What codec do I use for QuickTime 10.4 when rendering non-animated video?

[caal66]

I recently digitized some old low-resolution family VHS tapes, edited them in Premiere Pro CC 2018 using a MacBook Pro late 2013 version, and rendered them in Premiere Pro using the H.264 codec with QuickTime 10.4. The rendered videos do not have the same sharpness as the project previews. I tried rendering them in After Effects CC 2018 to get better results, but the H.264 had disappeared. Which codec should I use? For some reason the default setting is "animation." I'm not sure what settings my QuickTime uses; I've been unable to find them. QuickTime is not listed in my system preferences.

[Dave_LaRonde]

Well, QTX pretty much stinks anyway.  QT 7 is lots better.

And you don't need to be in AE -- stick with PP.  AE's NOT going to do a better job with H.264.

[caal66]

So, the older version, QT7, works better than the new one? Is there any other video player available for Mac users like me who want to share rendered videos with family members who have PCs and Apple products? As I understand it, rendering in Premiere Pro using H.264 is as good as it gets.I thought perhaps the "lossless" feature in After Effects might improve the quality.

[Dave_LaRonde]

If you go Lossless, the file sizes are HUGE.  Their bit rates will choke almost every machine, resulting in uneven playback.

You might just want to stay with what you've done already.  I don't think you'll get much better... unless you tweak the bit rate settings in Adobe Media Encoder.  Its H.264 preset will create an mp4 file, which has become a standard media container for this kind of stuff.  You'll need to make & save a new preset for this, which is pretty easy.  But before you do that, just use the existing preset.

[caal66]

So I noticed! When I rendered a one hour video in After Effects using "lossless," the file was 84 GB. The whole point of digitizing the old videos is to share them with children and with grandchildren who have the chance to see relatives long since gone. I just need to have the video looking fairly good and easily accessible.

[Dave_LaRonde]

In which case, I'd look at the H.264 preset in Adobe Media Encoder.

Since VHS is AT BEST standard-definition, the file sizes are pretty compact.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

I suggest you keep two versions of each video. One version should be of high quality, for safe-keeping and the other; optimized for playback today. The high-resolution can be used in the future to re-compress to a format; optimized and compatible for the time. The popular CODECs and containers we have today did not exist 15 years ago. CODECs that were popular 15 years ago are either no longer supported or support may be stopped in the years ahead.

The DnXHD format is good for a high-quality version. Use the H264 format for optimal playback across a wide variety of systems today. Use a Constant Bitrate setting with a bitrate of 10-15MBs for great quality.

[caal66]

Thank you both for your help. I've been restoring old photos and videos as a retirement project, keeping in mind that I would like the next generation or two to see them. I'm discovering that digitizing has its own set of problems with preservation. Our ancestors threw their images in a shoebox, and we still have them today, a little worse for wear. For the video version that is optimal for viewing today, would I choose "High Quality 480p SD, High Quality 480p SD Wide, or Match Source--High Bitrate"? For the DnXHD, which would I choose for 720? It ranges from 23.976 to 59.94?

[Roland Kahlenberg]

How did you digitize the photos and videos? Your output should be 1920x1080 (aka HD1080) but it all depends on the source and in your case, the resolution (pixel dimensions) that you digitized the source imagery.

BTW, there is no difference between AE or PPro when rendering - it all depends on the CODEC and settings you choose.

[caal66]

I digitized them with Elgato Video Capture.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Resolution?

[caal66]

I'm not sure how I can determine resolution. Most of the tapes are from the 80s and 90s. I have the original sleeves they came in, but they just indicate T-120/246 m.

[caal66]

I just found out online how to determine resolution--hit command I when showing the movie in QuickTime. All my unedited digitized videos are MPEG-4, 640X480. My digitized videos edited and rendered in Premiere Pro are H.264, 640X480.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

640x480 is rather small but that seems to be the upper limit for your digitizing card. Since your digitized movies are already in MP4, I suggest you output to MP4/H264 (they are the same thing). The only issue is your bitrate setting and type of compression (variable bitrate or constant bitrate) used. You should get pretty good results using constant bitrate with a bitrate value of 5MBs.

You may also want to see if you can get a professional post-production company to digitize the footage for you at a higher resolution - HD1080 will be preferred.

[caal66]

Is the setting you're talking about under "System Presets--Broadcast" in Media Encoder? Is your suggestion the preset called "High Quality 720p HD"?

[Conrad_C]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Roland+Kahlenberg  wrote

640x480 is rather small but that seems to be the upper limit for your digitizing card...

You may also want to see if you can get a professional post-production company to digitize the footage for you at a higher resolution - HD1080 will be preferred.

Can I ask why you're recommending that the output be 1920 x 1080? I'm wondering because these are VHS tapes we're talking about, and I can't think of why they need to be in a 2K HD 16:9 format. It seems like that would produce unnecessarily large file sizes, with unnecessary black bars on the sides of what I assume to be 4:3 aspect ratio VHS content.

I use the same ElGato digitizer as caal66 does, so I should mention that it is not a card, it's a very simple and affordable device, not much more than a cable with VCR-friendly RCA jacks on one end, a USB connector on the other end, and a digitizer chip in the middle. But it does a decent job of digitizing VHS tapes, and it does produce a 640 x 480 frame size.

I think a safe choice is the YouTube 480p SD preset, because it's the same 4:3 aspect ratio as VHS tapes, with the frame rate based on source (which will be TV standard 29.97 fps if it's coming out of an ElGato Video Capture). The typical bit rate of the ElGato clips is around 1.7 Mb/sec. While a professional facility could certainly do a better job of digitizing, it's not going to produce quality 2K HD content out of VHS. Especially the VHS that came out of consumer cameras and VCRs of the 1980s-1990s.

For my digitized VHS tapes, I created my own preset based on the 4:3 YouTube 480p H.264 preset, but I lowered the target and max bit rates to be closer to what the source is. I did that because consumer VHS is roughly equivalent to just 320 x 240 in the first place, and many of my tapes were unfortunately recorded at lower quality speeds like EP or LP which dropped quality even further from there. That source material is simply not going to come close to the image quality of a true 640 x 480 frame at 8 Mb/sec.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

Digitizing via a composite connection is the source for the biggest quality loss in the entire process; barring poor CODEC selection and a low bitrate setting. A facility may be able to provide Y/C (s-video) or even component signal into the digitization process. There are also hardware upscaling benefits that may be provided by a purposed facility. On the need to go HD1080, I was looking at preserving the footage to what is deemed 'standard' rez today. As you rightly mentioned, there may be negative impact with cutoffs or black bars but these can be put into consideration rather than being used as justification as deal-breakers. 

[Stan Jones]

I just tested 2 options on "old" edited videos: digitally captured (e.g. Sony HandyCam) footage and exported in the same AVI DV format. The relevance here is that it is SD. My current 4K TV uses hardware upscaling, and interlaced or progressive, the footage looks a touch better if I export the mp4's at the "original" size rather than using anything to upscale. AE's detail preserving upscale did a respectable job, but did not seem worth the trouble. After all, these were shot at SD on consumer or prosumer equipment. The big issue was interlaced on computer playback, but the software player (VLC in my tests) had very nice deinterlacing settings. So my current "deliverable" is mp4, using the plain ol' PR/AME format/preset of H.264/Match Source - High Bitrate (which is target 10, max 12, single pass VBR). Yes, this might be improved, but it is close to the "original."

I agree with the comments about archival versions. So far, my archival version is the original edited export in AVI DV PCM. I need to improve this, but it takes it place in a long list.

My father's 16MM film (1940s equipment, films from late 1940s to early 1960s) were steadily deteriorating, and I sent them to a company in California and had them digitized - approximately 2 hours that were still capable of being transferred. The old VHS versions done years ago were not bad (ugly can be endearing in old memories), but the 16MM was capable of about Blu-ray quality. But yes, they are 1920x1080 - with black on left and right to preserve the frame. Still very nice to have. Archival was an issue there, and I settled for 32Mbps mp4s.

[Roland Kahlenberg]

There is no need to use VBR encoding these days unless you're looking for trouble (bitrate spikes that exceed throughput) and optimizing footage for DVD or a fixed-space storage medium. CBR is the way to go - it's faster and is optimized for online delivery while ensuring smooth playback from a drive, with even seemingly optimized encoding settings.

And you can't compare TV upscaling with professional equipment. Anyways, there are options out there - depending on the time and budget available there are good options available.

[caal66]

I had my old 8 mm and super 8 mm films digitized by a local company, but the inside shots turned out very dark. According to the QuickTime information, the digitized films are 720X480 Photo JPEG. I might have them redone. Can you recommend the company who digitized your films?

[Stan Jones]

There are many services. After talking to them, I used Legacy:

https://legacydigital.net/

I would contact them and ask about the results you got.

[caal66]

Thanks very much.

[caal66]

Is the 32Mbps mp4 a custom preset?

[caal66]

Thanks very much for the information. I've just started familiarizing myself with Media Encoder and have a lot to learn. I see how you create a custom preset, but I'm not sure how you change the target and bitrate.

[Conrad_C]

caal66  wrote

I recently digitized some old low-resolution family VHS tapes, edited them in Premiere Pro CC 2018 using a MacBook Pro late 2013 version, and rendered them in Premiere Pro using the H.264 codec with QuickTime 10.4. The rendered videos do not have the same sharpness as the project previews.

(I also have an ElGato Video Capture that I use with Premiere Pro on the Mac) Do the Premiere Pro exports look the same at the same size? Because VHS can look sort of OK when you're editing in the little Program panel, but when the final exported video is viewed full screen, especially on a current TV many times the size of the TVs originally used to view VHS, VHS can look very disappointing.

For example, I would expect that if you played back the previews from the Premiere Pro timeline in full screen (press Ctrl+` ), they should look comparable to the exported video played back full screen.

If that's not the problem, and bitrate is not the problem, you could try this in Premiere: Open the Lumetri Color panel, open the Creative group of options, and increase the Sharpen slider. That might only work up to a certain point, since VHS probably won't withstand much sharpening, but it's something to try.