Vimeo Settings

[Nathaniel Kramer]

Does anyone have any advice on correct export settings for Vimeo.. I am never happy with my results..

 

[John-Michael]

x264

x264

Take a look into x264 encoders. There are a bunch out there with lots of good documentation on what each particular setting does, my favorite being the ability to embed a 2.2 gamma profile.

Also - keep in mind that vimeo does a re-encode after you upload. Many times this includes a re-size. Be sure to rip your video out of the website after posting so you can take a look at what vimeo has done during it's additional compression pass. I once worked with someone who uploaded 896x504 h.264 QTs, and linked to the vimeo site with their website using a 896x504 playback. However, after vimeo got a hold of the file it was re-sized to 640x360, re-wapped as mp4, and simply scaled back up to 896x504 in the player on the website.

best,

John-Michael

 

[Alexander Mejia]

Chances are you will need to pre-process your footage to get the best possible quality out of Vimeo. Here are a few things I do:

1) Downsample your footage with a high quality scaler to 1920x1080. I like Spline36 from Avisynth as it's sharp, but doesn't produce a haloing effect.
2) De-noise your footage. While you may like the grain pattern you have in your footage, or added in post, it's just going to loose detail and resolution after a low bitrate encoder hits it again.
3) after you convert your original signal to 4:2:0, chances are you will have banding in gradients, You will need to dither the signal in those gradient areas using a script in Avisynth otherwise it will be noticeably bad.

4) Compress your signal using the highest efficency codec you have access to, x264 is free but poses some licensing issues depending on what country you're in. Next up would be MainConcept's h.264 encoder. Stay away from Apple's h.264 encoder as it is very low efficency.

5) Calculate the max bitrate for audio and video using an online bitrate calculator and make the file as large as VIMEO or YOUTUBE will allow you to upload. This ensures maximum quality for when they re-encode your video.

All of this sounds complicated becuase getting a good quality encode requires knowledge. Find a compressionist if it's too much time in your workflow to create these deliveries.

 

[Nathaniel Kramer]

Thank you Alex... my main problem is the gradient shadiing.. We export from FCP7 as a 422 prores, and then use either compressor of mpeg bitsream to down size to 264-- we use max bitrate of 9000kbps, but still get the gradient shading/ rasterization

 

[Matthew Mann]

Try using Pro Res 4444 as a master format instead. 422 can cause some gradient shading in my experience (especially if there's a soft gradient in the video) and it's best to maintain as much integrity as possible before you encode to 264. Some of it is just unavoidable when compressing to 264, then the re-compression of Vimeo.

Best case with Vimeo is to get a 'Plus' account. They'll run it through a 2-pass encoding and give you higher bit rates when they re-encode.

 

[Alexander Mejia]

Try using Pro Res 4444 as a master format instead. 422 can cause some gradient shading in my experience (especially if there's a soft gradient in the video) and it's best to maintain as much integrity as possible before you encode to 264. Some of it is just unavoidable when compressing to 264, then the re-compression of Vimeo.

Best case with Vimeo is to get a 'Plus' account. They'll run it through a 2-pass encoding and give you higher bit rates when they re-encode.

Starting Prores 444 wont help over 422. Your content is still all being downsampled to 4:2:0 8bit at the end of the pipeline.

You can avoid ugly staggered gradients by either intrducing noise, or using a dithering pattern on gradients. I prefer dithering methods because they are static, and don't take away as much from the image quality like a constantly moving noise pattern.