Lagarith Lossless Codec Skipping frames, and removing layers

[Hopper200456]

Hey guys. It's that time again for me. The time when you export and everything goes wrong.

So anyway... I'm using the Lagarith Lossless Codec for compressing the export. It's my favorite, and I want to stick to it if possible. However, I've been having some weird issues... So it exports and is viewed fine on my PC.
But, (as I'm sure you know) YouTube, and almost any other web video site will compress your video to it's own format. When I upload to my Google Drive (That's what I'm using to test, as I'm not ready to upload to YouTube until I've worked all this out) it'll skip the last few frames, hide layers that were meant to be visible (but only sometimes, which is extra weird...) and it even switched to a camera view 3 seconds before I wanted.

Let me remind you, everything plays fine when I view the video on my hard-drive. I didn't even think it enough information to do all this, since it is compressed. Also, I'm sure it's the codec, as I've used and uploaded with other codecs that haven't had any problems. (I'm wanting to use this one, because it gives me the best video/sound quality)

Anyway, this is pretty annoying, as it flat-out ruins the animation. Do you guys have any suggestions or tips on how to fix/work around this? If you guys also have a compression codec that'll give the same quality (or better) of visuals and sound, that'd be great! Even better!

Thanks for any and all help!

-Hopper

[slowtiger]

Please read youtube's recent pages about recommended codecs and follow their advice. Lagarith ist totally out-of-date.

[Greenlaw]

Lagarith is an excellent codec for archiving video footage but it's a bit heavy handed for submitting as a YouTube video. I would avoid it for YouTube because: 1.) it will take forever to upload and for YT process. 2.) any quality benefit you might expect will most likely appear negligible because, well, it's YouTube. I don't know why the issues you described are happening but I imagine it might be because Lagarith is highly processor intensive and not really intended for normal playback.

What I do is edit my animations in Vegas Pro and then output as AVC/.mp4 with a bitrate of 5,000 bps or better (5k should be fine for most 2D animation.) Also--and this is important--I add a Levels plug-in in the Output FX channel and use the 'Computer RGB to Studio RGB' preset--this will make the video look bad when played locally from your hard drive but it adjusts the black and white levels properly for YouTube and the result will look correct once YT has finished processing it. If you don't do this, your video may look washed out on YouTube. Note that these are the recommended settings from Vimeo's website but I find it works well for YT as well.

If you use a different video editor, like Premiere, I imagine there are comparable presets you can use. You could check Vimeo's website for more info for your specific video editor. IMO, the recommendations at YT's website seem to always be in flux and a bit of a mess.

G.

[Hopper200456]

Bah- for some reason I always think that when I'm ready to export I'm done. And every time I'm wrong, haha.

I haven't been using video editors for animating, though I keep getting told that I should, haha. So, since all the sounds are already in the AS file, I'm probably just going to find a new compression codec for exporting this animation, and then I can use video editors for future animations.

Do you know of any free good video editors? I have no money to spend on them right now...

Also, what compression codecs do you use when you export into video editor? And do you know of any good codecs I could use right now, since it's a bit too late to use a video editor...

Sorry for being so naive about exporting and things. It's pretty new to me. I remember like 6 years ago I would export videos without being compressed, because I didn't know better, haha. And I always wondered why I would end up with 5gb files, haha.