Preserving Grain on Video Streaming Services (Youtube, Vimeo, etc)

[Lee Skinner]

Hello all,

I'm coming to the end of a project, and I thought this might be a good place to ask about the best options for video streaming. I've found in my experience that Youtube compression often degrades any hope you had of showing off the graininess of a final project. As a motion graphics designer, I'm a fan of grain and use it stylistically. In this case, I've completed a music video and I'd like to preserve some of the grainy footage, as I love the look of it. Is there a site that handles this better than others? If not, do you have any compression tips for youtube or vimeo for preserving grain in 1080p or 720p? Thanks.

[Craig Parkes]

I don't think there is any real way other than trial an error in terms of grain size and shape with each websites encoder. Youtube can encode from very high res original files, so rather than trying to get the export settings on an encode you do just right, only to have youtube/vimeo etc re-encode it and destroy the grain, I think you are best to test differing levels of grain on a series of clips of your highest quality master and let Youtube/Vimeo etc handle the re-encode, and then you'll have a baseline for future projects.

Ultimately with a lack of standardization on the web, any advice other than testing before each project may quite possibly be redundant by the time you do the next project - so if your main deliverable is pretty much web, then having test footage setup that you can re upload before each project to make sure that things haven't changed on the Youtube/Vimeo etc end is the only way I can imagine you getting any consistency/peace of mind that your grain won't be destroyed.

I think this is one of those cases where you really have to research for yourself the limitations of the end viewing medium before making the creative decisions on a given job, OR just live with what Youtube/Vimeo do to the image.

Personally, while I have been a similar boat on projects, my deliverables are almost always wider than just the web (mostly broadcast) so I find little benefit in trying to develop a workflow that will work for deliverables whose specs/implementation can change without warning/at the drop of a hat.

General image manipulation advice, like having more contrasty grain etc so the encoders see it as image data rather than noise which they can get rid of to save bitrate would be my advice as a place to start testing, but it will pretty quickly heavily effect the aesthetic because compression and grain at low bitrates really just don't mix.

[Doug Beatty]

One suggestion would be using the x264 encoder rather than h264 within Compressor. You have the ability to tweak a lot of the settings to help squeeze out the highest quality encode for uploading (higher bitrate, more keyframes, and 3-pass renders to name a few)

[Benni Diez]

If length and size allow it, use PNG compression. It's lossless and doesn't mess up your gamma. That way only the youtube/vimeo compression is applied (both are actually quite good when fed with lossless material).
It will still wash out a lot of the grain, but you can test with counter-balancing the values.

[Chuck Z]

Hello all,

I'm coming to the end of a project, and I thought this might be a good place to ask about the best options for video streaming. I've found in my experience that Youtube compression often degrades any hope you had of showing off the graininess of a final project. As a motion graphics designer, I'm a fan of grain and use it stylistically. In this case, I've completed a music video and I'd like to preserve some of the grainy footage, as I love the look of it. Is there a site that handles this better than others? If not, do you have any compression tips for youtube or vimeo for preserving grain in 1080p or 720p? Thanks.

On your typical video hosting website like YT, etc.? No, there is not.

If you host your own videos on your own site? Yes.

[Subhadip Sen]

Use X264, the "grain" tune and a CRF of under 20. Very effective in preserving grain on a compressed file.

Unfortunately, the hoster's compression will override and compress the grain. I suppose signing up for Vimeo's Plus services might help a bit as it offers a better 2-pass encoding (not sure if it still does?)

[Matthew Bennett]

I struggle with this all the time.

You have a beautiful, grainy master, only for the online compression to become a mushy blurry mess. While de-noised and de-grained masters look simply wonderful in compression, the grain that is a boon in your master image is a curse upon compression.

The only real solution is high bit rates. There is simply no way around it, or not that I can see.