Help -- my (post production) video is pixelated.

I shoot video from a Versacopter using an SJ4000 Action Cam (go pro knock off). The video looks great in raw form -- HD quality. However, after I edit it using iMovie and then post it to Facebook or Youtube it is quite pixelated. Even the post-production file that I save to a local drive is pixelated when not viewing over the internet. Do you have any tips or is it just that iMovie sucks? I can't spend money on software at this point. Cheers!
 

aarongerhart

New member
iMovie is definitely not your best bet. I haven't used it too much because of that... but what are your export settings? Make sure your output resolution is at least 720p (1280x720).

If you're looking around for something to edit with, you can get a full demo of Adobe Premiere Pro for a month for free. Adobe puts out industry standard software. If you find that you like it, they have subscription-based plans that start at $10/$20 a month.

Hope you figure it out!
 

Revere

New member
Post a link to one of your vids, I'll view it when I have time and can give you a proper answer.
For now here are a couple of basics for getting a vid without compression or resizing artifacts.

When editing - make sure your project is set to the same size, ratio and FPS as your camera footage.

When exporting - again make sure the output is the same dimensions, FPS and ratio and DON'T export to a compressed format. Export to an uncompressed format like AVI. This will be a pretty huge file but it won't have artifacts.

Use a decent video conversion tool to add compression AFTER export (here you can also resize - but make sure that you resize properly, i.e properly scale the footage don't enter random numbers, if your footage doesn't cleanly scale to the dimensions you want then leave black bars or crop to even it out, don't stretch your footage).

For converters try:

Free - Handbrake, has a "youtube" output setting and its H264 conversion is good.

Cheap - Any Video Converter, again has a "youtube" setting and its H264 output is good.
 
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PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
I have been using VSDC Film editor for over a year now and once I learned how to do conversions I can get crappy FPV dvr footage to post reasonably well. You tube STILL does something weird that degrades it even when uploading H264 video in native resolutions. I found when I use the highest quality MP4 YT does not screw it up as much from what I have on my computer when compared side to side same video.


What you need to do to get file size down is cut the audio from 42khz down to 11khz. That will take a huge amount of bytes off the over all size.
 
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