VCVRack MPG Video recording! (and question)

VCV Rack
1

I used the VCV Recorder to record video in VCVRack. Yay it worked!

The original video is sharp but once I upload it to Youtube, it’s blurry. VCV Recorder seems to do exactly what it’s supposed to, but something is definitely screwy about how Youtube deals with the MPG file when it’s uploaded.

Is there a trick to getting YT videos to be in focus?

2

Is the video you embedded an example of the blurry(ness) If so it’s not blurry for me, the first few seconds are but then its very sharp/

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You’re right. I think it’s an artifact somehow of this computer and how streaming works on my network.

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4

The video looks quite respectable to me, but yeah, when applying a magnifying glass some of the fonts look a bit fuzzy/blurry. If it’s any help…

These are the recommended YouTube upload settings: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

You could always use VCV:Recorder to record in AVI format (the second one) and then use ffmpeg on the command line to transcode it into a perfect YT file. If the command line doesn’t scare you ffmpeg is very powerful and has a ton of options.

If it’s any help, here’s a shell script I have, that makes a YT optimized video, from a still image + a WAV audio file. You could adapt it to transcode AVI files instead.

#!/bin/bash

# Make a video fit for YouTube, taking as input a waw audio file and a still image.
# Video will be 1080p@6fps
# Usage: audio2video.sh AUDIOFILE.wav PICTUREFILE

test $# -ne 2  && { echo "Usage: audio2video.sh AUDIOFILE.wav PICTUREFILE"; exit 1; }

AUDIOFILE="$1"
PICTUREFILE="$2"
SHORTNAME="$(echo $AUDIOFILE | sed 's/\....$//;s/^.*\///')"
INTERMEDIATE="$SHORTNAME.m4a"

# First make an M4A audio file
echo Generating intermediate M4A audio file "./$INTERMEDIATE" ...
ffmpeg -hide_banner -i "$AUDIOFILE" -c:a aac -b:a 384k "./$INTERMEDIATE"
test $? -ne 0 && exit 1;

echo Generating video file "./$SHORTNAME.mp4" ...
ffmpeg -hide_banner -loop 1 -framerate 6 -i "$PICTUREFILE" \
	-i "$INTERMEDIATE" -c:v libx264 -preset slow \
	-tune stillimage -crf 18 -c:a copy -shortest -pix_fmt yuv420p \
	-movflags faststart -movflags negative_cts_offsets -bf 2 -flags +cgop \
	-threads 0 "$SHORTNAME.mp4"

# echo Deleting intermediate file ...
# rm "$INTERMEDIATE"

echo Done!

I don’t know which OS you’re on, but if you happen to be on Mac, I find that nothing beats using QuickTime to record screen and audio, and then simply hit save afterwards. It’s a perfect YT video.

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5

I’ve seen YouTube video uploads be at 360p immediately after uploading, but in time (and with views) become available at 1080p. Maybe you’re just running into how YouTube’s compression algorithm works?

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6

Yeah, the video often initially shows at a low resolution in Youtube, but after some time the higher resolutions become available. I think they keep the different resolutions as different files on their servers. The lowest resolution version is probably rendered first by them etc…

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7

I’m on Mojave and find the screenshot app in the utilities folder perfect, not everyone’s aware of it as it’s hidden away.

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this is why I love macOS, so much hidden gems.

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Correct. Full resolution encoded videos are put in a queue for up to 24 hours after uploading to YouTube.

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