Overman's Moviestorm Render Workflow

[Overman]

Here is the workflow I used to get from Moviestorm render to finished product on the ad absurdum series, and am very pleased with the results.

1) Render out of Moviestorm at Ultra / 1280x720.

2) Extract audio tracks from these Moviestorm files. (see this thread)

3) Edit in Sony Vegas. I turn OFF the motion blur on every video track, which helps keep the image clean. Complete all post production (incl. soundtrack) using that and other tools as needed.

4) Render out of Sony Vegas as 800x450 (16:9) uncompressed AVI, uncompressed PCM audio. 1.0 Pixel Aspect Ratio; Field Order: None (Progressive). Highest Quality settings wherever indicated. Default keyframe settings. 25 fps.


Then, the versions:
A) DivX AVI - I feed the uncompressed 800x450 avi into the DivX Converter, and render out at that same resolution / framerate, keeping default settings except that I up the audio ceiling to 128kbps. This yields a significant improvement in audio quality vs. the default settings.

Working Example of A: (link)

QuickTime - I open the uncompressed 800x450 avi in QuickTime Pro, and render out a .mov at that same resolution / framerate using H.264 codec, AAC 44.1kHz audio, readied for Fast Internet Streaming.

Working Example of B: (download)

C) Flash - for Blip.tv and for my own website; I open the uncompressed 800x450 avi in QuickTime Pro, and render out a .flv (Flash Video) 720x405 (16:9) / 25fps file using the Flix Exporter plugin; 700-800kbps overall bitrate with 160kbps of that used by audio. The reason I use a smaller resolution here is purely practical; it fits better on my web page.

Working Example of C: (link)

D) QuickTime for Moviestorm Website - Same settings as B above (QuickTime), except I render at a custom resolution of 426x240. (For some reason, when I'd render out at the recommended 427 pixels wide, I noticed a one-pixel-wide green line at the right side of my video image; perhaps a rounding issue? So I did 426x240 and it went away.

Working Example of D: (link - you'll have to download it until the viewer issues are resolved)

E) For YouTube - Same settings as A above (DivX), except I change the resolution to 320x180. Note that YouTube states that it wants 320x240, but if you upload 320x180, it will automatically pad the video with letterbox so it works out fine.

Working Example of E: (link)

For me, the significant part of the equation is that I always create that intermediary uncompressed avi (at the highest needed resolution) before I go creating my distribution renders. In my experience, when I've tried to force the various other resolutions within Vegas, alignment issues with video layers can arise, and it just doesn't seem to resize at very good quality. QuickTime Pro and the DivX Converter seem to be very good at resizing without much degradation in quality, so I let those tools do that job. I don't do WMV files anymore, but if I did I'd follow the same principle: let Windows Media Encoder handle the resizing (if any).

I'm very interested to hear from others who are happy with their video quality, what are you doing to achieve it?

[zuckerman]

Overman! You are a prince among men. This is incredibly helpful. Thank you so much for this tutorial.

[johnnie]

I second that - this is an incredibly helpful and well-written post. Hope you don't mind if I sticky the thread, so we can all easily bask in the machinima-greatness that is Overman 8) .

[Overman]

Ah, I'm far from having achieved machinima greatness. But I'm happy to help however I can. Sticky away!

[Fulkster]

Darned helpful! Thanks!

[johnnie]

Ah, I'm far from having achieved machinima greatness.

Don't make me put this to a vote, Phil :-) If I say you're great, then you're great. I have admin privs on this forum. My word is law.

[Toriel]

Excellent work! This is very very helpful.

Thanks

[davidwww]

Thanks overman your a legend, this is really a great help I have my video sizes all over the place, now I can bring them under control.

Regards
Davidwww

P.S. I spent a lot of time watching the movies on your site last night and my favorite is Male Restroom Etiquette, I was killing myself laughing, if any of you have not watched it yet, especially the male members of MS, its a must.

[gishzida]

Thanks *** VERY MUCH *** for this!

It completely answers the question I tried to ask before about video formats.

I'm looking at a quad-core system.

What kind of render times are you getting from your system?

joel

[RiViT]

Is it possible to output a Moviestorm animation file that's 29.97 or 30 fps? Or is it just PAL? If it is just PAL, is there a plan to create an NTSC version down the road?

This isn't really noticeable for short projects, but it may become important later to North American projects with a longer running time.

[Overman]

What kind of render times are you getting from your system?

Great question, I haven't yet timed it. I've got some renders I'll be doing tomorrow, I'll plan on clocking them and get back to you.

Is it possible to output a Moviestorm animation file that's 29.97 or 30 fps? Or is it just PAL? If it is just PAL, is there a plan to create an NTSC version down the road?

In its current state, it only outputs 25fps (PAL), but a new render system is coming before too long and I am 99% certain it will include not only NTSC framerates but support for other codecs as well.

[gishzida]

I finally have a rough draft of my music video but I got problems... not that one... this one: I just tried to save uncompressed and quickly exceeded 4 Gb of space and the Vegas render failed. So tell me what am I doing wrong here?

[EDIT]

One other question: In your workflow you say you open the avi in QTPro and render it for QT... Why? You can render QT in Vegas if QTP is installed. Is there a render time difference doing it in QTP vs. Vegas?

[/EDIT]

[Overman]

1) 4GB filx size limit. This is a limitation of hard drives formatted as FAT16 or FAT32. In order to be able to exceed this size, you need to write to a disk drive formatted as NTFS. Windows should have a way to convert the drive without losing data, though a backup beforehand is never a bad idea.

2) QTPro out of Vegas. I don't know if there's a render time difference, it just fits better with my workflow to do one render out of Vegas and let other programs do phase 2. I've noticed odd anomalies when switching render sizes / etc. in Vegas, so I prefer to get one MASTER (the uncompressed .avi) out of Vegas, then I am ensured that all subsequent renders are coming from exactly the same source.

[RiViT]

In its current state, it only outputs 25fps (PAL), but a new render system is coming before too long and I am 99% certain it will include not only NTSC framerates but support for other codecs as well.

That would be very good news. Thanks.

[gishzida]

1) 4GB filx size limit. This is a limitation of hard drives formatted as FAT16 or FAT32. In order to be able to exceed this size, you need to write to a disk drive formatted as NTFS. Windows should have a way to convert the drive without losing data, though a backup beforehand is never a bad idea.

What kind of uncompressed files sizes are you getting?

[EDIT]
One other thing I'm not sure that using uncompressed video actually helps any as the source video is not uncompressed.

I looked at the properties of one of the output files from one of the scenes I created:

Frame Rate: 25FPS
Data Rate: 1575kbps
24 bit
MS-MPEG4 V2 [FFDS] compression.

I'm not to video savvy but what I learned in 'the MP3 era' was the less you messed with compressing / decompressing an audio file the less likely you were to create audio "artifacts" which did not exist in the master WAV audio file.

Since MovieStorm gives is a compressed output the best that can be hoped for is to create the "master cut / edit" of the files in the same format as noted above. I think this would be less likely to give you "odd' results... then from this master cut create all of the separate variants

[/EDIT]

[Overman]

The uncompressed files are huge, and it's not uncommon to go above that 4gb mark; NTFS is definitely required if you're going to go there. Was covered in another thread here, I believe.

I am already aware that, in its current state, Moviestorm does not spit out uncompressed video. I prefer to work with an uncompressed master, however, because I can have full PCM wav quality in the soundtrack, and because it recompresses faster when it's time to make the "versions". (I never use Moviestorm's audio output for anything other than a reference guide).

If you have your master compressed, then every subsequent render you perform will first decompress that codec and then recompress to the other. So if you're starting with compressed source footage, there will always be at least ONE decompress step and ONE recompress step. Even if you have Vegas handle it all, those steps are still going on, it is unavoidable. I just prefer to separate them because it fits better for my workflow, but it's precisely the same number of decompress/recompress steps.

You don't HAVE to have a master, it's just what I prefer to do, because I end up rendering to a lot of different formats for a lot of different purposes. If you don't need one, then don't do one, just render straight out of your NLE, it really just comes down to preference, not one or the other being a superior method.

[Overman]

What kind of render times are you getting from your system?

Great question, I haven't yet timed it. I've got some renders I'll be doing tomorrow, I'll plan on clocking them and get back to you.

Okay, just got finished timing one.

1280x720. Full-sized outdoor set, lots of props (houses, trees / bushes, cars, some furniture, etc.), three characters, multiple cameras, some moving some still, about 10 distinct shots.

2232 frames rendered in 4 minutes 20 seconds. So about 8-9 frames per second on average.

[gishzida]

Okay, just got finished timing one.

1280x720. Full-sized outdoor set, lots of props (houses, trees / bushes, cars, some furniture, etc.), three characters, multiple cameras, some moving some still, about 10 distinct shots.

2232 frames rendered in 4 minutes 20 seconds. So about 8-9 frames per second on average.

Yikes! that's about 8 times faster than my P4 2.6 gHz... where the average scene was about the same 2000 to 2200 frames.

On the topic of Compress decompress:

I'm using a wav audio master [PCM 44.1 khz] mastered in Sound Forge which was rendered originally in Acid Pro [for music] for the sound tracks but given that the fastest rate for video is a compressed a 1.5 mbps stream with MovieStorm, there is no real advantage to creating an uncompressed video render.

This isn't analog audio where "oversampling" can make a difference. Efffectively all you end up doing is creating a really big file that contains a lot of extra frames that do not add to the video quality.

Given that 176.4 KBytes / second is the actual sampling rate for 44.1 khz 16 bit audio [about 10.1 Mb per minute] and the frame rate for for MS's MPEG output is 196 Kbytes / second you should lose no audio when you edit and render back to the same format... or if you are concerened about the audio being compressed add the sample sizes together [372 Kbps-- call it 22 or so Mb a minute] and the file size is actually much more manageable....

The video / audio output ultimately be only as good as the slowest rate used in all the files used.

[Overman]

...but given that the fastest rate for video is a compressed a 1.5 mbps stream with MovieStorm, there is no real advantage to creating an uncompressed video render.

The sole advantage for me, while Moviestorm's source is still compressed, is the speed of dealing with an uncompressed file when generating multiple versions. It is in some cases slightly faster, in others ridiculously faster. Experiment for yourself, you will see.

Once Moviestorm offers uncompressed source video, the advantages multiply. For now, the speed is enough reason for me; once I took spatial considerations out of the equation, my limited time became my most precious commodity. So it's worth a little "wasted" disk space, which comes a lot cheaper than time lately.

[gishzida]

Eeep!

The problem I'm dealing with is that it's a P4 system and the "large Drive" is a 500 gB external USB device formatted to FAT32... I'd move the contents elsewhere and format it NTFS but I don't have enough space available to move everything,,, As it is I just had to Clone my main drive from an 80 gB drive to a 120 gB drive...

As for render times:

As you may have seen I've put up a rough cut of my first "music video". Not a grand affair by any means. Using it, the PAL DV 720 x 576 25 Frame rate [9050 frames] [1.441 Mbps stream] uncompressed audio, took about 22 minutes about 6.8 frames a second.

The updated version, a 640 x 480 QT MPEG4 mov file [15 Frame] took about 20 minutes from the same Vegas project file -- I rendered it out of the project file as a "new master"....

BTW thanks for the reminder why extracting audio from the raw MS AVIs is required. I had not done it in the first render and it was pretty obvious the spoken words and the audio track where not where they needed to be... though it might be used to pretty funny effect if one were "simulating" a Hong Kong Action film.

joel