Video encoding : h264

MF_Erwan · February 13, 2009, 07:33:30 AM

After 7 months, I have finished a video with Terragen. So now I have 4900 .bmp images. With VirtualDub, I have made a .avi file, with the xvid codec and a mp3 music 3 minutes 16 seconds long. But since the quality isn't very good, I'd like to change to a mp4 file with the famous h264 codec. Anyone knows how to do it?

Erwan

red_planet · February 13, 2009, 08:27:18 AM

Erwan

Congrats on finishing an animation.

Quality can be a very subjective matter. Any form of compression introduced into your output format will affect quality. I have seen well encoded divx and poorly encoded divx. I have also seen the same with H264 material. There is nothing magical about it, in my experience you do need to experiment a bit to find a combination of frame rate, resolution and compression ratio that delivers something you are happy with.

But, if you want a quick and dirty route, you could always try Quick time Pro. Not horrifically expensive and makes a good job of taking an image sequence and then outputting a movie in a variety of formats.

Rgds

Chris

Klas · February 13, 2009, 10:08:50 AM

I am using MediaCoder: http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

old_blaggard · February 13, 2009, 10:38:35 AM

Can you post the size of the final movie and your current settings? h.264 is great, but you can also get nice results with Xvid. I've found that Terragen animations usually require a bit rate of at least 2-3mbps in the video for 480p content (854x480, 24fps). This higher-than-average bit rate is because the entire scene is moving from frame to frame as the camera pans around, instead of just one element (like a person) moving.

MF_Erwan · February 13, 2009, 11:02:27 AM

For now the .avi movie with xvid codec is 557MB.
Here is the preview on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX8F38HNm8U
The full size movie can be downloaded from http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=BW4UW559
Here are the settigs: http://cjoint.com/data/cprczhkgXh_Sans_titre-1_copie.jpg

Erwan

Mohawk20 · February 13, 2009, 11:49:52 AM

You can use eRightSoft SUPER, a free media converter that converts to almost all formats!
http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html

Jack · February 13, 2009, 07:11:20 PM

convert it to .mkv format its small and is better quality than avi an mkv movie is around 300mb once you have converted it where as an avi dvd rip movie can be around 750mb and is not as good quality as the mkv format
I use earth mkv converter to convert avi to mkv (x264)
hope this helps

but mohawk is right super is an awesome program and free!

old_blaggard · February 13, 2009, 08:17:56 PM

.mkv is just a container, not an actual codec. It can hold mp4, h.264, and several other formats of video.

Oshyan · February 13, 2009, 10:44:50 PM

mp4 is just a container format, h.264 is the codec (or h.263, and others) .

If you want to encode to h.264 you can use MediaCoder or SUPER, as others mentioned, just be sure to encode from an *uncompressed* AVI, or the original frames, not from the compressed Xvid. Of course it is probably easier just to compress from Virtualdub, so I would recommend x264, a free h.264 implementation which will allow you to compress from Virtualdub. http://x264.nl/

- Oshyan

Klas · February 14, 2009, 03:45:29 AM

Quote from: Oshyan on February 13, 2009, 10:44:50 PMOf course it is probably easier just to compress from Virtualdub, so I would recommend x264, a free h.264 implementation which will allow you to compress from Virtualdub. http://x264.nl/

But then you have h.264 in an avi container.

Mohawk20 · February 14, 2009, 07:35:25 AM

Quote from: Klas on February 14, 2009, 03:45:29 AM
But then you have h.264 in an avi container.

Is that a problem?

Klas · February 14, 2009, 07:48:25 AM

Quote from: Mohawk20 on February 14, 2009, 07:35:25 AM
Quote from: Klas on February 14, 2009, 03:45:29 AM
But then you have h.264 in an avi container.
Is that a problem?

It's because:

Quote from: elegac on February 13, 2009, 07:33:30 AMI'd like to change to a mp4 file with the famous h264 codec.

Oshyan · February 14, 2009, 08:25:09 PM

Then the easiest would probably be Quicktime Pro, but it's not free. Free solution would be Virtualdub to losless compressed AVI with Virtualdub, then MediaCoder or SUPER to convert to h.264 in MP4 container.

- Oshyan

MF_Erwan · February 17, 2009, 08:58:53 AM

About the file format, I only talked about mp4 because most of videos with h264 codec I have seen are mp4 files.
Anyway I used VirtualDub to make an uncompressed .avi file (pretty heavy: 15GB) and then SUPER for encoding...result: a 700MB file...with only little progress compared to xvid.
And about http://x264.nl/ , I just don't understand how to use it. I downloaded and launched "x264.exe 32bit" but nothing happened (only a DOS window for a sew seconds).
Erwan

Oshyan · February 17, 2009, 11:49:17 PM

x264 installs as a DirectShow codec, so programs like VirtualDub can use it. It would be a selectable option in the video codecs menu once installed. The DOS window is probably just a part of the (simple) installer.

In any case if you haven't seen much improvement over Xvid and it's at 700MB, you probably need to adjust your settings. Do you have audio in it? What are you using to compress the audio?

- Oshyan