H:264 capture/render software

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

Yea handbrake is awesome and so is the x264 ecoding engine, I recomend if you are interested in this stuff to read up on all the handbrake settings in their FAQ, you can use the high profile setting for even more x264 wizardry. If you are using this for broadcast video turn CQ (constant quality) up to about 64%, at that point the Handbrake community basically agrees that it becomes transparent to the source (though you will be doubling your file size). Get a small sample file, like 2 minute video, and play around with different settings till you find something that works for your application (to warn you some of the 'high profile' settings will break compatibility with certain players).

Well I have been struggling with this H:264 all weekend as I am preparing test files for engineering to analyze on Monday and so far Handbrake is winning hands down in terms of good video quality in smaller file sizes, right now I am dealing with SD video which I have been capturing in Sony vegas movie studio 9 and rendering to mpeg 2, hoping the mpeg 4/H:264 will maintain same quality but with smaller file sizes as we ftp this video in from the road on Telus modems.

Tried Pinnacle Studio HD ultimate collection and streamclip and Vegas 9 but in Mpeg4 I am getting horrible results, I could be doing something wrong though, all good in mpeg 2 but once I go to mpeg 4 the end result is not even close to the quality of my raw .avi's or mpeg 2's but with Handbrake in the high profile setting I think I have something I can send to the station without being laughed at too loudly.

Then comes the HD H:264, that will be next and the challenge there will again be to have broadcast video in lengths of up to 7 min with file sizes not bigger than 300mb.

Rendering time, file size and video quality, a fine balancing act.

mark

[Jonathan Norris]

Mark, as you know by now all video encoding is a balancing act, I would say using Handbrake's high profile setting is a really good starting point even for HD encoding. There are many tools out there for measuring how close to the raw file your encode is picture wise, many developers and engineers on forums (particularly the Doom9 forum) have put a lot of effort into test x264 against comercial H264 encoders, and in most conditions it tests beter. But comparing one raw frame to an encoded frame won't tell you the whole story because alot of H264's magic juice comes with moving images.

It depends on what your station broadcasts at, you are probably broadcasting at 10-15mb/s mpeg4 720p. I would say that a 10mb/s 720p x264 encoded video would be noticeably better quality if its coming from a raw source. Heck if you are coming from a clean source I bet you could get away with a smaller bitrate, play with the constant quality setting on handbrake until you find something that is acceptable for you.

Originally Posted by Jonathan Norris

Mark, as you know by now all video encoding is a balancing act, I would say using Handbrake's high profile setting is a really good starting point even for HD encoding. There are many tools out there for measuring how close to the raw file your encode is picture wise, many developers and engineers on forums (particularly the Doom9 forum) have put a lot of effort into test x264 against commercial H264 encoders, and in most conditions it tests better. But comparing one raw frame to an encoded frame won't tell you the whole story because a lot of H264's magic juice comes with moving images.

It depends on what your station broadcasts at, you are probably broadcasting at 10-15mb/s mpeg4 720p. I would say that a 10mb/s 720p x264 encoded video would be noticeably better quality if its coming from a raw source. Heck if you are coming from a clean source I bet you could get away with a smaller bitrate, play with the constant quality setting on handbrake until you find something that is acceptable for you.

It sure has been fun testing all these encoders this weekend and learning as much as I can about this, I shoot for two stations and one is cable only and that's who this project is for so there are also limitations on what rate the cable and satellite companies transmit stations signals at and of course internal compression applied in their editing software to save space as well and those values I don't know, I haven't asked yet.

It's also good to remember that I am not using a pro-encoder yet trying to achieve broadcast grade results in small file sizes so that could be why none of the other converters I've tried have come even close.

Handbrake in high profile mode at least on my monitor here at home seems to be showing me quality as good as the original file and nearly half the file size, good results in video containing fast motion as well.

Still have to use Vegas to capture and make the original file though but so far so good, the idea of being able to have handbrake automatically convert everything in one folder and dump in into another folder for ftp'ing is nice but that's out of my league right now.