just use render settings that mirror properties of original footage (if its 640*480@30, then put in settings for exactly this number), dont use deinterlace and this should make field order option greyed out (thats and old thing for TV to make single frame size smaller). Also dont change color space, iirc all the standard capturing goes with RGB, and you have set YUV.

Simply put - all you have to experiment with is codec (xvid, mpeg4, divx, etc etc...) and its settings (like quality vs. file size).

Running a new test render now @30 fps rather than 29.97 (I was told was max for youtube anyway so just set it to that)
Turned off field order
Pixel size was and still is 1 or aspect

How do I change the color space back to RGB? different render profile?

[Deleted]

Have you tried different containers?
If you want to use .mp4, try Main Concept AVC/AAC instead of Sony AVC/MVC. As far as I know the Sony version leads to slightly smaller files but also worse quality. You can then also play around with the average and maximum bit rate. I would start with 14,000 average and 20,000 max and adjust if necessary.

Of course you could also try .avi files. Choose "video for windows", then go to the custom settings, choose Xvid MPEG-4, click on configure and then set the target quantizer - I usually set it to something between 1.5 and 2.5 (the smaller the value the better the quality and the bigger the file).
Of course you could also try to use the codec x264vfw instead of Xvid. This one yields an even better quality with the same file size (or same quality with smaller file, of course^^). But Youtube seemed to have problems with that codec 1.5 years ago and I didn't try it again.

Besides the containers/codecs you can try to disable resample. To do that click on the first file in your video stream, then hold shift and click on the last file, then right click --> switches --> disable resample.


Unfortunately there's something you can't change: youtube's reconversion. No matter what container/codec you use Youtube will convert it again - even if you use exactly the settings YT suggests. And I have the feeling that this conversion has more and more severe consequences on video quality. I don't know what YT is doing, but over the last 2 years the quality of my new videos worsened (while all the older videos stayed the way they were), even though I also optimized my settings. Here some comparisons...

Lei Shen hc kill video, Juli 2013:


Blackfuse hc, November 2013:


Both videos are in .avi format and Xvid codec.


And I have the same problems with my kayaking videos...

Sanna/Austria, October 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRbvxvZCiIo#t=11m04s

Soča/Slovenia, uploaded 5 days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ-lMkvVSr0#t=13m58s

(Yes, I didn't embed the two kayaking videos on purpose, because I wanted to link certain timestamps).

The last one of these videos was rendered in the settings suggested by Youtube (thus also as mp4 instead of avi) and the file on my HDD has a really great quality. All of these files look great, but the versions on Youtube are partially quite ugly.

[FatLer]

How do I change the color space back to RGB? different render profile?

In most codecs it depends on coder itself. Some support only RGB, some of them - more.

Basically, using same settings as raw footage gives you a clear idea of what coder actually does to your video (this just excludes effects of turning framerate or aspect ratio down, which is always crap even if done correctly).

I personally, when working with video (medium amount of editing and fx), have plenty of time and disk space. So I always finalize my project into one big piece of raw avi file, and then render it with tiny software called 1ncoder. It has only 4 buttons, 3 of them are for quality settings. This software makes mp4 file out of avi, max quality, minimal headache.

[palladish]

In most codecs it depends on coder itself. Some support only RGB, some of them - more.

Basically, using same settings as raw footage gives you a clear idea of what coder actually does to your video (this just excludes effects of turning framerate or aspect ratio down, which is always crap even if done correctly).

I personally, when working with video (medium amount of editing and fx), have plenty of time and disk space. So I always finalize my project into one big piece of raw avi file, and then render it with tiny software called 1ncoder. It has only 4 buttons, 3 of them are for quality settings. This software makes mp4 file out of avi, max quality, minimal headache.

I decided to go with this render, it's a lot clearer but I feel i've sacrificed a bit of color. I think I'll get it eventually but any more suggestions would be good