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Best export settings for 16mm scan to vimeo


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Hey everyone,

 

I wanted to see if anyone could help me out. I wanted to know if anyone could recommend the best export settings from Adobe Media Encoder for a 16mm scan.

 

I am fine with grain, in fact I love it. I have a project thats completely hand processed kodak 7222, and the results are quite grainy. The problem I have is that when I export the h.264 file for web, the grain just becomes ugly blotches and pixels. I've tried for many hours to get the best export, including raising my bit rate and everything.

 

I know there must be a good method, because i've seen film scans that have quite a bit of grain on the web, but the detail is preserved, so i'm completely at a loss.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Derick

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Vimeo will re-encode your video no matter what you do...

 

I find the best results by uploading ProRes or DNXhd files, but this only works for shorter clips as the data load is quite high. But the results are better than uploading a compressed h.264 and having it compressed again by Vimeo.

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Vimeo will re-encode your video no matter what you do...

 

I find the best results by uploading ProRes or DNXhd files, but this only works for shorter clips as the data load is quite high. But the results are better than uploading a compressed h.264 and having it compressed again by Vimeo.

 

Awesome, thanks Bruce. Do you have a specific recommendation of settings for say, a Pro Res Proxy file that will hold the detail and grain better? I tried a pro res proxy and the results were ok, but again I got those terrible compression artifacts in the grain. I know there has to be something i'm doing wrong, because I've seen some pretty great looking scans that hold the grain pretty well online.

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In my experience, first option should be to upload a ProRes 422 (hopefully HQ) file to Vimeo. YouTube and Facebook have no filesize limits whereas Vimeo does if you don't pay. I paid so I could upload higher res stuff. Otherwise you have to keep your uploads to 500mb and that's next to impossible to retain good grain for a several minute film at that rate. If I DO compress, I use 50mbps bitrate which still gives me a ~1.5 gig file for a ~4 min film. Another option might be (counterintuitive as it seems) apply a small amount of grain reduction to your film first. Basically gives the Vimeo/YouTube compression less hassle to deal with therefore potentially getting cleaner results.

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What Nick just wrote :)

 

I pay for 5gb/week uploads. I've just uploaded a 3.6gb file and have found some issues with it. (now I must wait until next week to replace it) One is that I have only one channel of audio so it's time to read the Resolve manual! And, I uploaded a 2k file and on my TV, vimeo has trouble with their conversion to HD, though it plays fine on computers and phones as far as I can tell. So, probably you should only upload in HD/1920 resolutions. Or maybe 4k, but nothing in between. Also I've learned in the past to not upload ProRes 4444 etc as Vimeo has difficulties with these formats. So no 12 bit or 14 or 16 bit uploads. Or maybe just no RGB uploads. I'm not clear what the real issue is here.

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Ah interesting you have issues with 2K Bruce. I actually was going to come back to this forum and suggest uploading 2K over 1080. I've found that Vimeo gives higher bitrate compression to 2K videos than 1080. Same with YouTube. And I pretty much never scan at 4k so it's not a factor for me. I've found 2K vs 1080 to be a huge jump whereas when I got some 4K scans, the difference compared to 2K was negligible. Granted I primarily scan Super 8 but still.

 

Also Bruce... if you need to replace a video, there's a section under the options for that video to replace it and it doesn't count against your quota. It's under GENERAL>INFO then scroll all the way to the bottom to REPLACE FILE. Boom.

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Thanks all, so apologies if this is a bit redundant but lets say I export a Pro Res 422 file at 1080, would this yield better image quality than say a 2.5 export as a Pro Res Proxy?

 

Right now, for the film at hand my Proxy export is about 3GB, but when I export a Pro Res 422 at 2.5k I'm getting a 6GB file. So would resizing help with quality control as well as space for the 5GB cap on vimeo?

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Ah interesting you have issues with 2K Bruce. I actually was going to come back to this forum and suggest uploading 2K over 1080. I've found that Vimeo gives higher bitrate compression to 2K videos than 1080. Same with YouTube. And I pretty much never scan at 4k so it's not a factor for me. I've found 2K vs 1080 to be a huge jump whereas when I got some 4K scans, the difference compared to 2K was negligible. Granted I primarily scan Super 8 but still.

 

Also Bruce... if you need to replace a video, there's a section under the options for that video to replace it and it doesn't count against your quota. It's under GENERAL>INFO then scroll all the way to the bottom to REPLACE FILE. Boom.

The 2k issue, if it is that, only occurs when I play through the Vimeo app on my Roku device on my tv. What happens is that somewhere during the playback the right side of the image starts showing the left side, in an area about the size of 2048 vs 1920... Strange. Every playback shows the error at a different place in the timeline, but once it starts the error stays for the rest of the playback.

 

I've tried the "replace" file before, and it seems that I still need to wait until the next week begins. I'll try again today to see if that now works.

 

If you have some advice about how to merge my 5.1 audio tracks into stereo in Resolve please let me know! Especially how to mix the center and sub woofer channels into both R and L channels.

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A 1080p Pro Res proxy isn't quite good enough, but standard Pro Res is fine. This would be standard DNXHD 115Mbps if you don't have Pro Res.

 

For .h264 @ 1080p, you need to be over 18Mbps, double pass, key every 8th frame, for it to look good. Media Encoder does a great job at making these, but it does take a while.

 

When using higher resolution, Pro Res and DNX becomes more of an issue because the bandwidth required is multiplied. I've been doing a lot more 4k work on Vimeo recently and it takes A LOT longer to deal with it. I haven't yet figured out a good alternative to .h264 with 4k workflow however. I usually encode .h264's in 30Mbps, double pass, key every frame, for 4k uploads and they look pretty decent.

 

This is a MPEG 2, .h264, 30Mbps .h264 upload @ 4k

 

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