Looking for an AVI to h.264/AVC encoder
 

I had given up on youtube as a delivery means a long time ago because of the horrendous recompression. I normally happily encode in Flash (using flixpro8) and stream client videos from my site, or ftp them an swf file.

I've been reassessing the youtube embed option after seeing some very good youtube encoding. I searched the weekend looking for rendering and encoding tricks/tips. I render out of Vegas 8.0 and have tried every tip/trick I could find, and my vids still look horrible on YT. In fact I had better results a year ago when I would convert to divx then upload to YT. I went to divx.com and updated my converter only to get all kinds of error messages 'invalid video stream, 'error 5502'. There was no support whatsoever for their converter. So I tried the AVS converter trial version, only to find their h.264 conversion is for ipods.

So I'm really looking for a reliable, somewhat affordable, relatively easy to use h.264/AVC encoder. I downloaded a trial version of LEAD h.264/AVC converter, but it wants an activation code. I'm not ready to drop $100.00 on it just to try it.

Any help is appreciated.

Try Quicktime Pro, Procoder, Squeeze, or TMPGenc Express.
H.264 via the Sony codec is...well, less than perfect. I believe you can get to the QT H.264 coded within vegas.

Why don't you use the mainstream h.264 included with Vegas? Works great and I use it for most of my stuff. If you wanted to try a different codec, the x.264 codec is excellent and free.

Not sure why you're jumping through all these hoops to get a basic mp4 render.

Another avid tester here, I tried every available transcoder...

Nothing works like MPEG Streamclip! And it will fit your budget perfectly... Take a look at In Contact, it's mp4 running behind the Flash player, bitrate 700Kbps.

I guess I really should have said: How do I get better quality from Youtube.

I've tried many different recommended settings and am still unable to get anything that I would consider reasonable. I just tried Sorenson Squeeze trial version to h.264 using their HQ Youtube preset. The mpg4 version looks great, but when I upload, it looks as crappy as my other so-called HD vids.

Here's a couple of links
Sorenson HQ preset
YouTube - Budget-HD-Render-Test You Tube HQ

1280x760 recommended Vegas Render
YouTube - Budget test - Youtube 1280x720.wmv

Ken,

Please go have a look at this video I uploaded after reading about your issue:

YouTube - RED_Test.mp4

That video originated on RED, was transcoded to 1920x1080, then I took it and rendered it today in Vegas from 1080p to 720p using the Mainconcept mp4 codec at 4Mbps and uploaded it to Youtube.

Are these the kind of results you had in mind?

Perrone,

Yes, that's what I had in mind. Cool vid btw.

I'm away from my edit suite, but I'm going to try to replicate something close to those settings when I get back.

Thanks.