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Recorder generates generates very poor quality videos

Discussion in '2018.1 Beta' started by georgeq, Apr 8, 2018.

  1. georgeq

    georgeq

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    I used the recorder on 2017.3 to produce several videos among them my entry to the Neon Challenge. The quality of the videos was excellent. Now I'm trying record a video with 2018.1.b13 and there's just no point of comparison, the videos recorded with 2017.3 look professional but those recorded with 2018.1.b look like if they were recorded with a handheld camera pointing to the screen, also some post processing effects (grain for example) look like if they were overlaid out of time, I don't think this is a problem of the prost-processing stack, as I don't have this issue on play mode.
     
  2. LeonhardP

    LeonhardP

    Unity Technologies

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    In 2018.1, we introduced a control for the encoding quality. However, the way it got hooked initially in the asset store package was forcing it to low-quality independently of what the UI says. This was recently fixed. Could you please try the latest version and see if this resolves your issue?
     
  3. georgeq

    georgeq

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    I just deleted the recorder folder and downloaded it fresh from the Asset Store, it says version 0.2.0027, but I'm afraid this didn't solve the problem. If I select UTJ/Legacy/MP4 I get a decent quality but don't get audio, if select Unity movie and MP4 I get sound but with very low video quality, if I select WEBM I get a decent quality with sound, but not all websites accept it. Something even worst happen if I select "Main Camera" and MP4, in this case the video is also recorded with low quality but upside down.

    Also, please, please, is a pain the neck to have to type over and over again the output parameters every time I change the file format, it would be of great help if you could set the path and file name once and for all, and never was cleared automatically... as a matter of fact, any parameters that are common to all recorders should remain unchanged.
     
  4. DominiqueLrx

    DominiqueLrx

    Unity Technologies

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    Hi georgeq! Thanks for checking you have the latest version.

    Your description of the problem does sound like the problem we had a while ago where the bitrate control had been "unplugged" by accident during integration.

    So can you verify if you do get different results when you change the bitrate (low/medium/high) for your recording tests? Another thing that would help isolate the issue is if you compared with what you get from the image sequence recording (instead of the movie recording). Using .exr images will provide the least amount of degradation compared to what the source texture contains. If the quality is low in the image sequence as well, then the problem happens earlier.

    Can you give us some more context? Platform, image resolution, reproducible with a stripped-down project or something that seems scene-specific, ...

    As for the image being flipped in some conditions, I am verifying if this is a known issue. We may ask you to submit an issue with a repro project if this is not already known.

    Thanks for helping out!

    Dominique
    A/V developer at Unity
     
  5. georgeq

    georgeq

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    Hey Dominque!

    I'm working with Unity 2018.1.0b13 on a DELL Inspiron 5555 with Windows 10. I have installed, Cinemachine, TextmeshPro, and the PostProcessing stack V2.

    I have tested with different bit rates, but there's nothing surprising here, the medium bit rate reduces even more the quality and low bit rate looks even pixelated. If I record the image sequence instead of the movie, the quality is good even with the JPG file format, so the problem is exclusive to the MP4 recorder. Like I mentioned on a previous post, the WEBM format doesn't have this problem. Also may be worth pointing out again, that UTJ/Legacy/MP4 doesn't have this problem either, but I don't use it because it doesn't record the sound.

    These are the parameters I'm using:

    Recorder.png

    EDIT
    Something I forgot to mention is the time required to generate the video. The MP4 recorder is notoriously faster than WEBM, which makes me think the MP4 recorder is skipping some necessary steps to keep up with quality.
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2018
  6. LeonhardP

    LeonhardP

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    Thanks George,
    Is there a chance you could send us a minimal reproduction project with a bug report?
     
  7. DominiqueLrx

    DominiqueLrx

    Unity Technologies

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    Hi George!

    Thanks for the additional details. I can't see what would cause the degradation you are observing between 2017.3 and 2018.1, so as Leonhard is saying, it'd be nice if you could submit a small project that reproduces the issue. Everything seems to be at its place, so there obviously is something we're not seeing.

    About the mp4 encoding being faster, it's because it's hardware-assisted. The webm encoding uses the vp8 video codec and vorbis audio codec, both of which are purely software implementation and thus not as optimized as the mp4+h.264+aac one.

    Dominique
     
  8. georgeq

    georgeq

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    It will take me some time, not sure when I can do it, but I'll spare some time for it... meanwhile, please take a look at what I'm getting, so you can have a better idea of what I mean:

    MP4 recorder

    WEBM recorder

    I recorded both videos with the settings I showed you on my previous post. I also recorder this with 2017.1, in this case it was recorded in QHD however it looks good when played on 720p and I don't remember having this problem with any version from 2017.1 to 2017.3
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2018
    LeonhardP likes this.
  9. DominiqueLrx

    DominiqueLrx

    Unity Technologies

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    Hi again!

    Can't disagree with you, something is very wrong with the mp4 version.

    Is it possible for you to upload (possibly shorter) videos directly here so that I can download them and poke around to see if I can figure out what's wrong with the encoding?

    Dominique
     
  10. georgeq

    georgeq

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    Mar 5, 2014
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    Hey...

    The page refuses to upload the video because the file doesn't have an allowed extension. Apparently you can't upload MP4 files, maybe I can upload it somewhere else?... anyways, I discovered another bug, apparently the render pipleline affects the video's orientation, in the examples above I was using linear color space and deferred rendering pipeline, I just changed that to gamma color space and forward rendering pipeline, and voila the video is now recorded upside down, as you can see here.