My EVE

Well...I checked this : http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/MyEVE_%28Useful_threads%29

But I need to confirm some things with wise men :)

First, here is my setup :

Core i5 2500k
4G RAM (upgrade to 12G in few days)
GTX 560 Ti
Playing EvE on a 22" with 1680 * 1050 resolution

I got Fraps, Adobe Premiere, After Effect, VLC, full Codecs pack installed and a few thing more I don't use..

*My footages are Frapsed full size with 30 FPS.*

I create an Adobe Premiere Project in H.264 with custom profiles because those provided by default seems very low in resolution. I set up something that looks like the more with raw files : 1680 * 1050, 30 FPS, Square Pixels (Am I wrong on that ?). I managed to edit some sequences and I have now to render it...And there goes my problems. I wish to render a high res vids with a nice quality but what is the way I should go for that ?? :s

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=503062 <- Is this thing up to date ?

Any help would be welcome :)

'That thing' is not up to date. Dark Shikari ceased playing some time ago now.

Within that wiki link are links to the wiki and forum post I put together during 2008 containing video tuts, if you can stomach my voice. In there are rendering guides for Premiere Pro and this should help you. There maybe minor differences in the GUI of Premiere since 2008, but the fundamentals are essentially the same in reference to rendering.

Nowadays I'd personally recommend outputting a higher bit rate, purely because most peeps upload to youtube or other online streaming sites. These sites will give the viewer the option of what sort of playback resolution, so the bit rate can go up, or even, upload an uncompressed version of the video.

If you want people to download the file, then you need to worry more about bit rates and playback speed.

H.264 MP4 is my personal favorite right now and yes, square pixels is correct. Just match the video file settings, which I think you're already doing, and then push out ten second sequences when playing with the settings of the render file. Your soon get an indication of what settings are working for you by altering the bit rate and MP4/H.264 settings.

This will also help when calculating the render time, as once you have rendered one ten second chunk of the main footage, the render time can be calculated as:

tens second render time x 6 x video length in minutes = approximate rendering time

The more detailed the render, the longer the render time. Some rendering can have the option of multiple passes, for example.

The lower the resolution you render in, the shorter the render time will be. You could even lower the output resolution to 1440 x 900 (keeping the same ratio) and shrink the size of the footage in Premiere to fit the render resolution - this would reduce render time and not have any noticeable impact on the quality. You could go lower, but I wouldn't recommend going too far and 1440 x 900 is still a good resolution.

You're also in luck. Having an nVidia card speeds up Premiere hugely, but you need to make adjustments to the Adobe program files so it can actually use it. I won't tell you how in this forum, but I'm sure you would be able to find the links if you do a web search.

AK

Alleykat posted a nice overview there.

Personally though, if you have the drive space, I still think it's worth considering leaving the creation of the compressed file to a tool like Staxrip or Handbrake.

In other words, get the final version of the movie in Premiere. Then extract to file: avi / codec : uncompressed / res: 1680x1050 (in your case) / square pixels 1.0 / bit depth: project setting / Fields: Progressive scan / no optimised stills / no recompress data.

This will give you a big fat .avi file, perhaps 100Gb or 200gb or even 500gb for a large video. Most videos would probably be closer the 50-60gb mark though.

Why?

1) Codecs evolve over the years. Your raw will always be the best source. A raw allows you to make a better compression when superior technology is available. It's a bit like the 'Master Tape' used to be in the analogue days of music recording.

2) Programs like Staxrip and Handbrake have many more options than Premiere to make higher quality MKV/MP4s. Battle scenes in Eve involve large amounts of fast drone movement which are unusual visually, and sometimes require some tweaking in compression programs to get best fidelity.


About nVidia and CUDA acceleration, etc. : it's good on paper but I don't recommend it. In theory I should have enormous GPU power available (3x580s in SLI) but in actuality I have often found (small) errors and artifacts on close examination. These are still issues in the Fermi implementation and manifest on Quadro cards also. And even with that setup, it's almost as quick on CPU anyway. Do NOT assume that video encoding is a finite digital metric process that offers many roads to an identical result. If you encode H264 ten times on the same settings you will get ten (slightly) different results.

A 2500k is an excellent CPU and I'd say keep it simple, just encode using tried & trusted CPU rather than nVidia's driver. Don't get me wrong, I throw silly money at nvidia at the slightest opportunity but I wouldn't trust them for accelerating Eve video compression. The YUV/RGB bug is proof of that alone.


Btw, regarding resolution, my 2 cents would be to keep it in 1680x1050 until the bitter end. If Youtube resize it because it falls between 1080 and 720p, then so be it - but you should keep it in native res as long as possible in your file types. Although space scenes scale well, the Eve HUD does not, and it's noticeable on pvp videos more than trailer videos, once it has been resized.


P.S. I notice you say you're getting 12Gb in a few days. Whilst there may be times in making Eve videos that having more than 4Gb is helpful, there's really no reason to push to 12Gb unless you have some other purpose. Presumably you have 2-2 in dual channel, in which case just add 2x2 more, so you have 8gb on 2-2-2-2, which would be a lot cheaper. It's money better spent elsewhere - e.g. on hard drives (especially given the impact the recent floods have had on HDD prices). Having space for more fraps, more master copies, etc. will be more useful for your Eve vids than having more ram. 8GB will be plenty and easy to upgrade to from your present setup.

Oh, totally - but it does make for faster/smoother editing.