Codec H264 on a PC
 

Can i create quicktimes with h264 codec in a PC?
can i do it with vegas video?

Thanks!

Miguel -

I am struggling with this right now. From what I can tell, there is no direct output to h.264. The Sony Vegas forums seem to confirm this at sonymedia.com

My current theory is to output uncompressed .avi and export it to h.264 from within the QT7 player (choose Export...)

"Yes" to both questions. You need Quicktime 7.0 and Sony Vegas 6.0c. Quicktime H.264 Tutorial.

Which is great - except QT7 consistently blows up with a buffer overflow error every time I select "Export..." SD or HDV.

Frustrating.

Does it do that with 7.04?

yep - latest and greatest. 7.04 QT and vegas 6.0c. If I open an uncompressed HDV out and choose export, it just crashes... no warning or anything

Does this thread help?

That's great - thanks for the lead. I don't know, but I will give it a whirl in Sorenson and report back the results.

I would say the QT Pro 7 (7.04 at least) on PC crashes consistently when trying to export anything (buffer overrun).

And yet another thread points to this application... http://www.alfanet.it/squared5/streamclipwindows.html

Results report: Sorenson 4.3 does the trick. I earlier assumed h.264 would be under Quicktime and actually say "H.264", but as pointed out elsewhere you need to use the settings of MPEG4/AVC. They are all there!

So the workflow for creating h.264 from PC for me is:

Import HDV footage into vegas using CineForm intermediate
edit/grade
export as uncompressed
open in Sorenson Squeeze
Squeeze using MPEG4/AVC1080i (or whatever format I want)


Thanks - I hope this helps someone else in a similar predicament

Brian: have you tried comparing the results you get that way with H.264 to what you can get by encoding directly to Windows Media with a similar bit rate? If so, what specific differences do you notice between these two options in terms of video image quality?

If anyone is interested I can try that out and let you know the results

Brian: please do, and while you're at it let us know how long each approach takes (from start to finish) to output a minute of your typical edited video.

I got the sorenson trial and some HDV footage from the HD100 and sorenson does a pretty good job. Unfortunately I was looking for h.264 in a quicktime mov container, but the sorenson encodes some nice h.264 in an mp4 container so I shouldn't complain.

I just wanted to do a raw hdv encode, so i used mpegtohdtv to convert the m2t files to mpg, loaded up in sorenson squeeze 4.3 trial and fired it off on some encodes.

It's great for exporting to several formats. I used cleaner before but I like sorenson squeeze now and think its a great program.

For HD I found that h.264 looked really good and so did wmv, but at similar bitrate I think h.264 looked shaper but it also changed the colours, it made it more vibrant and seemed to increase the contrast while wmv seemed to keep the colours much more accurately. It might just be it stretching the NTSC white and black to computer white and black but it still seems to be changing the colour. Anyone else have this problem? I think I'm going to try and do some more footage to recreate this problem.

if you are serious about creating h.264, you need to check out the nero encoder... it does a really good job.

wmv vs. h.264... can you create vbr footage with the h.264 encoders? it can make a big difference in quality and file size... h.264 will take more computing horsepower to play, so it won't be as compatible as wmv, on slower computers.

if you look at the nero encoder settings, there is a "quicktime compatability" setting, that apparently disables bidirectional prediction, in order for the clip to play back well with the qt player... at least i think that's the reason.

so you could be trading off quality over compatibility with h.264, because the qt player may not be able to handle the full h.264 standard.

Here's another vote for the Nero encoder. It works all the way up to HD resolutions and the quality is top notch.

What container format does the nero encoder output in for h.264, quicktime mov, mp4, or old avi?

I realized I actually have the nero suite and just tried to use nero recode to make a h.264. It came out as an .mp4 which is alright but it resized my video for no apparent reason to something like 1156 wide instead of 1280 wide like it should have been, did the same for height but don't remember the new one.

You just need to play with the GUI a bit more. There are a couple of templates with pre-set sizes, but you aren't limited to them. I'm sure it will do exactly what you need it to do, and the process is easy once you figure out their mindset.

If you don't have version 7 yet, the upgrade price is quite reasonable and IMO it's worth it. It will now convert a file directly from either a clip or directly from a DVD for instance.
This is really cool combined with Slysoft's AnyDVD, a program which removes annoying things like copy protection, zones, and promos before the movie (if you choose that option). With AnyDVD installed, you can make an mp4 directly from any DVD (just for your own personal backup of course)! It works well with NLE output files as well. I have used it successfully with both M2T files and Cineform codec avis.