Video Compression/exporting - Zaidimai | Zaidimu Forumas | Games Forums

ZilviS · 01-08-2009, 02:10 PM

Introduction
In this guide i'll help you all with getting great quality for your kal video's.

FRAPS
For recording i recommend FRAPS, record fullscreen for best result.
configure it the way i did below,

Always record FullSize for the best results
Disable sound because you don't need it
use 25 fps because the more fps you take, the more time you need to render, and the bigger the file will be.
you also need less power to record at lower framerates.

Project Settings in Sony Vegas
In my case I edit with Sony Vegas Pro 8.0, but most settings in it, and maybe even more settings, are also availible in other good editing programs, like Pinnacle Studio and Adobe Premiere (maybe others i don't know really well)
First of all before you begin with editing your video's, set the right settings in the properties of your current project.

What i did here is set all the settings like they should be.
In this case I used the resolution of 1024x786 since most people play at that, change those if you play at another resolution. (for me it's 1680x1050)
For FPS i used 25, the same as my recorded movie with fraps, change this if you recorded at another framerate. (I still recommend recording at 25 fps.)
Field order, set it to None (progressive scan) because it's a normal video. (not recorded with a camcorder or anything that interlaces video)
Tick the box to start all projects with these settings. (when you mainly edit kalvids)
Save the profile with a name like KalVid.

now you edit your video, you can find enough guides about editing videos, and most ppl do not have a problem here.

Rendering to WMV (VC-1)
now comes the rendering part.
this is the part where most people just press some buttons, and tadaaaa bad quality :]

NOTE: For people who are good with computers and stuff, i'd recommend you to take a look at the "Rendering For Expert Users" part

The settings are almost the same as the project.
First for the people that do not want to use an external rendering programm (directly from vegas):
Make sure that you have Windows Media Player 11 installed.
Use the "Windows Media Video V9 (*.wmv)" preset.

Set the "Video rendering quality" to "Best"
Set Mode on "Qualiy VBR"
Format on "Windows Media Video 9 Advanced Profile"
Image size on "(Keep Original Size)" or "Custom" if you want to enter it yourself.
Pixel aspect ratio should be on 1,000 (Square)
Frame rate (fps) on 25,000 (PAL) if you recorded the way I mentioned earlier in this guide. Else use the framerate you have recorded your footage on.
Set the quality slider on 75% (not higher, not lower, I did a lot of test and found this as the ideal between reasonable quality and filesize)

Go to the "Audio" Tab
Set Mode on "Qualiy VBR"
Format on "Windows Media Audio 10 Professional"
Attributes on "VBR Quality 75, 44kHz, 2 channel 24 bit VBR"

Save the profile with a name like "Kal WMV" like I did.
Now you can use this profile everytime without having to set all settings in here.
Press OK and save your video. After that upload it adn show us.
Rendering to MP4 (MainConcept AVC/AAC)
The settings are almost the same as the project.
First for the people that do not want to use an external rendering programm.
Use the "Mainconcept AVC/AAC (.mp4)" encoder after you click render as
Here you see how I set it up.
On the Video tab select "Custom Frame Size", in this case width will be 1024 and height will be 768. (if you use another resolution, change it to those values.)
Set the framerate on 25,000 FPS
Field Order on None (Progressive scan)
now the most important thing: the Bitrate.
Select the Variable bit rate, set Maximum (bps) to 4.000.000 and the Average to 2.500.000 for a good quality and a small file :]
For higher resolutions you should use higher values like for 1680x1050 (what I could use but i use an external renderer) the average should be like 5.000.000 and the maximum around 6.000.000-7.000.000.

Now audio.

Since you just use mp3s which are 44.100 Hz sampling rate, you should set that in the Audio properties.
Also use 128.000 bps as bitrate, it gives very good quality.

when you've done this it is nice to put a description like down here in the description box (copy paste it maybe? biggrin.gif ):
Audio: 128 Kbps, 44.100 Hz, AAC.
Video: 2000 Kbps, 25,000 fps, 1024x768

This way you'll know what's in the template without having to look.
Now save the template with a name, like "Kal 1024x786 25fps"

You're ready to save the file, give it a name and save it, and wait some minutes.
Gratz now you have a high quality video you can upload.

Rendering For Expert Users (H.264 and AAC with MeGUI)
Rendering with another program.
Others (including me) prefer an other program for encoding the actual video.
To do this you'll first need to render the file out of Sony Vegas in Uncompressed AVI format, you can also use another format for this as long as it is a lossless format.
Setup for the video setting is quite similiar.

set the resolution to 1024x768 (or your own resolution)
Field order on Progressive Scan
Framerate on 25,000 fps
Pixel aspect on 1,0000
For the Video Format you can also take another (for example huffyuv, be sure to use mod16 dimensions) but i haven't tested this yet, so I use uncompressed (be sure to have at least 50 GB free space on your harddisk though, one of my files became 64GB :X)
Tick the box to interleave every ** seconds.
Render alpha channel can be unticked, file will be 25% smaller and there's actually no visual difference afaik.

You will only render the video now, so untick the audio box, we'll render it separately.
Save and wait.

Audio part
We render the audio as uncompressed wave because we will compress that with the other program too.
In the dropdown box it's called Wave (Microsoft) (.wav)

the only important thing is to set it to 44.100 Hz, rest is ok already.

Now we have 2 files:
1 Video file (.avi)
1 Audio file (.wav)

you will need to download 2 programms for the actual compression:
Avisynth 2.5.x (this is a frameserver which sends the video to the compressor) Sourceforge Link
MeGUI (the compressor Interface which helps you configuring the compressor) Sourceforge Link (get the latest version of MeGUI)

Install both of them,
And open MeGUI
Note: .NET Framework 2.0 is required (most people already have this, but if MeGUI won't run, install the redist from Microsoft) .NET FW 2.0 redist

When you start it it will say there are updates, download and install them via the built in system.
Go to the Tools Menu and click "AVS Script creator" (formerly "Avisynth Script Creator".)
a window will popup like this one:

Select your video in the Video Input
don't use resizing etc, we want full res :]
now save it. (note: you can already add the line ConvertToYV12() into the code, if you haven't done it, the programm will insert it by itself before rendering)
upon saving it opens a window with the video in it, close it, and now it's loaded in megui.

For the encoder Settings use: x264: Unrestricted 2pass HQ. Click config and set bitrate, for 1024x768 set it to 2000. for higher resolutions like 1280x1024 set it to 3000, for 1680x1050 set it to 4000.
click ok, it asks saving, don't save, it'll set it to *scrathpad*

For the file format, your choice, there's only one bug that you can't open .264 files (RAWAVC) with the mkv muxer. (fixed now, you can open .264 files with the mkv muxer)
So if you're going to mux the file as mkv it might be a better choice to keep it on mp4, else if you want the final file in .mp4 set it to RAWAVC.

Click enqueue (now comes that warning about colorspace, it asks you to add this line for you: ConvertToYV12() click Yes or OK)

Now the audio, select audio input (the .wav file)
For the encoder select FAAC: *scratchpad* and click config.
There are some options, configure it like below

Use ABR 128, it gives really nice sound quality, you might save this profile, click on new, call it 128 ABR (or smt).
Click OK
Note: You can also use the Nero AAC encoder, tho you will need to download this package: Nero AAC Codec
Paste the file "neroAacEnc.exe" from the win32 dir in your megui folder and you can use the Nero AAC as audio encoder. It should give slighlty better quality then FAAC at equivalent bitrates.
Set the Extension to M4A.
Click enqueue

Now go to the Queue tab,
you'll likely see 2 video jobs (1 analysis and 1 rendering pass) and 1 Audio job.
click on start and the rendering process begins, takes a while depending on your system, but mostly not much longer than 1 hour in total.
Note: all files get saved in the directory where you have the uncompressed files.

After this you have 2 files, *.mp4 (or *.264 when you choose RAWAVC) and *.m4a
now comes the Muxing job.
Go to Tools, Muxer, MP4 muxer or MKV muxer
you'll get a window like this,

In the video Input select your rendered file (*.mp4 or *.264)
In the audio Input select your audio file (*.m4a)

standard output is *-muxed.mp4/mkv (where you use the mp4 or mkv muxer and * = filename of the videoinput)

Queue it
Note: the other jobs still stand there, it does no harm when you let them there, since they're already rendered they will do nothing
Note: muxing .mkv works the same, only difference is that it will be .mkv, one known problem is that sometimes the video will play longer than the sound, i don't know why) *got fixed afaik
Start the queue, this takes like 3 secs since it only writes the 2 files into one file.

Tadaa now you have your final .mp4 or .mkv file in high quality.

Now go test it with MPC HC (included in the latest version of the CCCP)
And test it with VLC

If it works (which it apparently will do in 99 of the 100 cases) upload it on a file host and let me and others watch your beatiful work biggrin.gif