Creating high quality / HD MP4 from a 50 FPS source using Movie Edit Pro 17 Plus HD

joho schrieb am 13.07.2011 um 10:48 Uhr

I have an "action cam" that can deliver a number of formats; one of them is 1280x720 50 FPS MP4. I've done all the cutting/trimming, added some transitions and some titles at various points in the video, now I want to export it to MP4. The generated result feels very "jumpy" and not at all as smooth as the input / source. I have set the export options to 1280x720 50 FPS as well.

It also feels like mission impossible to get super quality MP4 output, even if I crank up the specs as far as bitrates, profile "high", two-pass encoding, etc.

Are there some good guidelines available somewhere for how to accomplish this in MEP17PHD.. ?

Kommentare

blubb444 schrieb am 13.07.2011 um 17:48 Uhr

Hi, from your description and my own experience with trying to export mp4 at 50p I guess that your exported video is in fact only 25p. You should check that with an analysing tool like MediaInfo. From my experience the mp4 codec that comes with the program is very likely to override a manually set 50p setting and put it back to 25p/50i.

I was somehow successful with the following method: (First make sure that your movie setting is set to 50 fps and the correct resolution. Normally the program should ask you to adapt settings automatically once you've imported your source video file(s))

In the mp4 export dialog, first choose the preset "HDTV 1920x1080 H264 50 FPS" and then manually set the resolution back to 1280x720. The pre-set bitrate (16 Mbit/s) should be enough for that resolution. You can however change the advanced settings like encoding performance, profile etc. if you wish.

If this still leads to a bad output or doesn't work for some reason then you can do a quite lengthy and complicated workaround (I'm doing that too with my 1920x1080 50p material because for some strange reason the MAGIX internal mp4 encoder is apparently capped at 20 Mbit/s no matter which bitrate I enter in the mp4 output dialog or adavanced settings. Of course this leads to lots of ugly pixelation artifacts):

First, export the video as uncompressed or better as losslessly compressed AVI (fx huffyuv via ffdshow) with full framerate and resolution (1280x720 50 fps progressive). Use "Video only" if possible. Of course the resulting file will be huge, I needed 300 GB for a 45 min 1920x1080 50p video so you should have enough free disk space!
Also export the audio of your project separately as WAV.
Then get the command line encoder x264 (from x264.nl). I highly recommend getting the 64 bit version if you're on a 64 bit Windows! Get the 8-bit depth version, 10-bit depth isn't supported by most players yet (I tested it, only VLC would even play the result but with very distorted colours).
Once you got the program, save it along with your exported lossless AVI (let's call it video.avi) and exported wav (let's call it audio.wav) in an easy to type directory, for example "C:\x264".
Now run the Windows command line (press the win key and "R" at the same time and type in cmd) and navigate to the directory (enter cd.. until it says C:\ and then enter cd "x264"). Now run the program twice for a 2 pass encoding, like that (you can change the bitrate of course):
x264 --pass 1 --bitrate 16000 -o output.mp4 video.avi
When it's done, run the 2nd pass:
x264 --pass 2 --bitrate 16000 -o output.mp4 video.avi
If not specified otherwise, the program will use the frame rate and resolution of the input file.
You can of course modify umptillions of other settings in x264, but I don't really understand them all that well so I can't give any advice here. Simply increase the bitrate a bit if there's visible macroblocking in the result.
Now you have the mp4 file but without sound... and the mp4 container only supports ac3 audio, so you have to convert the wav file to ac3, this can be done with "WAV to AC3 Encoder" and also works with surround!
Once you have done that and obtained "audio.ac3" you have to rename output.mp4 to output.m4v (else you'll get problems in the following step). Now you need the program YAMB. With it, you can mux the video and audio streams into a single file. Open YAMB, go to "Creation" then to "Click to create an MP4 file...". Now drag/drop both "output.m4v" and "audio.ac3" in the field there, click "Next" and it should mux the streams into a single file called "output.mp4". Now you can delete all the other large files previously made.
Like I said, this is a very complicated method and needs lot of patience but if done right you can get very good results and it's all freeware, so no worries about additional cost. Plus IMO x264 is much faster (if you're taking advantage of 64 bit) and has a better quality/bitrate ratio than the MAGIX internal mp4 codec - and you can choose whatever resolution, framerate and bitrate you want, no stupid limitations here.

Scenestealer schrieb am 18.07.2011 um 02:03 Uhr

Hi. There certainly seem to be a few tricks with MPEG4 exports and I am trying to solve the riddle as well, myself.

A couple of observations after a lot of fiddling around:-

The 50p presets in the "file > export movie > MPEG4" are different to those available in the Burn section > encoder settings >advanced settings. If you use the latter and burn an AVCHD disc to the image recorder (iso) you will find the resulting .MTS file in the last subfolder called "Stream".

Whilst trying to encode / upscale some DV-AVI 25fps footage to MPEG4 720p I got very jerky playback and discovered that Media info reported it as having encoded (in several attempts) to 24fps when every setting advanced or otherwise was set to 25fps. I was only able to cure this by the MP4 advanced settings > advanced video settings > advanced tab and where it said "Picture field order". changed this to "bottom first" and then below that "Picture pulldown mode" changed this from "Auto" to "no pulldown". Hint - If you double click the Value field it turns into a dropdown.

It is worth noting that if you change the AVC preset / profile in the "MPEG4 export > Advanced video settings > settings Tab" you must hit reset defaults and then apply to make these things stick. Note though that I have changed the frame type from "Progressive" to "interlaced" here and it does not update the info settings back in the burn screen > encoder settings. Neither does the frame rate change if you alter the [Rate] input or output frame rate in the "advanced settings tab".

I will say that I have been able to export the 1080 50p footage from the Panasonic SD900 camera successfully via the Burn screen as AVCHD 1080 50p AC3 5.1, with no apparent loss of smoothness or resolution despite the fact that as blubb has pointed out, the video bitrate has dropped from the original clips reported 28Mbps to 21Mbps.

The upshot of all this experimenting has only left me feeling that it is very hit and miss when using the various presets and customisation in MEP for MPEG4 as to what framerate you will end up (also with depending on the source material) particularily exporting to 720p.

Hopefully someone can step in and clarify the "best procedure"!

Just a point joho - have you installed all the software that came with your camera as this may install a necessary codec. Alternatively if you analyse an original clip with Media info it will bring up a link where you can go to the website of the found codec and possibly download it from there. Also make sure you have the latest updates for MEP as they have addeded functionality for the 50p footage in recent patches.