Video is Muddy/Terrible Compression

[Patrick Wieland]

Hey guys so I am working on a feature that we shot with Epic-M and Red One MX. Shot at 4k. The footage looks insane. But as look at a friend of mine trailer that they put out recently it looks really muddy and compression looks terrible. I dont know if I am over analyzing it or what. They exported at 1080 24p Is what they said. I'm just trying to figure out where they wrong or if they went wrong at all. So I can get the best possible results for my client.

This is the clip in question.

This is a clip I just watched and along with more EPIC videos on vimeo they are pristine. No mud and sharp as a needle.

 

[Patrick Wieland]

Its way more noticeable in full screen.

 

[Jake Bastian]

You need more information than 1080 24p - it'd help to get codec, & data rate as those are the two areas they most likely went wrong.

EDIT: actually judging by how clean the title animation is it's probably just that you aren't using as high quality lenses as are used in the higher end videos you're showing.

 

[Patrick Wieland]

Munich Video are Canon lenses. I know they used Cine Lenses for the wakeboarding video.

We used Red Pro Primes for all of our shooting recently.

 

[ericyoung]

Might be a stupid question, but did you select HD when playing the "muddy" vimeo clip? That's what I just did by mistake! :smile:

Watching the "muddy" clip in HD, it looks fine in the brightly lit stuff, but yes a bit muddy/pixelated in the lower light stuff - did they export with VBR or CBR. what bit rate, what resolution? If it was lowish CBR at a non-recommended resolution for Vimeo which is getting scaled somewhere then it won't look as good as it could do. Follow the Vimeo guidelines for best results.

 

[Patrick Wieland]

Thanks guys. I never feel like my videos look as good as everyone elses on vimeo.

 

[Marc Wielage]

How did they compress it? Was the edit done with original R3D footage, and then output to QuickTime? What compression rates were used? What codecs? Final Cut / Compressor, or something else? A key factor would be what happens at Vimeo once you upload the footage; I've seen things change (especially on YouTube) where things can go horribly wrong.

BTW, you have a black frame in the edit around 3:17. (Not sure if it's deliberate or what.) I think there's also a lot of color matching issues in the first half, but I assume this is just a rough version for compression tests.