Go Pro HD video conversion
Discussion
Guys, i'm sure that this is often pondered but what's the accepted trade off when converting from H.264 to something more manageable for archive and streaming over the web?
At the moment i have a bunch of vids in native 1080p 12Mbps. Tinkering with different encoders i can either: -
1. downscale to 720p, reduce the bitrate to 5Mbps and it's circa 50% of the original file.
2. downscale to 720p, encode using Xvid at 5Mbps and it's closer to 40% of the original file size.
Quality is almost identical though am concerned with using xvid since it isn't your run of the mill codec. However, is there a tried and tested method of maintaining adequate quality at HD from the Go Pro vids?
Cheers
At the moment i have a bunch of vids in native 1080p 12Mbps. Tinkering with different encoders i can either: -
1. downscale to 720p, reduce the bitrate to 5Mbps and it's circa 50% of the original file.
2. downscale to 720p, encode using Xvid at 5Mbps and it's closer to 40% of the original file size.
Quality is almost identical though am concerned with using xvid since it isn't your run of the mill codec. However, is there a tried and tested method of maintaining adequate quality at HD from the Go Pro vids?
Cheers
I'd certainly downscale the video and reduce bit rate, but can't see any point changing from H.264. It's a fairly common codec these days.
Pick a video size to suit your purpose and then cut the bit rate as much as you dare. I'd store a high-res copy as a source for later transcodes.
Pick a video size to suit your purpose and then cut the bit rate as much as you dare. I'd store a high-res copy as a source for later transcodes.
Yes, Divx/Xvid are quite common, but not as ubiquitous as h.264. I'm thinking mobile devices for one however i would be happy to stand corrected.
I was experimenting with different xvid and h.264 quality settings and noticed that when converting a 2GB MP4 encoded in h.264 at 12Mb, the difference in file size between the two was a mere 100MB. For a comparatively smaller source file, the difference was only several MB's so for the benefit of ensuring compatibility throughout all devices, i stuck with using h.264 but downsampled to 5Mbps instead.
Oddly, i found very minor degradation in quality when i halved the bitrate which, if i understood this correctly, would probably mean that the source didn't need such a high bitrate to start with. The GoPro was set to 1280x960 (4:3) but i will be going widescreen 720p in future.
Just amazed how much space this stuff all takes up. Thanks again.
I was experimenting with different xvid and h.264 quality settings and noticed that when converting a 2GB MP4 encoded in h.264 at 12Mb, the difference in file size between the two was a mere 100MB. For a comparatively smaller source file, the difference was only several MB's so for the benefit of ensuring compatibility throughout all devices, i stuck with using h.264 but downsampled to 5Mbps instead.
Oddly, i found very minor degradation in quality when i halved the bitrate which, if i understood this correctly, would probably mean that the source didn't need such a high bitrate to start with. The GoPro was set to 1280x960 (4:3) but i will be going widescreen 720p in future.
Just amazed how much space this stuff all takes up. Thanks again.
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