CPU for video editing

[lakedude]

I am not familiar with this program compared to Vegas.

If you like Vegas better why not just use Vegas?

I used Avidemux because it is free and included in my favorite Linux distro FatDog64. If I had Vegas I would have used Vegas per your request.

 

[Shephard]

If you like Vegas better why not just use Vegas?

I used Avidemux because it is free and included in my favorite Linux distro FatDog64. If I had Vegas I would have used Vegas per your request.

I don't know if using a different program would change the render times. I assume they are all the same.

just wanted to make sure the tests were on the same field, so used same program.

I like avidemux but it seems basic. Not for editing or anything, just cutting clips and rendering.

Vegas is good but I am no expert with it. I was making some gaming videos long ago with it, I got an old version. It's hard to learn.

Maybe there is a better free program out there to edit with it.

Right now I need to learn how to make the best quality before I upload it to youtube.

 

[richierich1212]

Last test for today. Took a 812 MB 30 second clip of Far Cry 2 and converted to a 40 MB 1920 by 1080 MKV in 22 seconds using the SSD on the i7-3770s system.

Free unregistered FRAPS is limiting me to a 30 second clip with a watermark.

Try PlayClaw. I like it better than FRAPS.

 

[Shephard]

Try PlayClaw. I like it better than FRAPS.

Fraps is the best it records raw file. no compression at all.

the only thing I heard that is close is dxtory but it doesn't work with all games.

 

[Piroko]

Ok Video Output > Configure.

I didn't touch these settings before as I said.

Encoding Mode - Constant Rate Factor (Single Pass)
Default Quality - 20

I think you have it backwards because on the slider it says '0' is at the High Quality end. '51' is at the Low Quality end.

Fast First Press - Checked.
Macroblock Tree Rate Control - Checked.
Framerate lookahead - 40
IDC Level - Auto

Yes, shouldn't post so late at night :whiste:
PC games are fairly demanding for codecs, maybe go to a constant quality of 18 and call it a day.

If you're willing to try you could extrect a bit more performance by setting it to 'automated 2-pass', problem with this is that you'll loose the ease of use. Instead of an abstracted quality setting you need to input a target bitrate (or even worse, target size) which can take a while to find the optimum and is dependant on your target resolution. From my own experience a bitrate of 3000 Kbit/s for 720p and 5000 Kbit/s for 1080p could be a good start for pseudo-2d games. I've seen games like Ragnarok Online extract better visuals at as high as 8000 Kbit/s for 720p, but then you're really talking at fairly large file sizes and close to perfect quality (Youtube will reencode it though to a lower bitrate).

Also, take a short look at your audio, you would want to resample it to 128 kbit/s mp3 to make the file smaller. My guess is that Fraps records in PCM which is quite large for an audio track as well.

 

[Shephard]

ok so mkv is a container. basically it means it holds metadata like an id3 tag. it has nothing to do with quality, although the mkv container could be a smaller file size compared to avi. I will do mkv from now on.

tomorrow I will record at 1080p video for quality comparison. I will set quality to 18 in avidemux.

I will also change the audio and see if that affects the file size.

What about recording with fraps @ 60 fps oppose to 30? My video was smooth if you watched it on youtube. 60 fps would be a bigger file size, but maybe even smoother? Your opinion?

 

[lakedude]

According to this:

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

AVI has incomplete H.264 support. Not sure how big of a deal that is.

Anyhow it does sound like you are understanding better. MKV is newer and better and open source but your Sony Vegas program does not work with MKV files near as I can tell.

AVI might not be quite as good but it is compatible with both Vegas and Avidemux...

Choice is yours. Both AVI and MKV seem to work fine with H.264 in spite of the limitations mentioned in the link.

As Piroko mentioned You Tube is just going to lower the quality anyhow so it is somewhat pointless to stress about the quality after a certain level.

 

[Piroko]

ok so mkv is a container. basically it means it holds metadata like an id3 tag. it has nothing to do with quality, although the mkv container could be a smaller file size compared to avi.

Exactly.

What about recording with fraps @ 60 fps oppose to 30? My video was smooth if you watched it on youtube. 60 fps would be a bigger file size, but maybe even smoother? Your opinion?

Hmm 60fps recording can be fairly taxing for your system and I don't think it'll give you that much of a quality improvement over 30fps. Also, not sure if Youtube keeps it at 60fps.

According to this:

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

AVI has incomplete H.264 support. Not sure how big of a deal that is.

Not a big deal. You lose the support for chapters and some players might trip over it. But mkvs aren't problem free either, the container has changed several times in its history with corresponding toothing issues. It's still the preferrable container though.

 

[Shephard]

ok for some reason my post didn't go through.

Neither Tomb Raider or Starcraft 2 wants to be played at 1920x1080. I have done it with many games before. You just have to set it into a window because obviously it would not fit on my 1680x1050 monitor.

I set them to 1080p windowed and they do some wacky resolutions like 1680x988 or 1672x1024 or 1584x972.

I am going to try a different game. I want to compare Starcraft 2 1080p vs 720p but I guess that is not going to happen.

 

[lakedude]

I want to compare ... 1080p vs 720p...

Youtube makes this easy. Go view my video (or any 1080p video) at 1080p and then turn the quality down to 720p and view the same video.

 

[Shephard]

Ok I re-recorded 45 seconds of the same Starcraft 2 clip. I recorded it at native resolution 1680x1050 as I wanted to see if youtoube would rescale it. It did, to 720p, but it looks much worse than an actual 720p recording. The text looks way more compressed.

So be warned... either record at 720p or 1080p (which I cannot).

Now this clip I recorded at 18 quality with avidemux and mkv muxer container.

I also changed the audio from 'copy' to 128kbps mp3. I could honestly not tell much difference and this is someone with a very high quality music library. The audio 'copy' was a bit louder. Not much difference in clarity.

Now file size?

Audio Copy -65.3mb
128kbps mp3 - 57.8mb

that is a big difference there.