Video Help Thread - A guide to fine(r) video production

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

Increase your video prowess. Ask your questions on capturing, editing, publishing, or anything else you come across. Noob questions welcome. You can even ask for some critique on your vid, whether it be 64, Melee, or even P:M.


Helpful 'get started' guide:
How to get a 60 fps stream or record videos easily - EPsilon933/UsurperKingZant

Threads and discussions I've found useful about editing approach or theory
Tips for a better video - own-age, WhiTey
Study of Syncing - adamllis
Overview - Art of Editing - K1NDRED

Notes on making a combo video
Post 1 + 2 - -Philip Coast Philip-

Discussion on quality and effective editing in videos
What are the best videos in terms of editing?

Unofficial list of Melee montages

*****
***example topics
Capture cards
Sony Vegas
VirtualDub
Compression
Deinterlacing
Editing, effects
Yolo Swag
Video Formats
Banging
Rendering
Uploading


Some 'finer tips on implementing and developing effects when editing your video:
-Listen to your song, look at your clips. See if there's a theme or climax to your clip. Try pairing an effect that can enhance or complement this aspect.
-Be careful when repeating an effect; novelty can turn into annoyance quickly even without realizing it.
-A video is the product of its parts. What you choose to embellish will be seen, and the more poorly you accomplish this, the worse off your video will be than had you left out the effect in the first place. Keeping in mind this relationship will help discern what to add and what to leave out.

My current workflow, for reference
VCR or TV as splitter --> Dazzle DVC 100 (composite/s-video)
(optional) WD USB 3.0 HD
VirtualDub --> Yadif + Lagarith
Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11
DebugMode FrameServer --> VirtualDub
X.264 VFW 2-pass --> YouTube

 

[N1c2k3]

When creating a combo video/trailer, what is the best way to achieve the highest quality using clips posted from YouTube or other streaming sources. After downloading, importing, re-compressing, etc. the quality grade can take a serious hit. Are there any good downloading software that won't degrade the video? Thanks!

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

When creating a combo video/trailer, what is the best way to achieve the highest quality using clips posted from YouTube or other streaming sources. After downloading, importing, re-compressing, etc. the quality grade can take a serious hit. Are there any good downloading software that won't degrade the video? Thanks!

Yeah, there are definitely better ways to download from Youtube than just taking the first file you're given, but also like you said, recompressing can lower the quality as well. It would be nice if my editor just accepted certain types of Youtube files - for some reason, even after I've downloaded the VP8 and Vorbis codecs, Vegas still won't open WebM files (Google's open-source video container), so, whatever - but there's always the option to recompress into a lossless format (like Lagarith).

With Youtube, multiple filetypes are stored for any given video - this is what decides the quality you're going to get. Certain video formats are better than others.

To have control over this, try BYTubeD and DownThemAll!, two Firefox add-ons. BYTube generates links for multiple formats and resolutions, while DTA manages links in a queue.

So which format?

If the video you're downloading only goes to 360 or 480, then use FLV. (MP4 doesn't exist for 480, just 720 and above, and 360, and it uses a baseline encoding profile for 360 - not as good as the profile with FLV). If you're downloading HD, then the difference between WebM and MP4 won't really matter. In fact, it's probably better to re-compress anyway, because MP4 can be glitch-y to work with in an editor. My workflow already accepts MP4, so I'd go with MP4 (for HD). (Opinion seems to state that MP4 has a slightly better visual and sound, still, for now, and WebM may have a smaller bitrate. I haven't tested HD videos myself.)

(Tip: If you quickly want to check a video file's info, open it in VLC and click on Tools --> Codec Information. It will tell you the codecs used, res, framerate, and color space and ratio.)

Now, to preserve the quality.

Remember, if the video is 360 or 480, the maximum audio bitrate will be 128; if the video is 720 or 1080, the maximum audio bitrate will be 192. So if you're going to re-encode, do it at at least those audio rates, or in an uncompressed format. Also, if you're re-compressing into a lossy audio format, try and use a constant bitrate (CBR), as it won't cause any synching problems that VBR (variable) may.

Likewise, as you probably already know, when re-encoding video (at the same res), try and use a bitrate at least higher than that of the source video's, to preserve quality.

If you're editing with low-res formats, consider uploading in an HD format: not only will that force Youtube to keep your higher bitrate, but through upscaling, it's theoretically possible to improve the picture quality (slightly) by 'guessing' and 'filling in the gaps' when an upscaling algorithm is applied. It does seem, however, possible to 'force' Youtube to preserve high-quality 480 video, but only when your average bitrate exceeds 15,000 kbps.
__________

Sources
Table of Youtube formats - Wikipedia
Advanced encoding settings - Youtube

Hope that was helpful, post back if you have any questions.