-- Introduction --

It seems that a number of Vimeo users are confused about aspect ratios and how to eliminate jaggies, so I put together this tutorial for you. With this guide, you will be able to export a clip from any miniDV camera in DVD high quality, that will get the "HD treatment" here on Vimeo, without your footage having to be HD. Here's a sample of the quality you will get from your miniDV PAL/NTSC non-HD camera if you export the right way for Vimeo: vimeo.com/411905

Please note however, that this "high quality" re-encoding for non-HD footage feature might disappear from Vimeo in the future (your existing videos should be unaffected if that's the case though). [[UPDATE: As of March 14 2008, this feature is removed by Vimeo -- bummer]]. Regardless, that's the correct way of exporting widescreen miniDV footage for the web/devices in full quality, so it's good to know anyway.

-- Method --

1. Make sure you set up your camera to shoot in widescreen. The "high quality" re-encoding at Vimeo is only possible for widescreen miniDV footage.

2. Import your footage to your PC with the video editor of your choice. You can now choose to either edit the footage, or just use a single unedited scene in which case go to step #3. If you choose to edit the footage first, make sure you export from your video editor in .avi DV widescreen interlaced mode, so quality loss remains minimal. Most video editors support exporting back to the same DV codec, and if not, use another intermediate lossless codec to export. Do not export in a lossy codec, make sure it's DV AVI or an intermediate lossless one (e.g. Huffyuv).

3. Download and install the freeware & open source Handbrake utility: handbrake.fr/?article=download

4. Then, load your file to convert on Handbrake, and make everything look like this: eugenia.gnomefiles.org/images/handbrake.png (use 872x480 resolution, 2500 kbps bitrate, the rest as in the screenshot)

4a. *IF* your camera is a PAL 16:9 camera, you can try exporting in 1280x720 at around 5000 kbps bitrate instead of the 872x480, 2500kbps suggestions above. But that's only if you shot in widescreen PAL. Resizing to 720p an NTSC widescreen or a PAL/NTSC 4:3 signal is not a good idea.

5. That's it, after a while (depending on the speed of your PC), you will have an .mp4 file, ready to be uploaded to Vimeo. When it's up, it should have the "HD treatment" and look all fabulous.

-- Some important notes --

* This kind of export will create DVD-quality files that are playable as-is on the XBoX360 and Sony PS3! It should be playable on the AppleTV too, but I don't have one to test.

* If you are proficient in using your video editor's exporting dialogs with similar settings we used here, then there's no reason to use Handbrake. However, most people can't do that, which why I wrote this tutorial, using a single utility for all cases. If you feel adventurous though, or if you are using a Mac, you can follow my other, HD, tutorials here vimeo.com/forums/topic:3671 and follow them exactly, except for 2-3 changes you will have to make to reflect your non-HD source footage: 872x480 size instead of 1280x720, 2.5 mbps instead of 5mbps of bitrate, and the right frame rate each time (29.97 for NTSC, 25 for PAL).

* I suggested the same exporting resolution (872x480) for both PAL and NTSC miniDV footage. In reality, widescreen PAL can go up to 1048x576, but that's quite some over-stretching over the original 720x576 recorded frame size and so a resize down to 872x480 can be beneficial in terms of quality.

* For those who are confused why we don't export at 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576 (PAL), it's because in order to get widescreen in these resolutions, you have to set the "16:9 flag" in the internal format of these videos. Problem is, Vimeo and many other players usually don't respect these flags, and so your videos come out as 4:3. In order to go around this limitation, we export in aspect ratio 1.0000 (instead of 1.2121 for NTSC and 1.4568 for PAL), and so the 872x480 resolution is based on that aspect ratio. It's ok if you don't understand what I am talking about here, just trust the results.

* If you do not own a widescreen DV camera, in order to export with the right 4:3 aspect ratio you need to do the following: export at 768x576 for PAL, or at 656x480 for NTSC (at around 2000 mbps instead of 2500 shown in the Handbrake screenshot). You won't get the HD treatment at these 4:3 resolutions, but these are the right aspect ratio 1.000 resolutions you should be exporting for web usage from 4:3 miniDV.

super helpful

i did it but the aspect was super stretched out, i did everything according to the tutorial. also it is very choppy, can you tell me why? i already have deinterlace on

vimeo.com/658827

thanks!

DV AVI (NTSC)
is the format? that i uploaded the vid from my gs65 to the comp

then its in avi then i drpped the file into the super and it gave me an mp4

yea i made sure everything is exactly the same.
why is it that the fps has to be set at 29.9? why not more? is it a vimeo thingy

when i convert it to 16:9 in su per, it just looks stretched, and im guessing itll be even more stretched on vimeo, or the same, which is not what i want.

ok now i cant even upload to super

i upgraded to vista today, got vegass pro 8 and i edited a little clip

i saved it as the "Video for Windows (*.avi)" and the template is NTSC DV

according to super, if it runs in wmp, it should be able to convert!

i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff274/kurtrawr/supererror.jpg

i get that error when i try to convert it

I was a little disappointed with the vimeo "HD treatment" on a couple of my PAL mpeg-2 videos converted and uploaded as 25 fps 848x480 3000 kbps .avi's (Xvid) - some fast moving shots were very choppy.

So I tried converting one of the scenes to 24 fps Xvid with VirtualDubMod (same frame size and bit rate) and on the resulting .flv movement is much smoother.

Hello Eugenia, I was wondering if you could help me out.
I uploaded a movie exported from Adobe Premiere. Since it is a 16:9 instead of widing resolution I decided to lower height in order to have square pixel with smaller file size.
The problem is that I export video in 720x405 and Vimeo turns it to 720x406 which will put a black line at the bottom. If I try to export video from Premiere with that settings Premiere will put black lines. My 720x405 is clean...Why is vimeo messing my dimensions? thanks!

vimeo.com/719586

Hello,

I've got the same problem as Luke, my deinterlace box is locked for some reason, resulting in my video being interlaced, resulting in jaggy edges.

So, is there going to be a fix for this?

Sorry guys, the "HD treatment" for non-720p video was removed by Vimeo a few days ago.

ah crap.

It was good while it lasted.
I made a channel called BIG-SD just to see the difference of the upsized SD vs stretched standard.
vimeo.com/bigsd
I really needed to have the same clips, but still the stretched is terrible. It's like youtube on steroids.

What if you're not using wide screen?

Yep, but if the 4:3 is of a high quality then vertical black bars on each side (sorry I mistakenly said Horizontal before) would be OK.

Might be worth making a short "slide show" video with some 1600X1200 photos at 1280x720 and see how it turns out.

thanks for your excellent help and guidance!!!!

So, if the SOURCE VIDEO is mini DV: 720x576 / Par 1.4568 / Pal Dv / 25fps /interlaced / Lower field first

- PROYECT PROPERTIES: 720x576 / Par 1.4568 / Pal Dv / 25fps /interpolate fields / Lower field first / best rendering quality ?

- EXPORT: 880x 480 (or 1048 x 576) /Par 1.000 /25 fps / deinterlace / progressive scan / bit rate ~4.000 kbps ?

Thanks! Great guide, works like a charm.

Hi, thanks for reccommending SUPER! So, I copied your settings fine, which does the job grand, except on one particular segment of my movie which does not appear deinterlaced.

The orginal avi file plays the full video perfectly, but it seems that SUPER will not deinterlace this one section. I'm referring to my latest video during the night vision section: vimeo.com/1022863

If you have the chance to suggest anything to me it will be greatly appreciated.

HI Eugenia. (excuse my lenguage)
Your tutorials are incredibles! Awesome!
I´m from Argentina, and now i´m encoding from DVpal to HD with the program you recomend: SUPER. Excelent!
Now i want to know if with "SUPER" can i encode an HDV video (1080 x 1440, 50i, of Sony Z1) to HD for vimeo. And how?
Because i´ve Windows, so with PREMIERE it make me a TOO HEAVY video (i read you tutorial for this.)
I think this program SUPER is better and easyer for encode than Premiere media encoder.
Can you help me to do this with the SUPER?
Thanks a lot! You are great!

OH...if you speak spanish, so much better! jaja
Saludos!
Tomás
Buenos Aires, Argentina

hi, i have one question...

880x480 gives an aspect ratio of 1.833:1, whereas 16:9 should give 1.7778.

If i multiply 480 by 1.7778, i get about 853... so shouldn't the size be around that, not 880?

i have NTSC, and my project settings are 720x480 with 1.2 pixel ratio interpretation (I use a crappy sony DVD camcorder so i have to demux it, convert the ac3 to mp3, then link it again in premiere pro).

how come the horizontal resolution is 880?

Deinterlaced is greyed out when i want to encode a 25fps 16:9 dv file.

Thats why i want to deinterlace it. It wont work. I am using an external deinterlacer now. Decomb or Leakkerndeint (avinsynth)

I have now uploaded a mini dv video as avi (encoded with super) to get the 'HD treatment'. It is uploaded. But when i try to play with 'HD on' it says "sorry this video no longer exists'. When i set 'HD off' it plays. What is going on here?

Okay. Email is sent to main admin. :)

heres the super download link: erightsoft.org/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe

what a pain to find!

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for the tutorial, I've just uploaded the first part of a 2-hour long show, and the quality is just superb! Thanks!

PS: PAL Widescreen DVD > Vimeo, used 640x360 with 816kbps bitrate. Didn't notice any difference in quality if I go higher.

I just uploaded a video ( vimeo.com/1491501 ) encoded according to your fine tutorial, but considering the 880*480 file I uploaded, I was very disappointed with what vimeo deemed "enough".
Even though I would be smudging the original, and since it now seems the only way to be processed as HD, wouldn't it provide a better viewing experience if I blew up the movie to 1280*720?
Or maybe, for the sake of how well you view it online, and considering vimeo no longer takes advantage of this 880*480 size, shrinking it anyway, I should just forget about this 880*480 size and stick with a fine tuned 640*360 (assuming this is the resolution vimeo uses in standard full screen)?.

What do you think?

Eugenia, I just wanted to say thanks! I kept trying to get a right setting on Adobe premiere, and finally found this tutorial. It exceeded my expectations for a smooth video and was able to get vimeo to recognize a video as HD! Thanks a ton!!!

vimeo.com/1781008

No matter what I do, my 16:9 PAL video comes streched. Tryed export on 880x480; 880x480 fit to scale; 880x480 letterbox and nothing, the result is the same.

And it's the second time I finish my upload limit uploading video to check the result. Do you have any extra tip?

Thanks,
dieego.

Thanks for your reply, Eugenia.
Well, making more and more tests I discovered what the problem was. While exporting it was exporting as 680x480 with display size as 880x480. I guess it was uploading as 680x480 instead of 880. Problem fixed. Thanks for your reply. Very nice of you.

Best,
Dieego.

Hello Eugenia. Thank you for spending your time helping people like me (complete noobs)! I followed your instructions above (png) and the mp4 I created from Super appears to be fine when I view it on my pc. However when I upload it to vimeo it has these awful scan lines during any motion (aspect ratio looks fine). The only difference is that I'm using the Super build.33.

vimeo.com/2055064

Can you or anyone else tell me what I've done wrong? Thanks!
(miniDV SD widescreen)

Thanks for the tutorial. I followed the steps and produced my first widescreen HQ video - vimeo.com/2157940 . However, the quality seems to have deteroriated compared to my original DV-AVI video (187 MB). Moreover, interlacing is quite obvious with the horizontal lines showing up often (they did not show up on my original one). In the Other Encode options in Super, The Deinterlace to Progressive is checked but I can't change the options, since they are all greyed out.

Tried replacing the following video - vimeo.com/2184192 - with an MP4 version using SUPER. However, it does not display in HD. Please help.

Hi everybody,
just want to ask why 880x440 is recommended for PAL 16:9.
Joseph Choi asked it in this thread 5 months ago but I don't really understand why 864 and 880 are recommended?
The closest number to 440*16:9=853 which devides by 16 is 848; So I would use 848x480.
If somebody want to have less then 3 pixels stretch in Y direction, you can resize to 848x478 and padd 1 pixel below and above. For me it seems to be the most correct way for PAL 16:9.
Am I wrong?

Hello Eugenia, I have Mac and I can´t use Super. Can you tell me if there is another way to get the "HD look" from minidv footage? Thank you very much!

Ok, and which settings are the best for vimeo? My videos are 25 frames/sec, most of them in 4.3 ratio. I tried with all kind of presets for web in Compressor, but when I watch the videos in my computer seems all ok, while on vimeo the quality is very bad. Thank you for helping me!

I created the following videos (source DV AVI 720x480) - vimeo.com/2184192, vimeo.com/2261551,
using VirtualDub with the following parameters -
1. Resize filter - 1280X720, Precise bicubic(A=-0.75)
2. Compression - H264/AVC with 2 passes, target bitrate of 3024 and max ref frames of 5.
The first one has come out great but the 2nd one seems to skip frames during the fast motion parts (for example, 2:30-3:00 timeframe). Any suggestions?

Thank you so much!

Thanks for the tips!

Forgive my ignorance, but I was wondering how any of these settings might change if I'm trying to compress a 75 min. film that's about 14.5 gb uncompressed into a 1 gb file? Or two 500 mb files?

Awesome tutorial. Hope I can make this work.

Tutorial is updated, it now uses the Handbrake utility instead of SUPER. The author of SUPER is much more donkey-minded than I am, and doesn't believe that there's a new bug on his app where de-interlacing simply doesn't always take place when exporting in MP4 h.264. So I left SUPER behind, for Handbrake.

Hello Eugenia,
I have a Gl2 that says it can record in widescreen, but i have heard it actually does not and just chops off what is not in wide screen. what are your thoughts?
And what do you think is better?
Quicktime conversion or Handbreak?

i think i'm doing this wrong...
i've tried to encode my video twice using handbrake, but there's no video file in my documents after the program finishes encoding. the initial video played fine on every video program on my computer, but when uploaded the picture speeds up but the audio is normal (i've determined this is a frame-rate issue but i have no way of fixing it; i was hoping encoding it might work)

ideas?

People with deinterlacing issues. Just feed the source first through avisynth.

install:

free-codecs.com/download/AviSynth.htm
free-codecs.com/download/Helix_YUV_Codecs.htm

download these plugins:

neuron2.net/decomb/decombnew.html

avisynth.org.ru/yadif/yadif.html

Use this script:

#Loadplugin("decomb.dll")
Loadcplugin("yadif.dll")
avifilesource("your.avi",pixel_type="YV12",fourcc="dvsd")
#Fielddeinterlace(blend=false)
Yadif(mode=1)

for some sources i prefer fielddeinterlace (= decomb filter) but for most others yadif. Make sure to fix the correct path, watch the C in loadCplugin for yadif, note the # which disables the code, and copy/paste this in an nameyour.avs file.

If you do everything right you can open this in super or any other encoder and encode your footage as a nice progressive file. I have been doing this for years and started doing with super when i found out the build in deinterlacer does not work.

Hello Eugenia, I've read extensively through this thread and also through this one: vimeo.com/forums/topic:3671 but still can't find a solution.

I have a vid of the following settings: DVCPRO50 - PAL, 720 x 576 (1024 x 576).

I've exported various versions, with a bitrate varying from 3000 to 5000 kbps, yet the quality turns out to be really poor on Vimeo.

My latest compression attempt was: H.264, 1048 x 576, 5384.82 kbits/s. I followed your suggestion above to export these dimensions.

Could you let me know if I'm missing anything?

thank you

Thanks Eugenia, good to know about vimeo's bitrate, I'll definitely upscale it for hd.

regarding your second answer, the vid before the two "test" files was actually my first test, which was 1024x576, the following two were at 880x480.

Blip.tv lets you upload your own flv which doesn't get recompressed, that's not an option with vimeo, am I right?

Thanks again.

@Eugenia Loli-Queru

Ok, i didn't see you updated the guide.
I like how handbrake is using my quad core in full effect. Encoding speed is very fast. I am encoding almost realtime. (22 fps)

I would suggest to use 2 pass encoding though. It shouldn't hurt and in the best case it gives a (small) quality boost. Unless the program is buggy when doing VBR encodes.

The comment related to conversion to .avi format. There is two .avi formats represented .avi and .avi(DV). If you made capture with the conversion into .avi and did not pay attention to the prompt of those two options so your editing software stocks and not responding.

I just tried this for 4:3 SD clip that I made a Animation QT file from Avid and then dd the handbreak with recomended SD 4:3 settings and my video clip was grey and the audio was in slow mo. The clip is 30 sec. but after making the mpg4 it was 50 sec. What could be wrong?

Thanks a lot for this great tutorial! I have successfully converted a 720x480 (non-square pixel?) mpg file following your recommendations. A couple of questions:

1. The bit rate of the original file is 9.54M. Would I get a better resolution with the uploaded video if I use a higher bit rate (than 2500K)? If yes, what bit rate do you recommend?

2. Why do you recommend 872x480, which is not exactly 16:9? Can I use 853x480 or 720x405? If yes, which is better?

Thanks for the quick reply! I used a Sony DVD camcorder (HDR-UX20) and recorded the video in DVD HQ format (i.e., 720x480 @ 9M). Is its aspect ratio same as Mini DV's?

wow - that worked really well.
i've been needing some good compression settings for a while now.
thanks!

Hi Eugenia, I found this sticky thread like you suggested.

Sorry for not being able to unravel this myself.

In the final paragraph of your tutorial above, I see you say if one shoots without a widescreen DV camera, (like mine which is a DVX100B), then I need to export at 656 x 480 in order to achieve a 4:3 aspect ratio.

I tried this and uploaded to Vimeo as a second test, but I can't see any difference between the one I originally exported at 640 x 480 and this second test.

In both cases, the image is squashed vertically. Shouldn't the horizontal number be less than 640 so the image will "grow" vertically?

By the by, I'm using Adobe Premiere Elements.

Tanks!

Thanks for your lightning fast response! I'll get on this asap.

Hi again Eugenia,
Well, thanks to you my 4:3 aspect ratio is fine.

I uploaded two versions and both have a lot of lines, however....

On the first, I unchecked "allow interlaced processing." On the second text, I checked it. They both look about the same to me...

Any ideas on how to get this beat?

I'm using Adobe Premiere Elements.

Thanks as always!

Thanks and sorry!
I'm trying to figure out which way is up!

I just mentioned Abode PE since I thought it might have something to do with the "jaggies." I'll learn about handbrake.
Thanks again.

Hi Eugenia,
My uploaded video has always had jitters or skips. The original file looks great when downloaded from Vimeo. My camera is a Panasonic HDC-SD1 using AVCHD. I've used mpeg4 standard HD setting at 1280x720 and have also tried Divx, WMV using standard HD settings. Any suggestions?
Gary