Quote:
Originally Posted by Nautilus
Dunno... I wouldn't be that optimistic. We started to shoot some HD recently (we're also backward in that regard and still shoot most of our stuff in SD), but I was not really satisfied with how it looks at full HD resolution when encoded in h264 at 3mbps. Heck even raw 100 mpbs DVCPro HD footage didn't look nowhere near those recent Hollywood HD trailers that impressed me just like you.
Sure it's still much better than SD, but not million bucks worth imo. When you downres it to about SD size it looks really gorgeous, but not at full HD. Check Vimeo for examples - when they stream HD footage through about SD size player it looks great, but click full screen and it doesn't look that good anymore.
http://www.vimeo.com/762333 (just a random video)
And so I'm lost. |
That's some great looking vid there. When you say "at full HD" what do you mean? You don't mean that monster "nostril the size of my monitor" size that I talked about do you? lol I just don't know enough about HD yet to speak intelligently about it.
But I would THINK that you wouldn't want to have a huge resolution for your members area anyway would you? Or am I way offbase? I would think something that would fit most of the available screen on a "non-widescreen" monitor would be great. And it should look damn good too.
I use Adobe Premiere to encode these things. When I was using the Premiere Pro CS3 version it looked like crap until I clicked on the "de-interlace" check box in the "Output" tab. That's when I was able to take it down to 1,200 kps without it looking like a bunch of squares.
Now I have CS4 and that checkbox is no longer there...but it seems to just do it on it's own now when encoding flash and/or h264
Anyway, everyone that has helped me along has told me that you simply don't have to use a very high bit rate with h264. I worked and worked and ended up at that huge variable 2 to 6 mb bitrate to begin with. But once I got that de-interlace checked off...I was able to go down and get pretty close to the same quality (not really, but close enough for rock-n-roll)
You're gonna have to keep tweaking and get those bit rates down. I made the mistake of thinking that "Oh, everybody is on broadband so it's now big deal they can easily stream this fast" And I was right about the consumers ability to stream that fast...But I didn't take into account that the higher the bit rate, the more CPU it uses on the user side. I guarantee you, you would have half your members complaining because they have so many background tasks using up their CPU's that the vid wouldn't stream properly at 3 mb
Don't be discouraged. You just need to keep tweaking. You'll know you have it right when you are down in the 1000 to 1200 range and getting a good image that you can live with.
Sometimes I have to walk away and take a second look. Especially since I do all my own editing. I get used to it looking crystal clear and sharp because it's raw and uncompressed. So when I first see the compressed version it looks bad to me.
But when I walk away, and watch vids on other paysites and acclimate my eyes to that...my shit looks good to me afterwards. I guess our eyes get used to seeing either compressed or uncompressed video.