How to get the best quality with image sequences?

[ClosedCloset]

now this is something ive been putting off for a while, but whenever i render as an image sequence and turn it into a video, it looks pretty bad. ive tried vdub and hitfilm express, tried compression, still no luck.
anyways i would really appreciate some help.

[Capt Fuzzy]

Well, everyone has preferences to certain formats, but in my experience, I get the best looking renders by exporting my image sequences as .png files.
I then import them into Adobe Premiere and export the complete video as a 1080p HD .mp4.

The trick here is that I try to keep the same resolution all the way through the process, this keeps from having degradation in the quality due to upconverting lower resolutions to higher ones. You don't want to take something that is 800x600 and try to ramp it up to 1080p, it's gonna look terrible. So I render my image sequences in 1080p as well.

In video production it's kind of a well-known rule, you can always go down from a higher resolution, but you never want to go up from a lower resolution...

[ClosedCloset]

yeah i render them as png. i dont really think its the program or anything thats causing the bad quality, i think its something im doing wrong rendering it

[Capt Fuzzy]

Originally posted by ClosedCloset:

yeah i render them as png. i dont really think its the program or anything thats causing the bad quality, i think its something im doing wrong rendering it

I just edited a bit of explanation, sorry

[Marco Skoll]

The first question is what export settings you're using, both in SFM and in the video editor.

(This includes things like SFM's sample settings - but bear in mind the overrides in the video export panel don't work, you need to use either the element viewer or the preview window's settings.).

[ClosedCloset]

@marco both motion and deph of field are 128, and i render with 720p most of the time
with vdub i render it as an uncompressed avi
no idea what the hitfilm settings are

@capt i dont ever ramp it up

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by ClosedCloset:

@marco both motion and deph of field are 128, and i render with 720p most of the time

128 samples is probably overkill for most video renders.

64 samples is actually respectable in most cases even for still images - it might have slight flaws under really close scrutiny, but at 24 fps or more, no one will notice. A lot of the time, even 32 samples is good enough.

That's not going to be what's causing a quality issue though, it just means you're spending twice as long rendering as you really need to.

with vdub i render it as an uncompressed avi

Uncompressed AVIs don't play very smoothly on a lot of hardware - the data rate is too high.
If "pretty bad" means a choppy frame rate, that might be the problem.

If it doesn't... well, you need to tell us what it does mean.

[Capt Fuzzy]

Yeah, I was also going to suggest not rendering in .avi...
I find .mp4 will play well on just about any device and most video sites, such as YouTube and Twitch even suggest it as an acceptable format for easy uploading and conversion to their delivery system...

[ClosedCloset]

the visual quality is the bad part. frame rate is fine but for 720p the quality is pretty bad. also i only started rendering in 128 like a week ago. before that it was 64
and with hitfilm i rendered in mp4, still no luck

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by ClosedCloset:

the visual quality is the bad part.

Well, the next question is what the quality is like in the raw image sequence.

[Capt Fuzzy]

Originally posted by ClosedCloset:

the visual quality is the bad part. frame rate is fine but for 720p the quality is pretty bad. also i only started rendering in 128 like a week ago. before that it was 64
and with hitfilm i rendered in mp4, still no luck

Sounds to me like something is wrong between what SFM is exporting and what your video editing software is exporting. I'd say there's something off with the settings in hitfilm, but I'm not familiar with how that program works, so your guess is as good as mine in that regard...
I do know, with Premiere, you have to set everything everytime you make a new project. I'm sure there is probably a way to make my favorite settings the default, but this gives me more control from project to project, so I never bothered...

[ClosedCloset]

yeah raw quality is good. im gonna be looking for different programs to combine the image sequences

[Marco Skoll]

Originally posted by ClosedCloset:

yeah raw quality is good. im gonna be looking for different programs to combine the image sequences

It's going to be your settings rather than the program.

I've used VirtualDub many times for image sequences and timelapses with no quality issues.

I can't really show the video, as places like YouTube re-compress to really poor bit rates, but here's a frame that's been re-extracted from a video that was assembled in Virtual Dub:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=765081871

[ClosedCloset]

im gonna reset vdubs settings and redo them, see if theres any luck. ty for the help