Video Compression Question

Hi
I know there are some digital video gurus on here - maybe one of you can help me out.
I have a client asking for a film to be compressed to 720x576 with anamorphic pixels.
Does H264 codec support anamorphic pixels? Or would I have to compress it as DV-PAL?
Thanks

Use DV-PAL
H.264 is mainly for web use.

What format and resolution is the source?

And where is the video going to end up? Broadcast, web , tape?

The source is h264 at 1920 x 1080
The client is some sort of web TV thing - not really sure - and he's worried that some older equipment can't handle square pixels.
I don't want to use DV-PAL because of the file size and quality issues.
Is it even possible to have anamorphic pixels in h264?

Yep, h264 is just another codec and is the best thing to use for web. Set your frame size to 720x576, but change the pixel aspect to 16:9 setting. TV's and QT should see it as anamorphic and stretch it back to 16:9 for you.

Hi
I know there are some digital video gurus on here - maybe one of you can help me out.
I have a client asking for a film to be compressed to 720x576 with anamorphic pixels.
Does H264 codec support anamorphic pixels? Or would I have to compress it as DV-PAL?
Thanks

The source is h264 at 1920 x 1080
The client is some sort of web TV thing - not really sure - and he's worried that some older equipment can't handle square pixels.
I don't want to use DV-PAL because of the file size and quality issues.
Is it even possible to have anamorphic pixels in h264?

Like TooTallTim says, H.264 is just a codec, you can make it any size you want.

Don't get too tired up with the idea of 'anamorphic pixels' - it's only a conceit, there are no such things as non-square pixels - all pixels are square in a file, but the files we call 'anamorphic' get stretched out at the point of play.

So:

720 x 576 gets stretched out (at the point of play) to 768 x 576 for 4:3 signals.

720 x 576 gets stretched out (at the point of play) to 1024 x 576 for 16:9 signals.

So in this respect every codec supports anamorphic pixels (as it's only an idea expressed when played).

Hope that makes sense.

H.264 is very good considering the size (massively better than DV-PAL which is very old now) - x264Encoder is even better than H.264.

720 x 576 gets stretched out (at the point of play) to 768 x 576 for 4:3 signals.

small correction

small correction

Whoops !

Yes, 768 x 576.

Bump.

I'm having trouble with ugly banding artifacts in an h.264 export from Premiere Pro CS5.5 (Windows). Flat skies for example are horribly blocky instead of smooth gradients.

The original footage was ProRes from the Arri Alexa.

CS5.5 doesn't have Alexa project settings as default so I 'made them up'.

I'm trying to export the 4 minute video to a size suitable for YouTube but without losing the beautiful quality of the Alexa.

I've exported an Uncompressed Quicktime file (YUV 8 bit 4:2:2) which looks beautiful - but it's unfortunately a staggering 17GB...

Do you know of any solutions to shrink it to something YouTube ready but maintaining as much as possible of the quality?

Unfortunately the MacBook Pro died so I'm using a Windows laptop.

I have Adobe Master Collection CS5.5 and can get other software if needs be.

If you want it HD then 8000kbps h264 is minimum for decent quality. 5000kbps @ 720p. Always go multipass.

MPEG streamclip should be fine if it's going on youtube. Check you tubes settings because I'm pretty sure they tell you settings to go for.

Thing is, even at 50000kbps I'm getting these weird banding artifacts. The opening shot of the video is a pan through sea and sky and the sky looks like it was drawn in 4 different coloured crayons.

post up a screenshot of the bandings. I couldn't know without seeing it. I've never used Premiere so I can't help you out with the settings.
are you able to export a QuickTime reference file and then convert that.

CYOA I feel your pain - I hate this stuff. Particularly with subtle complex light variations like you get in skies.

Feels like normal acceptable video quality is just getting shitter, as streamable 'content' totally replaces broadcast once and for all.

My business card has a load of aspect ratios on it, never thought I'd be putting 1:1 on there.

Think the third party idea bradybrady is suggesting sounds good.

I've never heard of x264 mentioned four years ago upthread ... maybe have look at that!

btw you were doing multipass when you encoded, yes?

Screenshot attached.

Yep, Multipass.

Sad face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_eGm1qgGs

.

Hmm, Microcosm no likey image hosting. Here you go:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BysFC6-IcAAubIM.jpg:large

That's a screenshot from a file exported in Adobe Media Encoder CC in H264, a Quicktime wrapper, 1920 x 800 pixels, target bitrate of 50mbps with an upper of 250mbps, 2 pass, render in max quality, render in max depth, non frame blending.

I'm pretty sure your problem stems from the bit depth - you say you're exporting at 8bit? Can you export again a 10bit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_banding

This may help a bit more: http://provideocoalition.com/ryoung/story/remove_banding_in_after_effects/

Sort of... What I've done so far is export a final copy in 8 bit (which looks fantastic played back on any number of different players but is 17gb) and then compress that in one of the above tools to a file ranging between 250mb and 1.5gb. All look pretty much identical with horrid banding, though some have been better than others.

The problem is I was getting the same problem exporting straight from the timeline in Premiere (either through the NLE or queued in Media Encoder) which is what made me try the 8bit export in the first place.

Thanks for the add-noise link. I read something about that last night and meant to try it.

I've just heard back that the deadline has been pushed back to mid October so I've got a couple of weeks yet which is good.

Thanks so far everyone.