Looking for some advice on converting fraps videos to youtube HD

[Natural]

I've been mucking around a bit with some Modern Warfare 2 fraps recordings, trying to see what kind of quality I can get out of youtube, but the results have been a little disappointing. I'm recording at 1280x720 60fps and my system handles it fine, the fraps videos look lossless, and even my x264 or xvid encodes look good, but youtube just isn't doing a great job with them.

For my encodes I've tried using MeGUI and virtualdubMOD. With MeGUI I've gone with unrestricted 2 pass HQ, but I've had some trouble getting youtube to even accept the files. It seems that if I don't convert to 30fps/44.1 audio, I'll usually get a rejection. If I do the conversion, I can put the bitrate as high as I want, but the youtube quality looks about the same as a lesser encode. Here's an example with those MeGUI settings at an average bitrate of 27500.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN5rcLvTPDk

I know youtube's encoder has its own cap for video data, but I'm seeing much better quality videos already on the site. Is it just a case of capture cards being that much superior to fraps, or are there some settings or programs I should be trying for better results? Any tips appreciated. Thanks.

[mariush]

I've used 25fps and one of the DXVA profiles and had no issues.

[Natural]

I guess a more specific question would be, what's the best way to convert from my 60fps source to 30fps. My end result of simply ChangeFPS(30) is a choppy video. Is there another avisynth command to smooth the transition?

[poisondeathray]

selecteven() or selectodd()

[opaliya]

What kind of youtube videos should I make that involve only still images? I've just started making youtube videos, and I'm finding it to be pretty fun. But right now, I can only make videos that have still images in them, like a slideshow. So I was just wondering what kind of videos I should make next. Any ideas?
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[Die*wrek*show]

Here's an idea, you could find some interview footage where someone is being interviewed and then put pictures as relevant to the subjects they are disussing.

Not the greatest idea, but the problem with youtube videos is now that cameras are so cheap it's hard to do something that hasn't already been done.

[Dark Shikari]

Here's an idea, you could find some interview footage where someone is being interviewed and then put pictures as relevant to the subjects they are disussing.

Not the greatest idea, but the problem with youtube videos is now that cameras are so cheap it's hard to do something that hasn't already been done.If you didn't notice, the poster above is a spambot.

[Die*wrek*show]

Oops. I don't pay much attention to sig's.

WEll to answer the OP, who I hope is not also a spambot, the reason it looks choppy when you use changefps is because it just throws away half your frames. So in a scene with high action is poses a tricky problem. I would say try motion compensated framerate conversion but, going evenly from 60 to 30.... I don't know if it's appropriate. I mean going evenly from 60 to 30 changefps decimates every other, and that's correct I assume.

I downloaded your video to check it with gspot and even though it's ~50MB it don't look that great. Game footage like that with text and little details like it has, seem like the resize step might be really important. Because that stuff don't look like it would compress well.

One strategy to make your youtube videos look better, might be to hand them a video that's almost exactly what the final .flv will be, so to lessen the quality hit when their auto-encoder hits it.

[Die*wrek*show]

If you do find a good way to get down to say, 32-33 fps you could always assumefps(30) to slow the action down a little. I doubt it would be too noticeable, those game videos always go by in a blur.

[Natural]

Oops. I don't pay much attention to sig's.

WEll to answer the OP, who I hope is not also a spambot, the reason it looks choppy when you use changefps is because it just throws away half your frames. So in a scene with high action is poses a tricky problem. I would say try motion compensated framerate conversion but, going evenly from 60 to 30.... I don't know if it's appropriate. I mean going evenly from 60 to 30 changefps decimates every other, and that's correct I assume.

I downloaded your video to check it with gspot and even though it's ~50MB it don't look that great. Game footage like that with text and little details like it has, seem like the resize step might be really important. Because that stuff don't look like it would compress well.

One strategy to make your youtube videos look better, might be to hand them a video that's almost exactly what the final .flv will be, so to lessen the quality hit when their auto-encoder hits it.

Thanks for the reply. Can you recommend any avisynth code for this? Changefps hasn't been effective. I've tried Convertfps, but I'm a little unsure of how the zone value effects the video. Some tests seem to be generating better results, but I'm still hoping to do better. Also, can you elaborate on the resize step? I would like the final video to remain 1280x720 in order to be picked up under youtube's 720p option. I would also prefer to avoid altering the video's actual speed.

[Die*wrek*show]

This is the non motion comp'd way to do it. Easier, faster, but motion comp/blurring may be more appropriate. Hopefully somebody will speak up about that. I'd gladly paste my motion comp script but I can't access those scripts, that computer is down atm.

*whatever*source("path-to-fraps-video")
changefps(45) #knock the framerate down to 45fps, by dropping frames. I figure an even 3 to 4 ratio is good.
convertfps(31) #go further, using frame blending. this step drops some frames too.
assumefps(30000,1001) #Slow down to ntsc_video as discussed below.

Far as the modes for convertfps, as you can see from the documentation "Switch Mode is probably only suitable if the output will be shown on a TV," so I would say blending sounds better. Which unless you specify, it uses by default. The only caveat, the max you can go down at once is about 66.67%(of original fps). As you see, 45fps down to 31fps works because that's a 68.9% change. Now you say you don't want to slow down video motion, your youtube vid shows 29.97fps framerate in gspot. They probably cap fps at ntsc_video rate(30000,1001). I can't confirm, but I would guess they just slow it down. To slow it down from 31, you're just doing 1fps over what youtube will automatically do anyway. You can always adjust the script if u want.

Far as bitrate and other stuffs, make the same basic type of .mp4 but try 3600kbps as video bitrate. Maybe if you lower it, you'll find that point where they barely touch your video. Your hq22 vid was ~2700kbps, to give an idea.

Audio, I'd rather not guess. Haven't tested how and what youtube does.

If you want 720p, forget about resize.

Finally, you could try adding this

temporalsoften(1,2,3,25,2)

line up there^ underneath assumefps to see if it looks better.

[Natural]

Thanks for the tips. I'll definitely run some tests. I'd been trying Convertfps, but like you mentioned it's in switch mode due to the 50% drop. It still seems better than using just changefps, but I'll give the combination a shot and see what happens.

I've had success with audio of 44.1khz, with any bitrate. It seems that if the framerate is 30 and the audio is 44.1, the youtube encoder will accept whatever bitrate you want, provided the file is under 2GB. I found that when uploading a 60fps video with 48khz audio the converter would fail if the file sizes were large at all.