How to upload Touhou videos in HD quality Tutorial

~Hakurei Shrine~ > Help Me, Eirin!

<< < (69/73) > >>

Agent of the BSoD:
That's a peculiar video resolution. Why are you using that size? That won't even grant you 720p. If that's what you were trying to achieve, you got the calculations mixed up. Video size is calculated by height, not width. If you want to make a 640x480 video become HD in Youtube, you want 960x720 as the result. (also, a good idea is that you should keep around the original, non-encoded video until after you check your video on Youtube, because once in a while, Youtube decides to be dumb and bork the video, resulting in various things like crackling sound and that gray coloring effect at the beginning of some videos. Usually encoding the video again will fix it, even if you do the exact same method you did before)

As for your questions, I'll answer these as best I can.

1) I don't have size problems at all. The fact that they're being encoded means their size is being reduced. If your recording software records videos without a codec (raw data), then the size is going to be HUGE, because there's no codec compressing the size. This can be useful in many ways, especially if your CPU isn't particularly powerful, since it will have to run the program, record the program, and encode the program at once, and encoding is a very CPU heavy task. I still have a video to upload that is a little over 9 minutes and the size is only 650MB, so I don't see that 20GB limit being any such problem for most things. And if you're really worried, you can always crop the fps down to 30 to save more space, since Youtube will convert it to 30 fps anyway. (and save on upload time)

2) The file does not need to be in an mp4, Youtube will work fine with avis. I think the main thing Youtube cares about is the codec used, where different codecs result in different video qualities once processed. I don't know of another program that creates mp4s anyway because I've never needed them.

3) I don't like what Google is doing either, as I really don't care for Google+ nor want anything to do with it really. Unfortunately, Youtube is still the most popular video site so that's probably the best place to upload still.

?q:
That was embarrassing. The resize was a newbie mistake and the file size was the result of me completely forgetting to compress the video. Of note, the video was resized to 960x720; I suspect that may be unusual but it's 150% larger than the recorded window in both directions.

So, let's try this again... now with a video to show! It's hardly unwatchable, but there's a very evident quality loss between the .avi on my computer and the video you see here (particularly w.r.t choppiness). Suggestions?

Agent of the BSoD:
I can see the loss with the moving bullets, it's not as sharp as it could be. Not sure if messing with the sharpness setting will work, I haven't been able to experiment much with it yet. (HDD space, what is?) As for choppiness, it seems fine to me. If you're looking for a difference with 60 fps, then you'll definitely see the choppiness with Youtube as it uses 30 fps instead, which tends to make Touhou videos look a little choppy by eyes that look for that.

Unless you're seeing something I'm not seeing (if you are, let me know), maybe try other browsers to watch that video. Flash Player lately has been kinda borked in certain browsers, notably Firefox and Chrome. On my end, Internet Explorer (unfortunately) doesn't seem to be affected and plays Youtube better. Try checking with other browsers to make sure that may not be the problem you see.

?q:
It's entirely possible I'm seeing things or expecting too much. You can't play these games without being at least kind of a perfectionist.

I've been trying a few things for further comparison.

Video for comparison (not HD)
Video from .avi
Video from .mp4
Video from .mp4, with sharpness at 16 instead of 5

Comparing to a not-HD video is kind of unfair, but at least I know that the videos are of higher quality than some on the open Internet. As far as the other three videos go, I think the quality improves from second to third to first, but the difference is negligible and uploading as .mp4 is faster by at least twenty times. So... I think I'm done. Thank you for your help!

----

Quick version of what I did:
*Download and install the following:
MSI Afterburner
VirtualDub
x264vfw codec - I don't remember there being anything particularly special about getting this working.
LAME 3.99.5 ACM codec - If you have an x64 computer like me, this download comes with a readme that's actually quite useful for getting this where it needs to go. Otherwise you may be good for following the instructions here.
Freemake Video Converter - This isn't the download link but it'll tell you everything you need to know about it.

It may be worth the effort to check VirtualDub for whether you need either of the two codecs. I needed both; I don't know if everyone will.

*Play game. :V
*Open MSI Afterburner and go to Settings -> Video Capture. Set the video capture hotkey to something you're unlikely to press but easy to remember (I use Ctrl+F8). Set video format to "uncompressed" (this will disable your ability to manipulate the slider below; this is okay). Set Frame Size to Full Frame (I remember getting dubious quality with other settings) and framerate to 60 FPS. Set the folder the videos go to to someplace you can find it.
*Record replay at full screen while MSI Afterburner is running. MSI Afterburner will record the active window, not your desktop, but I got the best results from full-screen - though that may have been conflated with other fixes I made; I'm not sure.
*Open the .avi that you got from recording the video in VirtualDub.
**Under Video, select Full Processing Mode.
**In Video->Filters, click Add... and grab the resize filter. You'll be prompted to specify a size; get the width to 720. Everything else should be fine. If you screw up, click Configure on the Filters pane. Before you leave, grab the sharpen filter. You can adjust the sharpening to whatever you like; I did okay with 16 but you're perfectly able to play around with it. Setting it to max sharpness is hilarious but not something you'd want on a serious video.
**Under Video->Compression, choose the x264vfw. This is the H.264 video codec mentioned here. Click Configure, and set Rate Control to "Single Pass - lossless" (note that I'm just doing this because I'm sheeping the key word "lossless" wherever I see it). Click "VirtualDub hack" in the output subpane.
**Under Audio->Compression, choose Lame MP3 and off to the side select the 256 kbps CBR option. If Audio->Compression is greyed out, click "Full Processing Mode" down the Video dropdown first.
*Watch the before-and-after videos by pressing Enter. You'd like your video to look as good as it can before it goes off to be mangled. If you like it, save the .avi off somewhere. Press Ctrl-S to save your video processing options so you don't have to repeat the VirtualDub set every time; you can just Ctrl-L the settings back.
*Open Freemake Video Converter. Click Video and grab your processed .avi. Click "To mp4" at the bottom. The output parameters should be "same as source" and you should save it someplace where you can find it, per usual. Run it.

You now have an .mp4 that's teeny (20 MB vs. 618 MB with the .avi, in the case of the videos shown in this post) and YouTube will happily accept this. Mission accomplished!

The quality of the mp4 isn't going to match the quality of the .avi. As far as I'm aware the only response available is to :dealwithit: .

If I missed something and it's not evident where, Google can be your friend as much as it was mine when going through this process. I claim ignorance about anything that's too far away from what I described here.

---

Bonus tip: If you're like me and the make of your computer is an HP Envy, you may have found that your Stereo Mix sounds garbled. This actually isn't your fault and it's not the computer's fault; it's Microsoft's. Go to Control Panel -> Sound -> Recording -> Stereo Mix -> Properties -> Advanced and uncheck the "Enable Audio Enhancements" box. Insert your own joke here.

Maiden Synnae ミ☆:
Is there not a way to join the multiple .avi's + .wav without VirtualDub? It keeps screwing the stuff when I try to use that.

This is what happens:
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/363315-Having-a-lot-of-frustration-with-my-videos?p=2310700#post2310700

Navigation

 Message Index

Go to full version