RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pics)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

I'll second Termhn on this. You want to render in H.264. If we were to try and play the 50GB file, it wouldn't play at all.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

I'll second @Termhn on this. You want to render in H.264. If we were to try and play the 50GB file, it wouldn't play at all.
Well, technically it would play since youtube will compress it using their own voodoo algorithms once it's uploaded (processing time after upload) but you will loose any gain in quality you get for exporting to lossless. If we tried top lay the 50 gig file raw without compression then it wouldn't play, but youtube prevents that both for that reason as well as the fact that with the amount of video being uploaded they need to save as much space as possible.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

That's what I meant, playing the raw file. I've had times when I rendered in lossless forgetting to switch my settings and have issues playing even the smaller files. I've never uploaded anything to youtube so I'm very unfamiliar with their uploading and encoding process, but I would imagine the file's quality would suffer tremendously, even at 1920p. I can't even imagine how long it took to render a 35 minute video at 1920p with a lossless format xD.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

That's what I meant, playing the raw file. I've had times when I rendered in lossless forgetting to switch my settings and have issues playing even the smaller files. I've never uploaded anything to youtube so I'm very unfamiliar with their uploading and encoding process, but I would imagine the file's quality would suffer tremendously, even at 1920p. I can't even imagine how long it took to render a 35 minute video at 1920p with a lossless format xD.
1080p* :p Yeah, on my old mac I can barely play 1080p video even when it's compressed (nothing against Mac's, that faithful old Mini is still running and it's from 2004 I think). On my new computer I'm limited by the speed of my hard drive, it buffers at 1080p uncompressed while it caches, but once it's cached I can play ridiculous resolution smoothly.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

It takes 32 minutes to export 1920p at 29.97fps with 5.1 surround sound using Apple ProRes 422 HQ codec. This is the first video I've ever made and my first time uploading a video to YouTube, so I didn't know what settings to use. I appreciate the recommendations. I knew I wanted 1080p HD, and early on it was recommended to me that the video file be configured at 1920p. I'm able to play the HD raw file from my Thunderbolt drive without any issues and just assumed YouTube would take care of the necessary "magic" to compress the video for streaming. (The raw file is 328 GB, and that's with most of the media as external links.) But upload time is ridiculous. After 2 hours it's still only 1% done. I found the H.264 export option in Final Cut Pro and will export the movie again using that codec to see if that helps. Since the project is set up for 1920 x 1080 I don't think I'll be able to change that without messing things up. The export doesn't let me change the output resolution. I was hoping to have it uploaded today.

Exporting with H.264 took 19 minutes and file size is now 4.26 GB. I'll preview it to see how it looks and if it's acceptable I'll start the upload again. Thanks!

Update: Video is uploading and time to upload is now estimated at only 800 minutes. That's not bad compared to 10K minutes originally. The video should be ready viewing by tomorrow. :)
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

-snip-
Exporting with H.264 took 19 minutes and file size is now 4.26 GB. I'll preview it to see how it looks and if it's acceptable I'll start the upload again. Thanks!

Update: Video is uploading and time to upload is now estimated at only 800 minutes. That's not bad compared to 10K minutes originally. The video should be ready viewing by tomorrow. :)
That sounds more like it. ProRes isn't lossless like I originally thought (323 gigs what?!) but it is one of the highest quality "lossy" (relative term) codecs out there. More info about codecs, if you want:
ProRes is an editing format. If you are archiving a finished project, you can create an extremely high quality "print" with H.264. ProRes 422 will use approximately three times as much memory. ProRes 422(HQ) roughly four times and ProRes 4444 up to 10 times (compared to the size of the file FCPX will export as H.264).

FCPX exports (shares) H.264 in highest quality (over 45Mbits/sec [if needed] for 1080p), you have no options to adjust for smaller files (or lesser quality from FCPX.)

To get "as small as possible," you'll need to learn more about compressing video. As a comparison (to FCPX), YouTube limits a maximum bandwidth of 8Mbps (used to be 5Mbps -- I *still* compress to 5Mbps before uploading.) Even compressed this highly, H.264 provides excellent results. [Compressing in ProRes is going from 4444 down to 422 Proxy (not to be confused with proxy media used in FCPX which is 1/4 resolution, i.e. 960x540 for 1080, ProRes 422.) You cannot compress each of the different ProRes flavors individually.]

You'll need other software to compress further than FCPX. I use Quicktime 7 Pro. Compressor is another way to go (Compressor will let you set "compression markers" so you can vary the bitrates through various sections of your work). The way to figure out your compression level is to find a section (less than a minute) with the highest motion high contrast (and/or changing gradients) and export at different bitrates. Watch for "jpeg artifacts" (blocking) and once you've gotten past that, that's the bitrate you should compress to. (I've had some clips that required at least 20Mbps.) It just takes a little practice to get a feel for it.
Looking forward to seeing the video.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

That's a lot of good information - thanks! (Hey, you should maybe make a tutorial on sending videos to YouTube!) I didn't mess with any bitrate settings and just went with the defaults for H.264. I'm up to 12% uploaded at the moment, and the math works out to it being done tomorrow morning. If the uploaded video plays properly, then I'll change it from private to public and inflict it upon you all (hehehe...)

Yep, 328 GB, and that's without all the media (and there's a lot of media in this project). Nearly every frame of this video has some sort of visual effect, sound mix, video correction, etc applied. I didn't spend 8 months putting this together to have it look like it was done in 8 minutes. Inspired by CerealKill3r's latest videos, I went all out and pushed FCPX and Motion to their limits...
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

I could make one for Premiere, but I don't have FCPX (I do have FCP 7 on my mac but the mac is old and there wouldn't really be a point - FCP 7 is only really used in large productions and TV nowadays). I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I personally don't like FCPX/Motion as much and I've poured a lot of time into learning Premier/After Effects/Nuke (composting program used in most major productions nowadays).

Anyway, I'll stop derailing your thread now. :p
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

Like I've said a few times already, if I knew when I was purchasing FCPX and Motion what I know now, I would have bought something else like Premier instead. Motion is pretty cool, but FCPX is terrible. This thread will probably be retired anyway and a new one started up in another forum when this build resumes using new models being produced by SirPalesAlot.
 
RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many...

Well, in that case :)P)... I don't know how much you've played with motion as far as depth and honestly I don't know too much about it, but it really just doesn't get mentioned in the enthusiast/pro scene. After effects is just amazingly good for motion graphics/VFX, and does compositing well enough for most things. Also something that's not mentioned enough is that there are crazy amounts of tutorials etc for after effects because of its popularity. Nuke is pretty much incomparable as far as high level compositing, but that's a whole different subject.

It's interesting because my dad works in the TV industry (he's one of the primary videographers and editors at the local PBS channel here) and they're making the transition from FCP (they are still on FCP 7, never upgraded to X) to Premiere. He's been learning premiere on some of the less time constrained projects and generally likes it. His one complaint is that the color correction in Premiere isn't as robust/easy to use as FCP 7's.

Anyway, I would encourage you to check out the CC subscriptions-it's really not too expensive and they have some different packs and stuff.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

Okay, the uploaded video plays very grainy and low-def on YouTube. I don't like it at all. The .mov file plays in great HD quality on my machine, and I've watched plenty of HD videos on YouTube that look way better than mine. What can I do to get the uploaded quality comparable to my local quality?

Edit: Never mind - they must not have finished transcoding it yet because it's looking much better now.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

From my experience;

1. The YouTube Upload process will always provide a low-def playback version first. After it has performed it's compression algorithm on the Hi-Def version it will magically appear.
2. Your videos will always look and sound worse on YouTube than on your own computer.
3. If your channel has low subscriber-ship and views, and is mainly private videos, the algorithm tends to compress your videos more than others. This is more of an observation than fact, as the youtube compression algorithms are not released to the public. But do not expect to have sound or video quality like the front page channels until you are receiving payments from your videos.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

Thanks. Watching the private video right now and it looks good enough to me. I don't plan to receive payments because 1. I don't want to get in violation of fair use terms, and 2. it's a major pet peeve of mine when watching a video and ad banners are popping up. I'll make the video public very soon.........
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

Alrighty........


It took me 8 months, but I finally got my freakin' signature updated....!!
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

Don't get home until like 5 pm everyday


- Gray
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

Oh, I suspected as such (I'm in the same boat, except today I was home due to oral surgery this morning)...or maybe it was just a personal rule you adhere to for not watching new videos until they're 5 hours old. :lol lol

I'm taking a few days break before resuming pepping so I can catch up on things I've been neglecting during the final push to finish the video. Next up will be unfolding the new Ultimate Detail forearm model by SirPalesAlot to a Cameo-friendly format and adding it to my antecubital detail parts construction thread. I'll also need to make Cameo unfolds for the hand plates and shoulder pieces, then I'll get back into the build with reduced pep times, while collaborating with SirPalesAlot on the remaining Mk VI armor pieces.

I will be starting two new threads in the Pepakura forum for showing photos of the WIP, one for the child-sized UD Master Chief, and if time permits a Covenant Hunter costume for myself.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

I just finished watching the video and I can see why it took so long to finish. I think it was worth the wait. It was very detailed, and it was presented in a clear manner. I also had a few laughs along the way as well. As far as tutorial videos go I think yours is certainly top notch. It does seem like there are quite a lot of steps when watching the video, but I think the time spent doing each step for each sheet of paper will be worth it. I do like the fact that you have the option to use larger card stock pages with the Cameo. That opens up some alternate unfold options for some of the larger parts.

I do have one suggestion. It would be really nice to be able to go directly to the step you want in the video. You could add a section under the description with the title of each step and a tag for the time it starts so someone could click that tag and go directly to the step they want to view.
 
Re: RobotChicken's Halo 3 Mk VI Master Chief, Ultra Detail, First Build WIP (many pic

Just watched the video. I enjoyed it. Informative, humorous at a few points, and well presented. Well done.


- Gray
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top