VLC from Videolan.org is another great, free option

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

I found this to be worthwhile reading:

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5890/2/test-the-geforce-gtx-960-is-the-best-htpc-gpu-of-this-moment-h265-on-the-gtx-960-innpractice

Eugene

I was not too impressed with VLC handling 4K especially HEVC. And no HA for those formats (at least on the 2 month old version I have). 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Quote: I was not too impressed with VLC handling 4K especially HEVC. And no HA for those formats (at least on the 2 month old version I have).

You're right, VLC doesn't handle 4k HEVC/H.265 very well at all. I have no problems with 4k AVC/H.264 clips, although I only have HD monitors, not 4k.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote: To ynotfish...



Ok...LPCM was a nightmare. My windows media player wouldn't play the sound at all...just the video. Tried H265 and WMP played the audio fine, but the video lagged behind the audio big time. YouTube doesn't support my camera's native XAVC S that I know of (which will be the target for my clips on my YouTube channel). So I compromised a bit on the audio quality and decided on a custom profile that consists of H264 with a MP4 container, 100Mbs video and AAC audio at 384Kbs and 48kHz. It runs just fine in WMP.

I render in H.265 80Mbps from my Samsung NX1 camera clips and I convert to XAVC-S 100Mbps for YouTube. I upload from YouTube those files without problems.

On my pc WMP is the smoothest player for both H.265 and H.264. Perhaps it is because I downloaded the K-Lite codec pack before upgrading to Windows 10. Corsair Vengeance C70, Asus Geforce GTX 1060
Asus Prime Z370-A, Corsair RMx 850, Samsung SSD 960 EVO M.2. Windows 10,
Corsair Vengeance LP 2X16Gb DDR4 RAM,Intel i7-8700K

Quote:

I render in H.265 80Mbps from my Samsung NX1 camera clips and I convert to XAVC-S 100Mbps for YouTube. I upload from YouTube those files without problems.

On my pc WMP is the smoothest player for both H.265 and H.264. Perhaps it is because I downloaded the K-Lite codec pack before upgrading to Windows 10.

First of all... it's great to hear that YouTube accepts XAVC S video and all at 100Mbs! That means I can edit and output in the clip's native format without need for conversion.

As for WMP being the smoothest player for your H264 and H265? Well XAVC S is a H264 codec and WMP plays these native clips from my camera buttery smooth!!

As for H265? My NEW test clip is 10-secs long. It's the same source clip as before, but this time I used PD 14's default 4K UHD 30p (37Mbs) H265 profile instead of customizing it to 100Mbs. Just like the original test...in WMP the sound would end at the 10 second mark like it's supposed to but the video is displaying slower and plays for 15 seconds with obviously the last 5 seconds in total silence.

I took Eugen157's advice ....downloaded and tried Media player classic 64 and at the 3 & 6 second marks of my 10-sec test clip it would pause both video and sound for 2 seconds then play again..... but both video and sound ended at the 10-sec mark like they were supposed to. I tried Daumplayer (never got around to Gom Player) and also tried DivX 10 with their H265 codec installed. BOTH reacted basically the same way as WMP... audio plays for 10-sec, video for 15-secs.

If I play the H265 clip from inside PD 14 (the program that created the file in the first place) BOTH audio and video are in sync and end at 10-sec like they are supposed to.... but there is a ton of dropped frames. So when the camera pans there are clearly jumps without frames in-between that gives it a jutter-like-look. WMP's playback of it looks a bit smoother, but is playing the video for 15-sec/audio for 10-sec..... which means the 30fps video is actually playing at around 20fps.

I went into Sony Vegas 13 and it doesn't support H265 clips in loading OR in rendering. There is a 3rd party hack plug-in that will allow you to work with them but I'm not gonna bother going the unofficial route. I'll wait until official support arrives in a future version or update.

I will say this about H265... it does make pretty small files. The original 100Mbs 4K UHD 10-sec XAVC S clip was 117MB in size and in H265 at 37Mbs ended up at 41MB in size.

So until the support and playback bugs are worked out, I'm gonna leave H265 alone for now and just work in XAVC S for the foreseeable future. The files will just be bigger I guess. I highly doubt the K-Lite codec pack will work for me if all these other programs I tried with their H265 Codecs (including WMP) can't play it back right or smoothly.

Another problem with working with 100Mbs XAVC S files are they are HUGE in size. I recorded a handful of clips of a local train and they total 25GB before I start even editing some of it down. And the final movie of it is still gonna be around 15GB-20GB I'm guessing when I'm done.

My upload speed of my DSL is about 768Kbs and that's gonna take a long time! Even if I use my friend's cable internet with 6Mbs upload speed it's still going to be awhile. I was hoping H265 would help me here but apparently not at this time. I may look into recording my video at 60Mbs to bring down the file sizes and ultimately the upload times to YouTube. Sony FDR-AX100 4K UHD camcorder
Sony ECM-XYST1M Stereo Microphone
Sony VCT-VPR1 Compact Remote Control Tripod
Vello VB-1000 ActionPan Stabilizing Action Grip
PowerDirector 14
Intel i7-4510u w/8GB RAM Nvidia GTX 850M w/4GB

GS kid,
Unfortunately you are seeing first hand that 4K 265 is extremely demanding, before I installed the GTX960 card I was just barely able to play those files, CPU near 100%.

Now the CPU is at 10% or less and it looks like I am playing SD.

On my PC encoding to 4K 265 takes no longer than 264, app twice the playing time. The PQ is surprisingly good at only 35Mb.
Any artifacts generated would really only show in a A/B tests.

In a few month we may see some UHD BR players on the market, so I am content that my pc can handle that format.

It is the combination of PD14 and the GTX960 that makes the smooth and fast en/decoding of 265 possible.

One of the many PD14 bugs is the inability to create Shadow Files when inputting 4K 265 material. It will most likely be fixed in the next download.

This may be of interest if you have NOT read it.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5890/2/test-the-geforce-gtx-960-is-the-best-htpc-gpu-of-this-moment-h265-on-the-gtx-960-innpractice

Eugene

BTW I love trains too, we have a garden train in the back. How can we see some of your videos? 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Eugen157...



I only really wanted H265 to reduce file sizes and hence reduce uploading time to YouTube. Space reduction on disk is only a very minor secondary reason.

YouTube uses Google's in-house developed open/royalty-free VP9 codec for it's 4K video streaming (VP10.. it's successor was just published in August, 2015). My Samsung 4K UHD TV's built-in YouTube app supports VP9 (as do Chromium, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and MS Edge browsers) and the quality looks pretty stunning for streaming video.

Google says VP9 wasn't made to compete with H265 but to simply compliment it...although clearly it seems to be turning out that way considering Google's goal for VP9 was compression efficiency that was higher than H265. It certainly seems to have more support at this time and to be less demanding of hardware at a fairly equal video quality.

Google's YouTube upload format page doesn't list VP9 as supported for upload. I'm assuming they convert it to VP9 once your clip is uploaded in one of the supported formats. Older comments on the net about uploading in VP9 format suggest it doesn't work, but a much newer webpage on the subject seems to suggest YouTube supports it now.

I was wondering because there are programs on the net that will convert to VP9 and if it saves significant space, then hence the shorter upload times I'm seeking.

PD 14 allows uploading directly to YouTube in the Production section of the editor AND has a 4K UHD 3840× 2160 profile to choose from. But since we never see the output file (it gets uploaded directly to YouTube), I have no idea if it's being converted to VP9 on-the-fly (thus saving me upload time compared to uploading the large original XAVC S file) or simply sending an H264 file anyways. I see no indication in the PD 14 specs that it supports VP9 in anyway... be it importing, exporting or uploading.....so I just speculate it's uploaded in H264 and thus saving me little or no time in uploading.

I may try a VP9 converter and test not only the quality of the output but also the file sizes compared to XAVC S. Then I gotta see if YouTube will accept it for upload.

BTW... since H265 appears to be so demanding on hardware, I expect it's adoption to be slow until more mainstream computers can handle it. Gaming PC hardware specs that can handle it aren't the norm.



PS.. I'll PM you a train video of mine..... although it's just in 720p from a point and click camera I brought on my last trip cuz I wanted to travel light on my way to Vegas to see a Skrillex concert at the XS nightclub inside the Wynn Encore casino. I had left my Sony HDR-SR11 1080i HD cam (2008-era) at home and got the FDR-AX100 about a month after the trip. Sony FDR-AX100 4K UHD camcorder
Sony ECM-XYST1M Stereo Microphone
Sony VCT-VPR1 Compact Remote Control Tripod
Vello VB-1000 ActionPan Stabilizing Action Grip
PowerDirector 14
Intel i7-4510u w/8GB RAM Nvidia GTX 850M w/4GB

Gs Kid

I am guessing on this, but it may be not just file size, YouTube has to decode the video it gets and I would not be surprised that the 265 just might take longer than 264. Also the video has to be encoded by UT.

My guess is that YT records the uploaded videos, then uses that recording to produce the various formats.

A better measure than file size might be the time it takes until YouTube has all formats ready for watching.

I have uploaded some 4K videos that could be watched in 320 resolution a few hours after upload but took an other 18hrs to view the 4K version.



I too produce a video first and upload that rather than using the feature in PD14. With PD YouTube you have no idea what quality you have.

My Verizon speed is 50/50

Since you like trains as I do, here is a video of a special photo excursion on the Durango to Silverton RR taken in 2008.
Camera was the first available HD camera that came out in 2005 Sony HC1. It took 9 more years for Sony to have a 4K camcorder. Then the HC1 cost was about the same.

If you are looking for great RR shoots, Durango has it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bEpbyLqBo

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Eugen157...

I looked for a VP9 encoder on the net and almost all of them are for Adobe Premiere. But I noticed trusty ol' Super © converter supports it. I've used it for years and totally forgot it does VP9. Problem is...it only outputs up to 1080 res for the VP9 format. But I tried it out anyways to compare it to H265. The program would only allow me a max video bitrate of about 9.8Mbs for this format. It would not allow me to use two higher bitrate options for some odd reason.

The VP9 output file was unplayable in WMP and PD 14 would only play the sound...so I played it in Super ©. Looked pretty decent, but since it's not 4K....I have no use for it. Outputting the same clip in PD at 1080 res with H265 at the same exact settings as the VP9 file produced a file about 500KB smaller. So even less reason to use VP9.

But it proved your point.... H265 is too demanding of my hardware at 4K res cuz my laptop plays H265 at 1080 with no problems at all. I even dropped the H265 4K output down to 20Mbs and it still had issues.

So that's that. I'll stick to XAVC and live with the long upload times. Since I won't be making train videos that often, it won't be as big of an issue. Quality over quantity!

Thanks for HDR-HC1 footage. I'll share the link on a train sim forum I get on cuz you got some good shots. You can tell it's from an older camera. It's a little softer and less sharp than today's higher pixel 1080 cam sensors. The colors aren't quite up to par of today's output and are slightly washed out at times. That scene at the end where the train comes by on that long curve..... the exposure of the sunlit area in the background is massively blown out! Wow...LOL! I'm guessing it had so-so AE or limited options for ME?

BTW.... what's the max bitrate on that cam? Sony FDR-AX100 4K UHD camcorder
Sony ECM-XYST1M Stereo Microphone
Sony VCT-VPR1 Compact Remote Control Tripod
Vello VB-1000 ActionPan Stabilizing Action Grip
PowerDirector 14
Intel i7-4510u w/8GB RAM Nvidia GTX 850M w/4GB

SD in those days had about 330 000 pixels, most camcorders had less. I already had a flat screen HD TV, so to coin a cliche, the video was stunning.
The HC1 had about 1.5 000 000 pixels in theory, in practice most likely less. Bit rate 25Mb on a DV tape cassette.
Transferring to the computer was an ordeal, suffered in real time!
The camera was known for its poor dynamic range and replaced a year later with the HC3, that one was cheaper and had better video.

The list price of the HC1 was $1999.00 same as the AX100 when first available.

I think sticking with XAVC is a good choice, then you can use SVRT to maintain picture quality until YouTube murders it.


SVRT and shadow files were the reasons for me to change to Cyberlink PD. Although rarely use SVRT, because one in perhaps 30 scenes typically gets butchered for some reason.

Should get my new memory cards from B+H today or tomorrow, from then on it will be 100Mb.

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A