trouble finding right h.264 formula for particular website upload

Hi. I'm new to Compressor but learning fast.

I have a 3-minute teaser that I need to upload to a "crowdfunding" website called kickstarter.com. The site recommends using an h.264 codec, with acceptable file types MOV, MPEG, AVT, MP4, 3GP, WMV, FLV, video file size limit 200 MB. They also suggest starting with a bit rate of 1500 and adjusting from there.

My sequence is HDV edited natively (1080i60). FCP7, on a Xeon quad core. Moving people, moving camera...nothing is locked down, ever.

So I began my adventure with a droplet for HD going to Vimeo. Settings as follows:
Video Settings: compression type h.264, frame rate current, key frames every 30, frame reordering checked, compressor quality high, encoding best quality multipass, date rate restrict to 5000kbits, optimized for download.
Audio: AAC, stereo, 44.1 ,render quality normal, target bit rate 128 (no problems here, audio comes out great)
Frame Controls: On, resize filter better, output fields progressive, deinterlace Better, with adaptive details checked, anti-alias all the way to the left, details level all the way to the left, rate conversion fast, duration 100% of source
Geometry: Crop to Custom (all zeros), 1280x1070, pixel aspect default for size

So, the only tweaks I did were upping the date rate to 7000, and adding a gamma correction of 1.2. My sequence took less than 20 minutes to compress and looked pretty good for the purpose at hand on my end. File size 161 mb. Uploaded to youtube (minus the gamma correction, which I hadn't discovered yet), where it also looks pretty good (for youtube, especially at 720p) here's that link in case it helps you help me:







But when I upload the same file to kickstarter it looks crummy. Whatever happens on their end is degrading the file considerably. I can't show you that version cause I haven't launched my page yet. But I'd say it just looks "lossy"--not steppy in the motion, but more just noisy and having trouble settling on which pixels, in areas of subtle change, like flesh tones on faces.

I've tried several more uploads with files created with different adjustments. I made one to their size specs (560x420), with data rate on automatic, some brightness and contrast tweaks (again before discovering gamma) and put the letterbox in myself using padding (learned a lot!). Looked really crisp and fantastic on my end but still crummy after upload.

Tried putting in more key frames (15). Looked a bit odd so didn't upload. Tried one with date rate up to 8000 and all resizing and retiming controls set to their maximum best (guessing the retiming probably was moot since frame rate was set to current). This increased my encode time up to many hours, with file size still within their limit (183 mb). Looked not noticably better on my end, and same if not worse after upload.

I'm beginning to wonder if I should be doing something counter-intuitive like decreasing data rate, or trying 1-pass constant bit rate.

The people at the website are looking into it, but no answers yet. All the other videos I've seen on the site look quite good.

With apologies for the novel length of this post, but I wanted to put out all the info I could in hopes of getting help.

many thanks,
Robin

Sorry folks, my link to the reference video on you tube was wrong. here's the correct url:

Tests are good. However, why the weird frame sizes? You should be using either 640x360, or 1280x720 (720p), or heck, even 1920x1080 (1080p), although not everyone has a 1080 computer monitor. The flash player will scale the video down when you play it from within the box, but it will look better when you play it full screen.

Unless kickstarter is recompressing the videos, you should have bitrate set to somewhere around 2 Mb/s. This is because not everyone has extremely speedy internet connection, and you want the video to stream. Keyframes, set it to auto.



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks for the reply strypes. You're right, I meant 1280x720, I just typed it wrong. (and you're the only one who bothered to tell me!!!!) As for the other weird frame size, 560x420, that's the size kickstarter resizes to. I thought maybe If I gave it to them already at their size, the recompression they're doing might be less noticeable. Not so.

I think that's the bottom line, that they are recompressing on their end and I have no control over that. I've tried everything under the sun, uploaded various gorgeous compressed files from here, all with the same disappointing result.

I've stayed toward the higher end of their allowable upload file size (200mb), thinking the better looking the file was that I uploaded, the better would be the result, the old garbage in/garbage out maxim. But even with the deinterlace quality set to the highest w/ motion compensation, (cause we do have a very motion-heavy sequence), data rate automatic and frame rate automatic, my beautiful uploaded file gets quite lossy on their site.

I was unable to get any info out of them about what kind of recompression they are doing.
I have come to the conclusion that I have to get over it (it's been two weeks of Obsessive Compressive Disorder), and save the worrying for situations where I do have more control.

Didn't you mention that other files on that website actually look okay? If so, then it seems to me there's some kind of miscommunication going on. You should ask the website what format other users are producing. Because recompression does result in loss of quality, but all users should encounter that.

And I've also had bizarre, illogical results when uploading files for Flash recompression. I've tried uploading 900MB files to YouTube versus the 80-120MB files I usually use (same running time -- three to five minutes per video file), and have actually gotten worse results with bigger files, against all logic, on occasion. Not just stuttery motion (which would be expected of a larger file), but sharpness. I haven't figured out the reasoning behind that one yet.


www.derekmok.com

Yup, Derek, I did indeed say other videos looked really good, but I haven't seen anything nearly as "busy" as ours...we're never locked down and our subjects are always moving against busy outdoor backgrounds as well. But that's interesting what you say about the larger files, 'cause that's what I meant about doing something counter-intuitive...like maybe creating something closer to 100mb rather than 200mb.

As I said above, kickstarter recommended h.264, which I used. In the end, I wound up using suggested settings from Ken Stone's very clear and helpful article: "Compressor H.264 movies from FCP for the Web." Just tweaked gamma and sharpness a little, and changed to the max quality setting for the deinterlacing because of such constant motion in the shots.

I also had direct communication with the maker of one of the other videos on kickstarter, who said he just uploaded the same file he used for vimeo. We discussed all the particulars. Nothing out of the ordinary. And it was even a vimeo droplet that I used to create the file I put on youtube, which I'm quite satisfied with.

Go figure. I wonder if there's anything to the smaller file idea. It does go against logic.

I think that's the bottom line, that they are recompressing on their end and I have no control over that. I've tried everything under the sun, uploaded various gorgeous compressed files from here, all with the same disappointing result.

I've stayed toward the higher end of their allowable upload file size (200mb), thinking the better looking the file was that I uploaded, the better would be the result, the old garbage in/garbage out maxim. But even with the deinterlace quality set to the highest w/ motion compensation, (cause we do have a very motion-heavy sequence), data rate automatic and frame rate automatic, my beautiful uploaded file gets quite lossy on their site.

The preset you want for H.264 web video is called ?iPhone & iPod Touch?, ... Once I find a good explanation of them, I'll link it here and incorporate them into the .... The benefit of going to all this trouble is that the browser will check the type attribute first to see if it can play a particular video file.

Hmmm...interesting. I look forward to reading your further explanation of this. In the meantime, I can now provide the link to the way the video looks on kickstarter, since I launched the page yesterday.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/31470369/escaramuza-riding-from-the-heart-a-feature-documen?pos=1