HD MP4 files: very jerky pan/zoom?

[CreativeIndulgence]

Hi all.

Again - many thanks for this latest version.

Another item I'm seeing, and wondering what I may be doing wrong (or if anyone else is seeing this).

I have a presentation with a number of slides that have nice slow buttery-smooth pans and/or zooms.

When I use create a HD version, (using the any of the pres-set settings), the resulting MP4 plays back very very jerky; nothing like what we see in P2E or the resulting .EXE files.

The higher the resolution in a HD version, the more the jerkiness is pronounced.

I've uploaded an abbreviated version of the slideshow to a secure server so you can download this safely and see what I'm talking about:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...OOW50TWxMWEE9PQ

Would love to know if there's a way to get smoooothhhhh output...

Thanks!

[Igor]

Did you try to play this file in Media Player Classic Home Cinema?

http://www.wnsoft.com/soft/other/setup_mpc.exe

[CreativeIndulgence]

Hi Igor -

Actually I haven't. The MP4s are then uploaded manually to YouTube as that's the final target. What's happening there - the same jerkiness shows when playing on YouTube HD as it does on my local machine (hi end PC, using Apple software to watch).

I also have Windows media player, v11, but it doesn't have the codecs for MP4s.

Since I am seeing the same behavior on both the local machine and on YouTube (both Firefox and IE7), it didn't seem necessary to look for other local machine players.

Suggestions - greatly welcomed!

Thanks!

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jerry,

I downloaded and played your MP4. It runs smoothly on my system except for a slight jerky horizontal pan to the boat.

First try these players. Download and install:

http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Kantaris_Media_Player

If this fails to give you smoother play, please go to your "Start" "Run" and type dxdiag then click on O.K.

When the diagnostic runs, please click on the "Display" tab and report back the model of your video card, amount of video RAM, etc.

I can look it up for you and see if your card may not have enough clout to run large h.264 mp4's smoothly. Some cards will run the executable without problem yet have jerky movement on the h.264.

Vimeo simply can't play back a smooth HD video with any animation. Youtube can, but if you upload at above 720p your card may not be up to playing back smoothly. We are having a discussion about this very issue here:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9355

Best regards,

Lin

[CreativeIndulgence]

Hi Lin -

Thank you so much for your continued support!

First, the video card I have is

NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS, with 256mb

Second, here's a link to the YouTube video (what you saw was a quick 'n dirty chop-up of the real thing)

I'd love to find out if this animates smoothly when viewing with the HD option turned on. For us, it's also stilted like what we're seeing on the local machine. Then again - if it's a limitation of the video card, that puts my mind at ease actually.

I'll look at the other info you provided, but wanted to get an immediate reply to you now...

Again - Thanks!

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jerry,

I just watched it on my 8800GT card and it's smooth "except" for the pan which pretty jerky at the start then smooths out about half way to the boat. It's much more jerky than the MP4 was.

Usually the 8600 GT card is quite good, but the 256 meg video RAM may be a bit short for these big h.264's. Fortunately I also have a system up right now with an 8600 GT with 512 meg so I'm going to watch it with that one and see if there is any relevant difference.

..................

Just watched it on the 8600 GT and again other than the pan it's pretty good. The zooms are smooth but the pan is jerky - not good at all.

Let's try an experiment and see how much influence the 256 versus 512 video RAM makes. I just put up a 1600x1200 which has no pans or zooms but has multiple large PNG layers creating falling snow. If you could look at it and tell me if the snow falls smoothly, maybe we can determine how much of this is due to the card's capability and how much is due to the amount of RAM. Youtube is "very" slow right now on my system so you may need to wait an extended time for buffering. I would start the show in full screen HD then hit pause and let the gas gage go at least three inches to the right or so before beginning. If the snow fall is jerky on your system then the probability is that you need more video RAM. Something like an 8800GT with 512 meg RAM will do it, but you need a minimum of 450w power supply and at least two 4 pin molex connectors free or one 8 pin connector because the 8800 GT, unlike the 8600 GT has to have external power.

Here's the link - maybe we can figure this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP09_-nwNG4

Best regards,

Lin

[CreativeIndulgence]

Hi Lin -

Interesting animation...

In HD on YouTube, both the falling snow as well as the very slow zoom in are very smooth. I'm not sure what that tells me though.

I'm not a hardware dude (unless it's DSLRs) so the discussion on various video cards and modes isn't that enlightening I'm afraid.

You're spot on that it's the card, however. I had just finished paving and reinstalling Windows on our hi-end laptop. On that machine, the HD mode for our YouTube video looked great. It doesn't have any other players installed on it (we have to keep it very lean), so I'll probably not be able to see how the MP4 looks. Then again - guess I don't need to...

I'm curious about one other thing - and that's you have a 1600x1200 video. What were the other settings you selected when creating this? In particular, "mode" and "fps". If I increase the quality more, is that something YouTube will reflect (realizing it's a much longer upload time of course).

Again - thanks for your help.

PS - hope you enjoyed our presentation - the travel in Alaska was beyond incredible!

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jerry,

The reason I wanted to check the snowfall animation was to try to determine how much of the issue is video RAM versus video card GPU performance. The snowfall doesn't require a great deal of video RAM but does require a decent video card GPU to get smooth results. That you have jerky movement on your Youtube playback with the same card then tells me that the probability is that the video card just doesn't have sufficient RAM to handle the MP4 h.264 or Flash conversion smoothly.

The fact that your hi-end laptop is much better is a good indication that your connection, etc., are probably fine and that it's primarily the video card on the other system which is the culprit. I think there is little we can do about the jerky movement on horizontal pans. This seems to be an issue regardless of the quality and resources of one's hardware. I've got some pretty powerful hardware systems and no matter what I use, horizontal pans just are not that good in either Youtube, Vimeo or on my systems with MP4's. I suggest just trying to avoid them for now. Perhaps sometime in the future they will catch up with the executable quality but not quite there yet.

I used "Custom" mode with the horizontal set to 1600 and vertical to 1200 with 60p (60 frames per second) and quality 100. This is single pass encoding and probably is about as good as double pass for Youtube since the Flash conversion will downgrade the MP4 anyway. For home use and for burning to Bluray, etc., I would suggest the double pass and 1000 bitrate. The single pass 100 quality is 600 bitrate as far as I can determine so not "quite" as good in terms of image quality, but still very good for web presentation.

I don't think Youtube will get it much better than the above settings, but I'm still experimenting so not absolutely certain of that. The reason I suggested that Igor implement (he did) the 1600x1200 custom mode as an option versus 1080p and 720p is that unless you have a Nikon D90 or Canon 5D Mark II, the probability is that as photographers we will generally get more utility from a 4:3 or 3:2 aspect ratio than from having to crop our images to fit the video 16:9 mode. I hate having to cherry pick my own images to find ones amenable to cropping and I don't have a video camera with 16:9 either. It seems a shame to waste even part of the full sensor resolution on a good dSLR even if one of mine could shoot in 16:9.

I really enjoyed your show. I spent a good deal of time in Alaska in earlier years, did my winter survival training with 5th Special Forces there back in the 60's, and always love to see the country. Never tire of it.

Best regards,

Lin

[nobeefstu]

Just some information to pass along in my reading about playing back h.264 content

I believe the core video drivers supplied with the various GPU card makers provide the key to the processing capabilities for the decoding and playback of video. GPU cards and models are supplied with varying video core driver capabilites.

ATI uses ATI Avivo and ATI Avivo HD processing technolgy.

Begin here:

http://ati.amd.com/technology/Avivo/index.html

NVIDIA uses PureVideo and PureVideo HD processing technolgy.

Begin here:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_purevideo.html

About some players and their limtations:

http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/mp4...back_page1.html