Best encode settings for web from ex1 720/50p footage

[Carlos Padilla]

When I upload 720/50p footage from my ex1 to vimeo/exposureroom etc... it never plays correctly. I tried some kind of settings without succes. I use the settings that recommend this webs but the footage with a lot of movements (steadicam) plays with a lot of stutter. Can you give me some advice?
thanks

[Craig Seeman]

EXACTLY what settings did you use?
Why not post the link to the video so we can see what's wrong? How do you know it's not your internet connection?

[Carlos Padilla]

I think isn't my internet connection because I can see other people videos without problem. If I upload videos at 720/25p they plays good. Only have a problem with 50p.
I encoded in h264 and tried diferent bit rates 3000, 3500,4000...
Deleted the videos until I find good settings. I you can give me some advice of new settings I will post the link with the results

[Craig Seeman]

When Vimeo encodes video it converts them all to 24p. It does a poor job of changing the frame rate and drops frames. I'm wondering if that's the problem since you say 25p looks good and 50p does not.

I know YouTube is now allowing 720p24, 720p25, 720p30. As a test, upload video to YouTube and see if it does a good conversion from 50p to 25p.

[Carlos Padilla]

Thanks Craig,
I think this is the problem. I will try if Compressor can do a better conversion 50p>25p to upload 25p footage. If anyone know the better settings to do this I'll be greatiful

[Mitchell Lewis]

Here's a brand new tutorial on how to do it in Compressor:

Converting Frame Rates in Compressor

[Craig Seeman]

Note this comment in the article description:
"Remembering that we always want to convert frame rates up"

Worth giving it a try but Carlos needs to convert DOWN to 25p (or 24p which is ideal for Vimeo).

In fact the article says converting down results in choppy video which is what Vimeo does and why the video looks choppy in the first place. That said, Compressor's results should be better than Vimeo's.

[Paul Cronin]

I have tried the converting down from 30p to 24p for vimeo and have not been pleased as Craig stated you always want to convert up.

Was all set to have my demo and a few other videos run embedded on my site with Vimeo Plus. But it looks like I will cancel the account in the 30-day time frame until a different solution hits the market.

[Craig Seeman]

30p is generally difficult to convert to either 24p or 25p. The reason is that 30p has no fields to divide. That's why it's often recommended to not shot 30p for international distribution.

The problem with Vimeo is they convert everything to 24p and do a poor job of it. They should be able to accept 25p and 30p but they do not. While TV sets may be PAL or NTSC specific, computers do not have to be. Vimeo has claimed in the past that some computers have a hard time decoding frame rates above 24p. Their reasoning is "twisted" though in my opinion. Instead of "some" people getting dropped frames because they can't decode 25p or 30p, EVERYONE gets dropped frames at video badly converted to 24p (unless you shoot 24p).

Mind you NONE of this happens on YouTube which handles 25p and 30p just fine. So you can pay $60 for Vimeo's 2GB per week limit and get BAD frame rate conversions or you can use YouTube, play at your native frame rate, have no weekly limit.

True Vimeo has some nice features but if all my HD video has dropped frames the other features have limited value.

I brought up the frame rate issue with Vimeo staff about 7 months ago and they were very defensive.

[Paul Cronin]

Craig thanks for the helpful input. I also talked with the staff at Vimeo and they were not receptive to my request. I will give Utube 720P 30p a try and see what I get. Most of my shoots are 30p due to clients request so that is my preferred choice or 720p 30p/60p for over cranked.

[Dominik Seibold]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

Most of my shoots are 30p due to clients request so that is my preferred choice or 720p 30p/60p for over cranked.

I think that 30p is a very good choice because almost all computer-displays are running at 60Hz, which is an integral multiple of 30. So it can be watched on them perfectly smooth. Also the look of 30p is a great tradeoff between that 24p-film-look and that 60p-reality-look.

[Craig Seeman]

Ultimately what it comes down to is that unless you're shooting 24p specifically, Vimeo is not a good place to show professional HD work.

It's ironic given that YouTube is considered a "playpen" and Vimeo wanted to be the place for "serious artists."

I've had viewers and clients contact me about the dropped frames on my Vimeo posts (not that I have much there). I'd been uploading HD using their password protect feature to send to specific people (not for public viewing).

As an alternative one might try
ExposureRoom - Providing Exposure & Opportunity for Talent
as another alternative.

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

Craig thanks for the helpful input. I also talked with the staff at Vimeo and they were not receptive to my request. I will give Utube 720P 30p a try and see what I get. Most of my shoots are 30p due to clients request so that is my preferred choice or 720p 30p/60p for over cranked.

[Paul Cronin]

Dominik I also like 30p look better luckily my clients agree who know the difference and the ones who don’t I show them options and help them decide.

Thanks Craig I will check out Exposure Room. For some clients I post on a hidden page on my site and they do not mind the extra upload time. Also Blu-Ray burner on the way this week for my Mac Pro so one more options to FedEx out rewriteable disk to the client.

[Craig Seeman]

Dominik, Interesting that you say that coming from a PAL based country. You make some key points though.

Computers are frame rate agnostic. Higher frame rate is better temporal resolution. Computer don't suffer from the PAL/NTSC restraints. With more efficient codecs, faster computers, faster internet connections, decoding is becoming less of a problem.

For me, I shoot for TV, Digital Signage, the web. 30p (in an NTSC country) meets all those needs. I have had to shoot 60i and 60p when shooting sports though. Both of those convert to 30p fairly easily when needed.

24p has been the "international" standard because it can be converted to 60i by adding pull down and 25p (or 50i) with a very small speed change. Some would say it produces a smaller compressed file for the internet given that it has fewer frames. The problem is some of us are unhappy with the temporal resolution of 24p.

There's Carlos' case where 50p gives him better temporal resolution at the source but it doesn't easily convert to 24p (at least the way Vimeo is doing it). It could convert to 25p but Vimeo stubbornly holds to 24p. The result is that very HD few frame rates play well on Vimeo.

YouTube handles 24, 25, 30 so those as well as 50 and 60 (which are more easily downconverted to 25 and 30) handles motion much better.

What also may be at issue is On2VP6 decode vs H.264. On2 updated VP6 to include a simpler profile (but at the potential cost of quality) for HD encode decode. Vimeo probably went with On2VP6 (and I'm not sure if they're using the simpler profile for HD) because they may have felt that H.264 flash was not widely decoded at the time. Adobe updated player, capable of H.264 decode spread very quickly though. On the encode side On2VP6 has a fairly expensive cost too which is not the case for H.264.

So it seems that many hosting sites jumped on H.264 Flash when they felt market penetration was high enough while Vimeo, early HD adaptor, is using the expensive (for them) and probably harder to decode On2VP6 Flash which may be why they don't have the frame rate playback other sites do.

Not only is YouTube using H.264 Flash allowing 24, 25, 30fps, they are encoding at a higher data rate too. Vimeo seems to be at about 1800kbps whereas YouTube seems to be an avg of 2000kbps allowing for brief peaks up to 4000kbps.

Basically we're getting to the point where someone with a 5000kbps internet connection can watch 720p HD coming from the web. That's why so many are arguing that Blu-ray may not really catch on the was DVD did.

We're getting closer to the point where you can watch HD web on HDTV. My main computer has a graphics card with 2 DVI out. I have a DVI to HDMI cable going to my 46" HDTV. I can drag a YouTube web page with an HD video on it to the HDTV and play the video in full screen mode. It's certainly not Blu-ray but it's pretty cool to be able to do that. I do that with Vimeo and the dropped frames look really bad. Vimeo has the advantage that you can turn scaling off so you get 720 whereas YouTube scales it to 1080 so it looks a bit soft.

Originally Posted by Dominik Seibold

I think that 30p is a very good choice because almost all computer-displays are running at 60Hz, which is an integral multiple of 30. So it can be watched on them perfectly smooth. Also the look of 30p is a great tradeoff between that 24p-film-look and that 60p-reality-look.

[Carlos Padilla]

I tried to convert 50p video in 720/25p with compressor without special settings and the result was very bad. I don't know if I did it in the best way. In exposureroom also had choppy video. I can't try youtube at the moment because I need password protect so the client don't have the final work yet.
Is important to me to find a solution because in some projects that needs fast movements or steadicam, 720/50p (pal area) is the better option to me.